First there is this:
President Barack Obama’s climate czar said Sunday the Environmental Protection Agency will soon issue a rule on the regulation of carbon dioxide, finding that it represents a danger to the public.
The White House is pressing Congress to draft and pass legislation that would cut greenhouse gases by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, threatening to use authority under the Clean Air Act if legislators don’t move fast enough or create strong enough provisions.
Carol Browner, Obama’s special advisor on climate change and energy, also said the administration is seeking to establish a national standard for auto emissions that could mean tougher efficiency mandates for auto makers. The new standard could be fashioned after strict proposals developed in California that would limit greenhouse gas emissions.
But when you go all the way to the end of the article you find this tidbit kind of slipped into the mix:
Separately, Browner said the administration was also going to create an inter- agency task force to site a new national electricity transmission grid to meet both growing demand and the President’s planned renewable energy expansion. Siting has been a major bottleneck to renewable growth, and lawmakers and administration officials have said they’re likely to seek greater federal powers that would give expanded eminent domain authorities.
Expanded?
# 35 bobbo said, “There were no Enron entities motivated to defraud the State of California when the State of California ran the energy grid/sources.”
Nope, just the legislature spending the state into BK. Enron was minor compared to that…
Paddy Zero==I’m not surprised. Can’t follow the point of a comment made. The issue here is who provides electricity better? Private Enterprise or the Government? To your tangential and irrelevant comment, imagine how bad off the State of California would be if Enron had run the entire state instead of just the energy supply?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#California.27s_deregulation_and_subsequent_energy_crisis
Before passage of the deregulation law, there had been only one Stage 3 rolling blackout declared. Following passage, California had a total of 38 blackouts defined as Stage 3 rolling blackouts, until federal regulators intervened in June 2001. These blackouts occurred mainly as a result of a poorly designed market system that was manipulated by traders and marketers.
# 37 bobbo said, “I’m not surprised. Can’t follow the point of a comment made.”
Here was a point YOU made.
booboo said, “Much of the inefficiencies of government run anything are minimal compared to free market fraud. ”
I simply pointed out that you were so wrong as to be laughable.
#38–Paddy Zero==do children cry when they see you coming?
# 39 bobbo said, “do children cry when they see you coming?”
No, only mindless, unthinking zombies like yourself.
I think I found it. It appears Europe had some big drops in emissions after then, with East Germany added to West, and the collapse of other Soviet satellites. Plus some other changes like Britain adopting natural gas.
So the reason for the year is that the emissions mix is different between countries, and the US takes more of the hit. If we were to adopt a different year like you suggest, then Europe would object.
Wow, that’s a lot of words to say nothing. Mostly, you agreed on the important points and only disagreed in places where opinion allows for differences. (note to readers: I’m using his own debating technique on him; that is minimize the poster by calling him silly or some other names, call his philosophy bad so that you seem perceptive, minimize the post itself with sarcasm and then use a lot of words to show how your opinion is simply different that the posters which implies that your opinion is more enlightened. Oh, and it helps if you can make points about the post that actually miss the point.)
I’m sure that’ll get a reaction ;-).
1. I’m an amateur because I don’t make any money to debate with you.
2. Thanks for agreeing with me on this point. Every system has it’s problems based on the morality or lack of it of people. So, given a certain equal amount of corruption (a corrupt person in business would be just as corrupt in government right?) which system would you rather have?
3&4. Agreeing once again, thanks. However, I think you are implying something else based on this phrase, “It’s all variable.” This doesn’t really agree with your derisive comment “you need to use your terms with much more precision…” I think you’re implying my terminology isn’t precise but your terminology is. However, you make the emphatic “No.” but then go on to say the same thing as I did which is essentially, price is what the two parties agree it to be. Ok, I only addressed the sellers side, fine. In a free system the buyer has to agree or no sale.
Instead of working so hard to imply things about me or my post you could have actually addressed the point I was making, which is, if the government runs something and it’s not interested in profit then how can it price the product?
