President Obama's attack on climate change

[careless hal]

   
Charles Krauthammer
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ALEX WONG / GETTY IMAGES

At the heart ofc is a desire to create new emissions standards for coal-fired plants. Power plants produce a third of all the greenhouse gases in the country, and coal plants are the biggest offenders. Above: President Obama unveiled his plan to combat global warming at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

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July 8, 2013
The economy stagnates. Syria burns. Scandals lap at his feet. China and Russia mock him, even as a "29-year-old hacker" revealed his nation's spy secrets to the world. How does President Barack Obama respond? With a grandiloquent speech on climate change.

Climate change? It lies at the very bottom of a list of Americans' concerns (last of 21 — Pew poll). Which means that Obama's declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost — and it will be heavy — is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic. You decide:

Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years — a curious time to unveil a grand, hugely costly, socially disruptive anti-warming program.

Now, this inconvenient finding is not dispositive. It doesn't mean there is no global warming. But it is something that the very complex global warming models that Obama naively claims represent settled science have trouble explaining. It therefore highlights the president's presumption in dismissing skeptics as flat-Earth know-nothings.

On the contrary. It's flat-Earthers like Obama who refuse to acknowledge the problematic nature of contradictory data. It's flat-Earthers like Obama who cite a recent Alaskan heat wave — a freak event in one place at one time — as presumptive evidence of planetary climate change. It's flat-Earthers like Obama who cite perennial phenomena such as droughts as cosmic retribution for environmental sinfulness.

For the sake of argument, nonetheless, let's concede that global warming is precisely what Obama thinks it is. Then answer this: What in God's name is his massive new regulatory and spending program — which begins with a war on coal and ends with billions in more subsidies for new Solyndras — going to do about it?

The U.S. has already radically cut CO2 emissions — more than any country on Earth since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Emissions today are back down to 1992 levels.

And yet, at the same time, global emissions have gone up. That's because — surprise! — we don't control the energy use of the other 96 percent of humankind.

At the heart of Obama's program are Environmental Protection Agency regulations that will make it impossible to open any new coal plant and will systematically shut down existing plants. "Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they're having a war on coal," explained one of Obama's climate advisers. "On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what's needed."

Net effect: tens of thousands of jobs killed, entire states impoverished. This at a time of chronically and crushingly high unemployment, slow growth, jittery markets and deep economic uncertainty.

But that's not the worst of it. This massive self-sacrifice might be worthwhile if it did actually stop global warming and save the planet. What makes the whole idea nuts is that it won't. This massive self-inflicted economic wound will have no effect on climate change.

The have-nots are rapidly industrializing. As we speak, China and India together are opening one new coal plant every week. We can kill U.S. coal and devastate coal country all we want, but the industrializing Third World will more than make up for it. The net effect of the Obama plan will simply be dismantling the U.S. coal industry for shipping abroad.

To think we will get these countries to cooperate is sheer fantasy. We've been negotiating climate treaties for 20 years and gotten exactly nowhere. China, India and the other rising and modernizing countries point out that the West had a 150-year industrial head start that made it rich. They are still poor. And now, just as they are beginning to get rich, we're telling them to stop dead in their tracks?

Fat chance. Obama imagines he's going to cajole China into a greenhouse-gas emissions reduction that will slow its economy, increase energy costs, derail industrialization and risk enormous social unrest. This from a president who couldn't even get China to turn over one Edward Snowden to U.S. custody.

I'm not against a global pact to reduce CO2 emissions. Indeed, I favor it. But in the absence of one — and there is no chance of getting one in the foreseeable future — there is no point in America committing economic suicide to no effect on climate change, the reversing of which, after all, is the alleged point of the exercise.

For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible. It is the starkest of examples of belief that is impervious to evidence. And the word for that is faith, not science.

Washington Post Writers Group

Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

[3 wide and wingin]

It made Algore hundreds of millions.

Its an industry now.

I live in Maryland. We have to goto VEIP every 2 years to have our cars tested for emissions.

The funny thing is. It can never end.

Why?

The government has spent the 15 dollars you have to pay for the 30 second test for the next 10 years.

It is counting on that money. So there cant not be emissions tests here.

The government. They are the best.

Had a horseman make a status a few days ago. About having to drop his health insurance because of the rate increases. Its very sad because he did not vote for Obama 2 times. But it is America in 2013.

And the health care abomination hasn't really kicked in yet.

As Ive said before though a country that re elects Bush and Obama in a 20 year period is going to be in bad shape.

Cant feel sorry for the country they elect all of the politicians.

congress has a 4% approval but then they all vote for their own congressman again. Go figure.

[Jeremy]

If it weren't for global warming over the past 20000 years there would still be an ice age.  And I thought that the earth warming and cooling had to do with the sun cycle.

[LVGaryD]

I recently read where one single large volcanic eruption causes more global warming in a week than all cars combined have in history.

[3 wide and wingin]

I recently read where one single large volcanic eruption causes more global warming in a week than all cars combined have in history.

That fact wont make ALGore hundreds of millions of dollars or get  Barry millions of votes from dummies.

This global warming racket is now a part of the American fabric. It will never go away. And is just part of the mess that will cripple the country into the future.

[Jeremy]

I recently read where one single large volcanic eruption causes more global warming in a week than all cars combined have in history.

