The Greening of the GOP
Where the Candidates Stand on Global Warming
From the Chicago Tribune:
“Climate change is real. It’s happening. I believe human beings are contributing to it,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said during a debate in Iowa when pressed on the issue.
But Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney adamantly oppose a mandatory cap on the greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that are blamed for the earth’s warming. Both have borrowed a page from President Bush’s strategy by maintaining that the answer is to free the country from its dependence on foreign oil.
That’s in marked contrast to Sen. John McCain, who is battling Giuliani and Romney for the lead in Florida. The Arizona senator has been among Congress’ loudest voices for aggressive action, co-sponsoring legislation in 2003 that called for capping greenhouse gases — principally carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels — and frequently chiding the Bush administration for its failure to support mandatory measures to reduce such emissions.
It’s a turnaround from when McCain ran for president eight years ago and was dogged in New Hampshire by a critic in a penguin suit protesting McCain’s skepticism about climate change. McCain cited a series of Senate hearings he held on issue for convincing him the problem is real.
The so-called “cap-and-trade” approach — where companies would have pollution allowances they could sell if they fall below a cap, or buy credits if they found they could not meet the requirements — also has been endorsed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has called protecting the earth from warming “a moral issue.”
The leading Democratic candidates — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards — have called for a mandatory 80 percent cut in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by mid-century and have outlined global warming proposals more stringent than Democratic legislation before the Senate.
But Giuliani has no taste for mandates on carbon emissions, saying they make no sense.
“The best way to deal with it is through energy independence,” he argues, calling for building more nuclear power plants, promoting conservation and alternative fuels and more research into capturing carbon dioxide from coal plants. He argues mandates to cap greenhouse gases don’t make sense.
Yet another reason McCain and Huck supporters haven’t thought this through. Look at what they are saying about Global Warming….
There’s not a bit of daylight between the democrats and McCain/Huckabee on the imposition of this hoax on the American taxpayer.
Posted by Kathy
January 24th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Which is exactly why everybody wants them to win the nomination. I was going to write up something this morning reminding people of that little McCain fault. Thanks, Kathy.
In fact, every candidate left buys into the manmade global warming hoax to some extent, in spite of significant scientific evidence that almost all of it is due to natural climate shifts.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Kathy, that ‘….critic in a penguin suit..” reminds me a left a reply on your earlier
‘Medieval Global Warming’…..wondering about your flaming overcoat. Have you seen the new technology which involves large ’solar sails’ for ships? I guess
big ships use a lot of diesel, and that would be more cost effective and less polluting…..well, until nightfall.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I haven’t BB - would be interested as I am an expert at wind powered boats - have a 27footer in my driveway. Don’t ask.
If we didn’t ship our fuel over in tankers, it would consume less fuel. Drilling ANWR and putting it in a pipeline would make a huge dent in that. Not too mention buy us time to find alternatives and build a mechanism to get off our carbon addiction, like nuclear power (which I think is the cleanest and safest).
Not to mention the pollution leaky tankers emit on their journey, and it’s especially bad when they don’t complete those journeys -thinking Exxon Valdeez here.
Nobody is greener than me, BB, but I believe in pragmatic solutions, not ideological ones. We have real issues with the environment that aren’t one hundred years out.
Isn’t it odd how those who most believe in evolution are the strongest forces to thwart it?
January 24th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Won’t ask about a 27 ft sailboat in the driveway….will assume it is used as a decorative planter. I agree that nuclear-genrated electricity is a good solution.
That country referred to by some as ‘Fwance’ has taken the nuclear route with
extraordianary success, see http://www.uic.com.au/nip28.htm ..things like
Three Mile Island, China Syndrome (the movie) and overzealous environmentalists
practically killed the concept here. IMHO, the only drawback is where to put the
spent stuff…and living in an area near Hanford and Idaho Engineering labs, the
folks that know how are doing it well. Should you have interest in a solar sail for your ‘planter’, see http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9813329-54.html
January 24th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Know all about where to put the spent stuff.
