This bill is the equivlent of p*ssing on a plant and telling people it's been watered.

I hope whatever the next spiecies is that takes over the earth will understand the concept of planning ahead. We had our chance and we blew it big time.

Remember, the dinosaurs are still the most successful large spieces to live on the planet. We humans are so stupid.

The progressive triceratops said dino-caused global cooling was coming and pleaded with the other dinosaurs to listen to the pteradactyls' studies. 

But the partisan T-Rex said the pteradactyls were high from too much flying and bogged down any reform legislation with procedural filibusters.  Meanwhile, the power raptor lobby for Brontosaurus Leaf Consumption, Inc. (aka Big Food) spent millions of eggs on misinformation campaigns and ate anyone else who tried to challenge them.

In the end, it didn't matter because a meteor showed up, dusted out the sun, and no one ever found out who was right.

Stupid dinosaurs...

We may not pass a perfect bill this year, but we need to act and we need to focus on keeping pressure on the Senate to move a bill. With a bill, we lay the foundation for ultimately solving the problem. Without one, we're doomed.

And, we can strengthen over time in regulatory and legal fights and, if needbe, come back for better legislation down the road.

The important thing is getting a damn bill passed, showing the world we mean business, putting our foot forward for the Copenhagen negotiations and working with other countries to cut total emissions 2-3% per year by 2050.

Once inertia is overcome it will be easier to pass additional measures or even a completely new bill that will have an impact.

Far better to play the Hanson Game of always claiming that "Evil Guys" are "preventing us from limiting carbon dioxide" and then never have the bet called.

The problem has many, many causes, Co2 emissions are only one part, earth's albedo (amount of reflected heat and light) is less thus keeping more heat, greenhouse gases, historical data showing that we are in a short term ( several million year) warming trend,et.al....

I think the far better approach is to pass a strong, though imperfect bill, get the emission reduction program in place, prove it can be done in a way that doesn't destroy our economy, and work on strengthening the bill over time, like we've done with the Clean Air Act.

See this post from Climate Progress, which addresses some of the complaints about ACES being too weak: http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/09/nasas-james-hansen-pushes-false-misleading-and-pointless-attack-on-u-s-climate-action/

How do you define natural causes?

Climate responds to forcings.

What natural forcings can you identify that are responsible for the ~0.2C per decade warming trend since 1975?

Robert K

What historical data are you talking about?

The Earth has been in an ice age for the past few million years with only brief interglacial periods, such as the current Holocene.

Where do you guys get such patently false ideas from?

 The "greenhouse gas effect" was disproved in 1909 by R.W.Wood and has been shown to Violate the Fundamental laws of Physics. Look up the publications of Dipl.-Ing Heinz Thieme and Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner. Other important web-sites with true information http://www.strata-sphere.com and "icecap.us" and a few hundred others.
The "greenhouse gas effect" is a hypothesis that can not be proven and is a Fairy-tale, therefore Man-made global warming is a political & environmental wacko hoax.
We are going into a natural global cooling climate change caused by a Solar hibernation- http://www.space and science research.com

Permalink

NASA: 

http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/causes 

“Most scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human 

expansion of the "greenhouse effect" -- warming that results when the atmosphere traps 

heat radiating from Earth toward space.” 

NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) 

http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/ocp2009/ocp2009-ccsp.htm 

“Climate research conducted over the past several years indicates that most of the 

global warming experienced in the past few decades is very likely due to the observed 

increase in greenhouse gas concentrations from human activities.” 

 AGU (American Geophysical Union) 

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positions/climate_change2008.shtml 

“The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of 

the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the 

extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, 

and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not 

natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of 

greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century.” 

And on, and on, and on.  Universities, Global Panels, Space Programs, 

Government science programs, and privately funded institutions – over, and 

over, and over again, explain this situation to the public. 

while the IPCC, UN, EU, BRIC, umpteen academies of science, NGOs and others are calling for around a 40% cut by developed nations, just to have an even chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change,

is it possible that there is a motivation for delay in the senate on grounds that it would be better to have a bill in progress during Copenhagen

rather than trying to negotiate while holding a newly signed but pathetically feeble bill that only further discredits US diplomacy ?

_____________________

With regard to the conspiracy theorists that insist on spouting their guff, it is worth observing that at Copenhagen there will be govt. reps of all the worlds national producers of oil, coal and gas, none of whose govt scientists have been able to refute the work of the IPCC over the last 17 years, despite their massive national interest in finding evidence that can do so.

Which means of course that Saudi Arabia, in endorsing the IPCC reports, is in cahoots with Russia and Japan and Venezuela and Germany and South Africa and Iran and the USA, among many others, in purposely undermining their own economic interests.

Seriously weird

And no shred of evidence of that vast global conspiracy to falsify the evidence, involving the many thousands of scientists, diplomats, politicians, (and all their subordinates and staff) of 187 nations that are UNFCCC signatories, has ever come to light on the web or the trad media -

And that is beyond bizarre.

