Fox News finally does a good news report:
The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn’t move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a “command-and-control” role over the process in a way that could hurt business.
“This is not an ‘either-or’ moment. It’s a ‘both-and’ moment,” she said. “If you don’t pass this legislation, then … the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area,” the official said. “And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.” “So, passing the right kind of legislation with the right kind of compensations seems to us to be the best way to reduce uncertainty and actually to encourage investment,” the official said.
What EPA means is that if Congress doesn’t pass the cap-and-trade bill, they will just make CO2 a pollutant and regulate it that way. It’s ridiculous.
#60, Nodebate,
In #51 you made reference to “ the executive summary from the EPA report on CO2”
Your link does not go to an EPA report. It does to a “Comments on Draft TED for Endangerment Analysis for GHG Emissions under CAA”
I apologize. I overestimated your intelligence and actually expected you to know the difference between an internal discussion paper and a final report. Now I know.
The point here is to show a dissenting view within the EPA. But sense you brought up the article that also adds that this dissenting view was silenced by the new incoming EPA head (see heading: “The EPA’s Internal nightmare on Global Warming”).
YOUR point is to show a dissenting view. Not by a scientist(s). But by an economist.
Why not read this article, over half of EPA staff scientists were muzzled by the Bush Administration. Yup, the very ones included that wanted to speak up about CO2.
You’re problem is that you can’t win a real debate so you lead everyone off into the weeds where you can find camouflage
The problem is you can’t win a debate when you bullshit your way through. This whole blog is another bullshit hit piece in order to get hits. Maybe if you had of read my earlier posts you would understand. Read over the first 25 comments and see how many actually added anything to the discussion and how many were just an opportunity for wing nuts to spew their bullcrap.
The EPA is under a court order to write regulations on CO2 emissions. The only way they may be stopped from writing regulations is if Congress writes them. The EPA has already admitted CO2 is a greenhouse gas and has voluntary means of reducing emissions.
So, here’s your challenge, prove that there is a greenhouse signature in the upper atmosphere (#1 on the EPA list by the way). Lets see just how intelligent you are; enter into a real debate or avoid it and show what you’re really doing.
It is not up to me to prove anything one way or another. I have neither the expertise nor the finances to prove that argument. I will accept that scientists at the EPA have agreed it is a problem.
The vast majority of serious scientists agree that green house gases are contributing to global warming. The few scientists that have been bought off by carbon emitters can only question the conclusions, they have yet to refute any of it. While meteorologists, electrical engineers, and veterinarians may be serious (See the Oregon Petition), they are not climatologists.
The deniers are of two minds on this. One group admit there is global warming and CO2 is partly the cause, BUT man is not to blame. The other group just deny there is a problem. So which is it? Is there global warming or not?
Fusion, my point, as stated in my very first post, is that EPA is bluffing. The Clean Air Act was never designed to regulate “greenhouse” gases. Nothing in the Supreme Court’s opinion changes that. If EPA attempts to regulate CO2 in the same manner it regulates criteria or hazardous air pollutants, they will need to regulate virtually every activity in the U.S., and virtually every activity will need to obtain an Operating Permit. EPA knows this, so they are attempting to establish standards and rules that are inconsistent with the Statute. Hence, the basis for all of the legal challenges I have predicted.
Dude, this is my job. I’ve been doing this for twenty, damn long years. I’m really very good at it.
Fusion. Thanks for showing that you’re great at bullying. Besides that (bullying comments) the only other thing that you said was “It is not up to me to prove anything one way or another.” Kind of a reverse ad hominen attack; instead of telling me I’m not qualified you say that you’re not qualified. As if the only opinion that matters is mine and you have nothing to do with it. So, what is your purpose, bully everyone else?
I know what evidence is, don’t you?
Show me one piece of evidence that shows the greenhouse signature (That would be warming about 10 km above the surface, which should be especially pronounced in the tropics). Or do you only want to stay on the meaningless fringes bullying people to fulfill you’re own intellectual needs.