5. So, off the top of your head you don’t know. But you would employ ‘cost accountants’ to figure it out. Lets say they figure it out and the cost is n. At the least the price is going to be n + the cost of ‘cost accountants’.
6 & 7. In a sense you make my point here. I’m saying that the criticism of the free market it to call it cold and heartless. The implication is that it can’t be a good system and that something must be found add some warmth and heart. So lets use the government to hammer that cold nasty free market and bring in some folks who care.
Notice that in #6 you agree with me (thanks again) since your obvious implication is “yes, it is.” And in #7 you build up the government but not too much.
Isn’t that exactly what I would have predicted you’d do?
8. Then the fest de la ristance (pardon my french), “Business doesn’t care at all” You can’t possibly support this but it’s where you’re whole post has been leading.
So, lets say that business is cold and heartless and the government is cold and heartless, would you rather be free to make your own choices or controlled by the government?
The satiric definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.”
You would think that as many times as bobbo has tried to engage me with his fecal matter smearage, to no avail, he would learn that I just, well, don’t really care what he has to say. It makes it easy to skim the blog when you just skip his comments.
Kinda like stimulus package after stimulus package. The end result is always the same.
#43 – MikeN,
You may be right. I have no idea. The real point though is that the planet does not care. CO2 is CO2. Methane is methane. Other GHGs, ditto.
We (there is no they in this) need to reduce CO2 globally to some number that happens to equal 80% reduction versus 1990 levels. Any other year would alter the percentage. But, we’d still need to lower the total CO2, regardless of the nation of its source.
#43 – MikeN,
My mistake. I took your statement at face value before googling. Are you getting your conspiracy theory from junkscience??!!? Don’t look to ExxonMobil for answers on climate change please.
MS,
What will reducing CO2 to 80 percent of 1990 levels do? Exactly?
#36, Cow-Patty,
Nope, just the legislature spending the state into BK. Enron was minor compared to that…
Well, the banks have spent the country into bankruptcy. Is that any better?
The Legislature is only following the people of California’s wishes. And the politicians can be voted out. The banks, power companies, large companies, etc. can’t be.
#48 – gooddebate,
What will reducing CO2 to 80 percent of 1990 levels do? Exactly?
What will reducing your cholesterol from 280 to 190 do exactly? Do you need to know exactly when and how severe your heart attack will be before you take action?
Reducing our CO2 emissions to 80% of 1990 levels may prevent us from crossing one or more tipping points of global warming that would result in a severely degraded ecosystem. The global ecosystem is what we depend on, quite literally, for our very lives every single day.
Reducing our CO2 emissions may prevent extreme sea level rise, which is currently forecast to be as high as 4 meters by 2100.
http://tinyurl.com/c324qd
Reducing our CO2 emissions may prevent the worst possible case of global warming, a world in which the oceans become anoxic (little or no oxygen), bacteria that produce sulfur reproduce like crazy there, and then when they reach the surface, release toxic levels of hydrogen sulfide gas into the atmosphere rendering the earth uninhabitable.
This happened 250 million years ago, though obviously not from human activity, and caused the worst extinction in the history of the planet.
http://tinyurl.com/6q7qn8
It’s not really that important to lower CO2, unless you care about the survival of the human species and 95% of the other species on the planet as well. Personally, I’m not so enamored of humans as you may realize from my blog alias. But, I care very deeply about a lot of the other species on the planet.
It may already be too late.
However, I think we must take strong and decisive action in the hope that we can prevent the worst effects.
#48 – gooddebate,
Here’s another reason to take action quickly. It turns out that the deniers have been right about the accuracy of the models all along. Unfortunately, they have been wrong about the direction of the miscalculations. Climate scientists in general and the IPCC in particular have been far too conservative. None of the models have predicted the actual level of severity of what we’re already seeing.
http://tinyurl.com/dc5hdw