Pretty sure they actually have a cooling effect.

[LVGaryD]

Pretty sure they actually have a cooling effect.

No. The carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is apparently what causes the warming, according to the scientist that wrote the article.

 

[Jeremy]

No. The carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is apparently what causes the warming, according to the scientist that wrote the article.

 

The ash and dust will block out the sunlight though.

[Just Saying]

All political bullshit aside: If you watch the evening news on local TV they usually show the record high temperature for that day in history. It is nearly always in the early 1930's when very few people had automobiles and the country was far less industrialized. I always think how miserable it must have been for folks during that time, with no air-conditioning in the cities and no rural electricity... the rurals couldn't even run an electric fan.

Funny how the scamsters like Algore never mention THAT weather history.

[3 wide and wingin]

Watch this video.

Listen to the laughter from the studio audience.
Trust me he could say anything and they will laugh. It reminds me of the press corp at the white house when Obama talks. They are just so in awe of him.
Will be lieve anything he says. It is almost cult like.

Anyway watch this video and read the comments.
If it wasn't so sad it would be hilarious.


http://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_on_averting_climate_crisis.html


Also read the bio to the right.

Its god like or well Obama level of worship LOL

And this is from 2006.

[3 wide and wingin]

OK

So I started poking around about AlGore and his movie.
More tyring to see how many millions he bilked the public of.

I read where the inspiration for taking the slide show and making a movie on it came from a lady named Laurie David.
She decided to produce the slide show and make it into a movie.

So just for fun looked her up and I cam across this.

Which made me  till I fell out of my seat.
If it doesn't sum up her and the ALGore types I don't know what does.

You ( common middle class worker) cant have an SUV. But she and Al go around in their private jets. The funniest part is paving over protected wetlands. I wonder if it was for a runway for her private jet or for her fleet of limos.

But here it is.



In an interview with The Guardian in November 2006, David acknowledged that owning two homes on opposite sides of the country and flying in a private jet several times per year is at odds with her message to others. In the interview she notes "Yes, I take a private plane on holiday a couple of times a year, and I feel horribly guilty about it. I probably shouldn't do it. But the truth is, I'm not perfect. This is not about perfection. I don't expect anybody else to be perfect either. That's what hurts the environmental movement – holding people to a standard they cannot meet. That just pushes people away."

In 2005, and then again in 2009, David was cited by the Chilmark Conservation Commission for paving over protected wetland areas on her estate on Martha's Vineyard.

[careless hal]

I recently read where one single large volcanic eruption causes more global warming in a week than all cars combined have in history.

It must be Krakatoa, which is in Indonesia these days.  You might remember the movie ,Krakatoa East Of Java.
Actually,  Krakatoa is West of Java.  Nonetheless, it put more gases and particulate matter in the atmosphere than all of man's activities before or since!  Most who know about the geologic history of Illinois know  the area was at one time covered by tropical seas, and then glaciers. And so forth and so on throughout time. This has been going on for billions of years.  But, wait!  Now we are told man is causing it!!!!! We give ourselves too much credit, or flunked our logic courses.  As far as I know, dramatic climate change is caused by shifts in the tilt of the earth's axis.  This has taken place throughout the history of thee earth.  Climate is the long term condition of th atmosphere.  I was taught the a trend had to be going on for at least 100 years or even 3 or 4 times that to even be considered a true change.  Now charlatans are exploiting people's ignorance and blaming everything mas does as the cause.  I think it is all part of a plan to get greater control over people by the government.   Mainly it's a a bunch of BS. We will be asked or told to give up everything to save the earth.  It won't work, but kiss our liberties good bye.

[Danville]

All political bullshit aside: If you watch the evening news on local TV they usually show the record high temperature for that day in history. It is nearly always in the early 1930's when very few people had automobiles and the country was far less industrialized. I always think how miserable it must have been for folks during that time, with no air-conditioning in the cities and no rural electricity... the rurals couldn't even run an electric fan.

Funny how the scamsters like Algore never mention THAT weather history.

I may be wrong on the actual date but sometime in early July we celebrate the date of the highest temperature ever recorded in the U.S.
Happened in some God awful desert in or around someplace appropriately called Furnace Creek and it happened 100 YEARS AGO !!!
Maybe Hussein and algore would care to comment

[beans and weenies]

All political bullshit aside: If you watch the evening news on local TV they usually show the record high temperature for that day in history. It is nearly always in the early 1930's when very few people had automobiles and the country was far less industrialized. I always think how miserable it must have been for folks during that time, with no air-conditioning in the cities and no rural electricity... the rurals couldn't even run an electric fan.

 
Funny how the scamsters like Algore never mention THAT weather history.

[Just Saying]

I may be wrong on the actual date but sometime in early July we celebrate the date of the highest temperature ever recorded in the U.S.
Happened in some God awful desert in or around someplace appropriately called Furnace Creek and it happened 100 YEARS AGO !!!
Maybe Hussein and algore would care to comment

I just read in the daily almanac in our local newspaper today that on this date in 1913 (100 years ago) the highest ever recorded temp, in the shade, occurred in Death Valley. It reached 134 deg F. Not a lot of autos, power plants, or industrialization 1913. It's all bullshit to take your money and your freedom at the same time, while politicians give up nothing.