Two things affect the safety of nuclear waste - time and distance - otherwise known as half- life and burial under lead laden rock. Unlike non radiological waste which is made innocuous by dilution, the harmful effects of radiation can’t be diluted or made to convert to a less difficult chemical. We just bury it deep and wait a long long long time. DOE Permitting on that stuff is pretty intense, even for the folks that simply test it. There has to be a dedicated waste stream and the holding tank is periodically disposed of at dedicated facilities.
Ever wonder what France does with it’s spent rods - Saddam had a great big desert….
Just sayin’.
Are you near INEL? I did some lectures up there about fifteen years ago. I’m sure nobody would remember… I had the impression those engineers hadn’t seen a woman in heels and a skirt in a very long time.. Hillary has never had to face true feminism like that..
I have family near Boise, mostly Meridian. Nice folks those Idahoans.
Dont get me started on misguided environmentalism. I could write a book.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I’m a day’s drive from INEL, and yes a woman lecturing should wear cowboy boots
(perhaps set off with a nice side arm). My daughter and son-in-law were chem professors at West Point for a few years. With a growing family, they moved to
the Richland area, where he is a Senior Scientist at Battelle NW Labs. (How old does that make me?) LIke INEL, Hanford is an expanse of scrub land, a going business in plutonium, tritium and other niceties until recently. ( I will refrain from my experience with a Hanford PhD mathematician on statistical research on mixture data, but gee, he was weird) So, we are about three hours from Hanford (and downwind) and it is a neat place (as is INEL, if you are into lonely) Which is OK with me, since my very early work was at Dugway Proving Ground-the definition of lonely. Where I did a lecture for the CIA, and no ,did not wear skirt or heels. Veering sharply back to subject: the long half-life isotopes can be encapuslated in molten glass, or so I’ve been told..one would think the latent
heat might even be further source of energy. I don’t think there is any question
that nuclear power will come back; it’s just a question of how costly fossil fuels
become and how long it takes. Obliquely, but on subject, there are numerous
‘wind farms’ out this way, on the high plateaus…hundreds of props generating
‘clean’ electricity.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Climatologist Roy Spencer says the following in a recent post : “On the political side, all of this talk of a supposed scientific consensus puts politicians between a rock and a hard place. Long-range scientific predictions of environmental gloom and doom have had a terrible track record, historically, and yet for some reason we are always willing to accept the next one that comes along. Maybe it’s their entertainment value.
So, what is a politician to do? Go with the currently popular flow, or ignore what most of the experts, pundits, and media are saying and just stick with their gut instincts? Certainly, politicians who want a better chance of winning an election should go for the popularity contest.
But what if sticking to one’s guns on such an issue is just enough for the Republicans to lose the White House? Well, what is more important for the future of America: the party affiliation of the next president, or the decision to let government control how much energy people and business can use from now on?
Once the government gains control over energy decisions, do we really think they will relinquish it after manmade global warming is realized to be a false alarm? It has been said that whoever controls energy, controls life. Right now, the free market (which means you) controls those decisions.†For the complete post see:
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWFjMDkyNTljYmEwYzUyNTkwZWJkMjEyODJjZTM3Nzc=
January 24th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Virtually all people who grasp radchem are weird. A certifiable weird. You have to be to grasp that whole partial differential of decay. The spectroscopists are the worst. Nice guys though - one of my great friends is a radiation physicist - just don’t ever ask them to help you move by taking apart your kids’ bunkbeds.
He took them completely apart. down to the bolt sockets. Great guy, though.
Worst headache I ever got - trying to fit a LIMS system to radchem analysis reporting or comes a close second to explaning significant figures to a radchemist reporting counts. Somehow the guy never got the idea that measuring 75 mls of the sample in a graduated cylinder required him to report to two sig figs on counts - not fourteen. I kept asking him if he’d had freshman chemistry. If you think I questioned your sanity….
