Sun editorial:

A matter of time

A global warming bill respecting the air will pass, if not now, then in the near future

Tue, Jun 3, 2008 (2:06 a.m.)

President Bush’s response to global warming has been to deny it and give industries the option of denying it, too, by insisting that any efforts they undertake to reduce greenhouse gas emissions be voluntary.

Fortunately, such timid leadership does not characterize all of Washington. In the fall, congressional Democrats and a few Republicans got behind a long-awaited global warming bill — America’s Climate Security Act — introduced by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va.

After revisions, the bill is being debated this week in the Senate. The bill proposes nothing less than the beginning of a monumental energy shift — away from fossil fuels and toward alternative energy sources, and away from guzzling energy as if there were no tomorrow and toward energy efficiency and conservation.

A major goal of the bill is to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 70 percent over the next 40 years. There is widespread agreement among leading scientists that greenhouse gases emitted by cars, power plants, refineries and factories are causing the Earth to become warmer, and that warming, if not reversed or considerably slowed, could lead to life-threatening environmental changes.

Under the bill’s major provision, the federal government would limit emissions in descending amounts each year until the 40-year goal has been met. To enforce this, it would issue permits in amounts matching the cap and polluting industries would be required to buy them. If industries needed to exceed their allowable emissions, they could trade for other companies’ permits.

This would be a major departure from past and current practice, which allows companies to largely think of the air as free and theirs to pollute at will. It is such a major departure, in fact, that the bill is probably ahead of its time. Most Senate watchers are saying it will not pass.

Yet the bill has merit because it signifies that Congress is treating global warming as a reality and taking it seriously. As the effects of global warming mount, a bill similar to this one is almost certain to pass in the near future.

Discussion: 3 comments so far…

By jfnance32

6/3/08 at 7:07 a.m.

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There is a "petition, signed by over 17,200 scientists who think that the currently available scientific data do not support the conclusion that global warming is anything other than a naturally occurring cyclic phenomenon"

Reid Bryson, emeritus professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison: "It’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air

Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa "We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly... solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle"

William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more."

Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame"

George Kukla, retired Professor of Climatology at Columbia University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in an interview: "What I think is this: Man is responsible for a PART of global warming. MOST of it is still natural."
By NVMakz

6/3/08 at 7:53 a.m.

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The arrogance of liberals globally - that they can affect the weather and change the natural variations of climate movement - is flabbergasting.

This effort is the most bogus political power grab since the advent of political correctness.

I am positive that the nation NOT covered by global efforts to cut their G/G gases, like China, Asia, Russia and so forth = are more than happy to allow the global eco-facist to harm our economies by many trillions to chase this canard.

Shame on the poltically deluded, pimped by the Socialist Sun.....
By mort

6/3/08 at 12:33 p.m.

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The Global Warming legislation cost $6.7 trillion just on a static Congressional scoring base. But once the hedge fund managers George Soros John Paulson, and Philip Falcone get into this market and start the securitization of carbon emission allowance permit (a the cap causing a liquidity crises) then who know what you might pay to buy and run a new SUV or cool your house. The system will be set up so that fee-collecting middlemen churn re-structured carbon emission instruments by reselling them. Soros’ tacit, in keeping with his “reflectivity” theory, is to cause people to make mistakes, that he can feed off of. Harry Reid is repeating this claim by saying not every expert agrees on the quickest and most cost-effective path to get there, but all agree that the one thing we cannot afford is delay. Once this is in place the government will not be able to control price just like the cost of gas.