Monday, June 01, 2009

200906014995 | The Costs of Carbon Legislation | / | Energy & Environment
...I think that the real threat to humanity comes from governments growing ever more powerful in the name of fighting climate change. Paul Krugman's recent attempts to justify these bold new measures ignore the IPCC itself, and even its "consensus" figures are based on wishful assumptions about the behavior of governments in the real world.

Whether you are a "denier" or whether you think carbon dioxide emissions need to be sharply reduced very quickly, you should be extremely skeptical of the process now unfolding in Washington. This isn't about saving the planet; it's about money and power.
Hot Air » Blog Archive » Obama cuts funding for green tech Interior hailed
This looks particularly embarrassing, especially since it takes place on Obama’s policy turf. Interior just got done promoting this technology as Congress appropriated the funds for its research. Now Obama has essentially reversed Salazar, which prompts the question of whether Obama actually consults with his Cabinet, or merely uses them for window dressing. So far, their performance makes it look more like the latter rather than the former.

Why is Obama picking winners and losers in the green spectrum anyway? After Interior’s assessment of wave technology’s potential, it doesn’t look like the administration had any scientific reason to make the cuts while increasing solar and wind funding. Could it be that the solar and wind lobbies have more of an influence than the White House wants to admit? When politicians pick winners and losers, the best way to figure out the decision is to follow the money.
Ontario Tables Cap and Trade Legislation
This week Ontario tabled legislation creating a framework for a greenhouse gas ("GHG") cap and trade system and invited public comments on how the system should be designed.
RealClimate
I don’t tend to read other blogs much, despite contributing to RealClimate. And I'm especially uninterested in spending time reading blogs full of ad hominem attacks. But a handful of colleagues apparently do read this stuff, and have encouraged me to take a look at the latest commentaries on our Antarctic temperature story.

2 comments:

papertiger said...

Tom I think you missed the lede on the RC story.
Check this out.

"The basic lesson here is that one should avoid using more parameters than necessary when fitting a function (or functions) to a set of data. Doing otherwise, more often than not, leads to large extrapolation errors." - Eric Steig.

Look whose suddenly developed a taste for the "keep it simple" principle.
Maybe we should get Eric and Jimmy Hansen in a room together, so that some of this newly displayed wisdom will rub off.

John M Reynolds said...

My comment to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment went something like this:

Carbon dioxide helps the environment. Since the average global temperature has not risen in over a decade in spite of ever increasing CO2 levels, it is not a primary driver for temperature. Carbon dioxide feeds the plants that in turn feed wildlife of all kinds. Carbon dioxide benefits the environment. Ensuring carbon dioxide's continued emission should be the goal of an Environmental Registry. Fighting pollution that hinders plant and wildlife is worthy; however, CO2 is not a pollutant. From an environmental perspective, any cap-and-trade programs should exclude CO2.

John M Reynolds