Wind power - great stuff if you live where you do - low population areas with lots of wind. Won’t work in a broad application - population areas tend to reject wind farms, see Kennedy, Ted, or Cape Cod Wind Farm That Never Happened.
Hydro is great stuff, too. Just limited on the output. It isn’t exactly the most efficient. Nuclear power is the way to go, but a nuclear power plant hasn’t been built in the US thanks to Fonda, Hoollywood, etc. After China Syndrome came out the public fear was palpable. The pressure then on the weak kneed and ignorant politicians closely resembles the silly anthropogenic warming scenarios presented by the Church of Gore. We’ve seen this error before and we learned nothing.
But there is enough fuel in shale extraction and stripper wells to adequate to the energy needs out west as well. Can’t fight the environmentalists who want us all to freeze to death in the dark.
Interesting proposal encasing spent nuclear waste in glass (Pb glass is technically “rock” - I hadn’t heard of it, but I haven’t worked in that area in almost two decades other than NELAC audits.)
Without incentives, I don’t see nuclear power resurrecting. And with the government getting read to punish utilities over global warming, which they in turn will charge their consumers, I don’t know where the money would come from. This is a really bad time to hamstring utilities.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Funny how the population reacts to science..frightened of nuclear plants but flocking to get injected with clostridium botulinum. Way back, way way..I used to do the rad decay equation on a sliderule. My Health Physics prof related better to his lab mice than the students, but as you note, he tended to be a nice guy. I see no cheap way out of the energy crunch, our engineering staff studied a wind prop for plant energy and the things cost over a million dollars. Can’t imagine the ROI of a wind farm. Likewise, shale oils, like ethanol, require considerable energy to produce. We have a lot of hydro and lately siltation in the pools is becoming quite a problem, requiring dredging by Corps of Engineers. Wouldn’t you think a society which can put an i-pod in every Jr. High pocket could come up with an easy fix?
I am in total agreement on science nerds doing mundane stuff: my boss in the
cosmetics business (Minneapolis at the time), a pretty sharp tech type, came over to show me how to sweat fit solder joints in a leaking basement frost-free faucet. His favorite weapon, er, tool, was the propane torch. The rafters caught fire and the MFD was not amused. Hmm, maybe the population is right in their aversion to nerdology…. IMHO we WILL see incentives for nuclear power in the not too distant future. Sig figs? I wouldn’t touch that one with a 10.007209763 foot pole!
January 24th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
BB - I saw an article a short while back on a new patent for refining shale. Considering that technology has been improving for thirty years, I think it still has promise. The chemistry on that is very different from ethanol which takes more energy to produce than it produces.
I hope the saga of the flaming coat made you chuckle. It’s sort of needed pictures to be really funny, but thankfully there are none.
I hope you are right about nuclear power, but you can forget it if a dem gets elected - they will never go for nuclear power with the green marxists in their base. it would be political suicide for her/him.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Climate scientist, Roy Spencer, had this to say about the delema that politicians face today on global warming: Abstract: On the political side, all of this talk of a supposed scientific consensus puts politicians between a rock and a hard place. Long-range scientific predictions of environmental gloom and doom have had a terrible track record, historically, and yet for some reason we are always willing to accept the next one that comes along. Maybe it’s their entertainment value.
So, what is a politician to do? Go with the currently popular flow, or ignore what most of the experts, pundits, and media are saying and just stick with their gut instincts? Certainly, politicians who want a better chance of winning an election should go for the popularity contest.
But what if sticking to one’s guns on such an issue is just enough for the Republicans to lose the White House? Well, what is more important for the future of America: the party affiliation of the next president, or the decision to let government control how much energy people and business can use from now on?
Once the government gains control over energy decisions, do we really think they will relinquish it after manmade global warming is realized to be a false alarm? It has been said that whoever controls energy, controls life. Right now, the free market (which means you) controls those decisions.
see:http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWFjMDkyNTljYmEwYzUyNTkwZWJkMjEyODJjZTM3Nzc=