Personally I see no point in further tolerating the cant of those whose policies of inaction have likely already committed us to intensifying famine in Africa.

Think about it - to what extent would we tolerate such propaganda here if the victims of the consequent genocide happened to be, for instance, predominantly Jewish ?

Free speach has its place, and IMHO it stops at the point where it starts getting innocent people killed as a consequence.

Or am I just old fashioned in caring for children that I'll never meet ?

Regards,

Billhook

Look, I fully get that climate change is a huge and important problem (though I don't like other huge and important environmental problems, such as ecosystem destruction and ocean acidification, being ignored because of people obsessing on it) and that passing legislation to deal with it is an important step in doing something about it.  But grossly overestimating the good that could be done by a bad bill like this serves no purpose other than to convince people they've done something when they have not, which will cause even more inaction.  If your main issue is climate change, you should spend your time and energy trying to make this bad bill into a good one, not trumpeting a bad bill.

The "greenhouse gas effect" is supposed to be the "back radiation of IR" this cannot happen because it is a violation of the Second Law of thermodynamics.

Quoting different parts of the NASA fantasy:

“Climate research conducted over the past several years INDICATES that most of the 

global warming experienced in the past few decades is very likely due to the observed 

increase in greenhouse gas concentrations from human activities.” 

THEY ARE SURE hedging there bet.

The next bit of bull is from the AGU :The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of 

the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, etc. ---The most recent data from NASA is that there has been no  temperature increases since 1998 and and has been decreasing to the point that that the 2007-08 temperatures are about the same as 1978.

Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic has increased to more than in 2004.

According to the information on the web-site Space and Science Research that we are going into a mini ICE age because of Solar hibernation.The weather in Europe and Asia in 2007-2008 were the worst in 100 years. Glaciers in the Himalayas have been growing.

There is no scientific evidence that the Greenhouse gas effect exists.

The NASA should be very worried because EPA says that CO2 is a dangerous gas- therefore if the CO2 atmosphere in a space shuttle , the space station,or in a space suit gets above 320 ppm we will kill the astronauts.

Now let address the most corrupt and stupid Cap& Steal proposed law-If it passes how will the most generous people of the United States have any money to contribute to charities for both the US and Africa.

 The estimate is that every family will be paying $3000 more per year for there electricity plustheincreased cost of everything else maybe a total of $30,000. per year.

 If we stop paying billions of dollars to research grants for global warming  research that will do nothing there would be lots of money for charitable project in the US and the rest of the world.All of the major universities are receiving millions to reduce CO2 outputs this will do nothing to help  climate change because the only thing that controls climate is the energy out put from the Sun.

There is a reference to the IPCC that no one has shown its has been disproved -there are more than 2000 scientist that had been on the committee and have withdrawn their names from the reports because of manipulation of the data and the report. Look up the web-site 'icecap.us' and look at the U-tube presentation of Bob Carter and others.

Billhook you are totally ignorant of the truth your are a sheep being led around by the nose being led to the slaughter

It is now very public information that the EPA has hidden the report of Alan Carlin an EPA physicist and analysts -the report shows that CO2 does not cause global warming.The report has peer reviewed data to backs this up.

The Heinz Hug paper has been thoroughly discredited by none other than Roy Spencer.

Hug ignores emission and only considers absorbtion in his calculation of atmospheric absorbtion of surface emissions of IR. If that were the case and the atmosphere only absorbed IR energy, there would be no mechanism for shedding the energy which is impossible. The pertinent fact that he ignores is that the atmosphere itself is also emitting, in fact there is more downward IR flux to the surface from the atmosphere than there is SW flux from the Sun.

Just because there are 100 or so websites making money propagating specious psuedo scientific arguments does not validate the ludicrous argument thet there is global conspiracy by the scientific community.

Just the simple fact that your source would promote such a silly premise should give one pause and reason to question all assertions made by said source.

I will look up Roy Spencer comments on Heinz HUG , how about the following-"Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effects Within the Frame of Physics" by Gerlich and Tscheuschner.

Mean while: What are you saying in your comments. Also where is your data from? If you are talking about a paper from a Heinz Hug -I have not made any reference to it . My reference is to a paper by Heinz Thieme,"Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics"

To those that question the work of R.W. Wood -his paper was peer reviewed before it was published. It appears that most of you do not understand what his work did.

In 1896 it was assumed that the "greenhouse effect" was caused by "back-radiation" of IR inside the confined space thus causing higher temperatures inside the enclosure- we see this every day in closed cars that can get to temperatures in excess of 140 F.

 Wood's experiment showed that the cause of this temperature increase was due to the lack of convection and conduction of the heated air from  the confined space. Anyone can check this with an IR thermometer  and a bi-metal thermometer placed in a shaded part of the car interior.First have the windows closed -read the Bi-metal thermometer and read the temperature of many parts of the interior with the IR thermometer. You will find that the parts of the car interior in the sun can reach 140 to 170 F( if black) ,the bi-metal thermometer will read well over the outside temperature-easily 120 F if the outside temperature in the 80's - this is what kills many children and pets left in a closed car on a Sunny day. Now open the windows and watch what happens to the temperatures , the bi-metal thermometer will start dropping, the temperature of objects in the car will drop a little but the items in direct sunlight will change very little. I have done this many time.