“Is there global warming or not?” After spending so much time working on your smug response and saying how it’s not up to you you ask me to draw a conclusion? Nice. Lets see how many more attempts to derail the debate you can think of.
#60 He doesn’t get that nor anything else. He’s conFused.
#62 I hope you know what a troll is (hint: Mr. conFusion)
CO2 is a pollutant, duh.
The difference is obvious, when you breathe out, that CO2 laden breath is part of a closed cycle.
But when you turn up your thermostat, you are using electricity that was generated by coal or natural gas, adding CO2 to the atmosphere that came from a carbon source that would ordinarily be locked deep inside the earth forever.
Conservatives know this, but feign ignorance. No, cow farts aren’t the problem, non-renewable energy sources are.
#62, Smith,
If EPA attempts to regulate CO2 in the same manner it regulates criteria or hazardous air pollutants, they will need to regulate virtually every activity in the U.S.
Maybe you should read the Supreme Court decision again. The case dealt with tailpipe emissions.
Even so, the EPA may not regulate naturally occurring chemicals, such as exhaled breath or volcano emissions. But they may regulate turning carbon into CO2 or sulfur into sulfuric acid in a commercial enterprise.
. EPA knows this, so they are attempting to establish standards and rules that are inconsistent with the Statute. Hence, the basis for all of the legal challenges I have predicted.
And what, pray tell, are these standards “inconsistent” with the statutes? That the EPA may make regulations is firmly established. No court will entertain a frivolous argument that the EPA does not have authority. This is called settled law. Any argument that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas will need much more evidence than a bunch of screaming right wing nuts calling the EPA a bunch of communists.
I’m really very good at it.
Actually, you have shown nothing to indicate you know much, if anything, about this. You have yet to indicate ONE area or point that may be realistically challenged.Your spiel, as with most deniers, is reminiscent of Orly Tate.
And for many many years I have been on both, a professional as well as personal, quest to root out bullshit.
Rick,
The idea that CO2 is a pollutant is based on the idea that too much of it is harmful to the environment by causing a rise in temperature through the greenhouse effect. To have a convincing argument though, you’d have to find at least one piece of evidence that that shows that higher CO2 means higher temperatures.
BTW, if cow farts are the problem then why is the left throwing around the idea that livestock should be regulated?
nodebate,
Fusion. Thanks for showing that you’re great at bullying.
Bullying? And then you accuse me of ad hominem attacks? What kind of an idiot are you? You were the one that wanted to change the debate. You were the one that created your own strawman challenge. You are the one with all the accusations that have no foundation. And you call me a bully.
Show me one piece of evidence that shows the greenhouse signature (That would be warming about 10 km above the surface, which should be especially pronounced in the tropics).
Question. Are you going to fund my research?
I can tell you right now that is a bullshit quest. The air at that level is extremely low density. That means very little specific heat. Since there is so very little at that height that effects human activity it would be a low priority for any earth scientist. The true indicators are those areas of high specific heat. At the earth’s surface the most obvious is water and ice.
What a typical right wing nut comment. No substance, just “answer the question, you’re wrong if you can’t.”
#67, nodebate,
To have a convincing argument though, you’d have to find at least one piece of evidence that that shows that higher CO2 means higher temperatures.
Ice cores.
This is accepted science. If you want to challenge it YOU provide the evidence.
First, the preliminary ice core data used to support the idea but there is better data now. Closer study of the ice core data now shows that CO2 follows temperature by an average of 800 years.
Second, if CO2 was driving temperature then we would have to explain why the greenhouse effect doesn’t keep going as CO2 rises. The theory is that it should gain momentum and we’d be in a runaway situation. But something else stops this process from continuing. That means that there is something more powerful than CO2 but none of the models account for this.
According to the ice core data, climate change (yes, the climate changes) can’t be explained by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.