Now that we have established the "greenhouse effect" it is obvious that you can not have a "greenhouse effect" in the troposphere.Gases are not insulators and only reflect light at an interface between defined layers. 

In 1896 when the "Greenhouse gas effect" was hypothesised it was assumed that Sun light passing through a gas caused it to heat up from the absorption of IR or other radiation. Wood's experiment also disproved this but only after the work of Niels Bohr in 1922 was published  was the explanation better understood. It is possible that Bohr know of the work of Wood and used it in formulating his great work.

Niels Bohr work has two parts- one is that electromagnetic radiation passing through a gas does not heat the gas when it is absorbed-the photons are absorbed by the electrons of the gas atom or molecue and the energized electrons go to a higher energy shell. This can happen from one to many times depending on the gas atom or molecule. After all the possible energy levels have been filled -the molecule will not accept any more energy until it has radiated the energy out as an electromagnetic wave of the proper wavelength.

The out bound radiation will go in any direction. Thus the assumption of the ghg effect is bull that it will be directed back to the earth if the radiation came from the earth. There is no force that will cause this to happen. This whole concept is verified by the work of Heinz Thieme and Gerlich &Tscheuschner.

The "greenhouse gas effect is a fairy -tale. Look up the fact that the EPA is hiding the report of Alan Carlin that shows that CO2 does not cause global warming with peer reviewed references. The only cause of climate change is variations in Solar energy output. There is actual evidence that we are going into a global cooling period. This is caused by a Solar Hibernation and Al Gore closed his mouth.

My point was to address your view that the EPA should be allowed to regulate carbon. I agree with that in theory, but in practice that's certainly not a silver bullet solution and I would much rather have a law than a series of regulations that can be undone by subsequent administrations over time. Plus, the EPA administrator Lisa Jackson strongly supports this bill as does President Obama. So, there is preference from this administration and EPA to pass the bill.

You and I disagree on whether this bill is on balance a positive or negative bill. I think getting a carbon market up and running, setting legal pollution reduction goals, creating the legal framework for dealing with this problem is very important. And, I might add, that if the bill were so environmentally flawed, why are the oil and coal and utility companies nearly all lined up against it? On my side, I have Waxman, Markey, Pelosi, Obama. On the other side, you have ExxonMobil, Southern Company, Rush Limbaugh, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. Legislation truly does make strange bedfellows.

Your posts demonstrate an exteme lack of understanding of spectral physics. It is obvious you do not understand even the terms you are using in your arguments.

Also this is not the proper forum to discuss physics. If you are interested in such a discussion I suggest this forum.

It is a moderated forum to discuss science. I was suggesting that you post there if you wish to have a serious discussion about the science. If all you want to do is make specious non-sensicle arguments, then I suggest you avoid it and other forums like it.

The Physics Forum website states that short wavelength IR passes thru the atmosphere inbound but long wave length is absorbed out bound and is reradiated back to earth this is impossible this Violates the Second Law of thermodynamic. You obviously have never looked at the spectral analyses of the light inbound from the sun, look up the NASA spectral data on sun light it contains more long and short wave length energy than can be absorbed by 50 times the present CO2 levels in the atmosphere the rest gets to the earth. After the earth absorbs the IR radiation it heats up and then radiates out to space cooling the earth. I realize that the next statement will confuse you but the only molecules that cause the earth to be warmer that a planet without an atmosphere is water and its several physical phases. It is not a "ghg" its properties are totally different than CO2 or CH4, which are colorless, gases at normal temperature and pressures. Water can be a liguid, solid or gas at normal earth temperature and pressure.

Skyhunter go back to school and take a physics and chemistry class so you will understand what I have written.

 If you want some real science and facts go to www.strata-sphere.com

If there were no greenhouse effect the Earth's surface would be 255K not 288K.

There is no such thing as shortwave infrared.

CA&W, you do not have a clue!

 You obviously don't understand my comments on the effect of water on planetary temperatures. Like I said go back to high school and take some courses in physics,general science, and chemistry. There are two saying I learned in High School-"An empty barrel makes the most noise" and It is better to have people think you are dumb that open your mouth and prove it"

As I have said before the greenhouse effect is caused by confined space heating as  proved by R.W.Wood in 1909. This Effect Can not occur in the troposphere. The greenhouse gas effect is also a fairy-tale. Global temperatures have been proven to be decreasing since 1998.

Look up the work of Alan Carlin of the EPA and read carefully the Executive Summary.

Carlin is an economist, not a scientist.

Sylas uses SW and LW in context. IR is infrared which is long-wave radiation. Therefore there is no such thing as short-wave IR. (infrared)

So I stand by my earlier comment that you have no clue about the physical science that you are trying to argue.