Climate change is in your back yard
Steve Milloy over at greenhellblog is parsing the hell out of a comment NOAA’s Thomas Karl made regarding climate change:
“What we would want to have people take away is that climate change is happening now, and it’s actually beginning to affect our lives,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of theNational Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a principal author of the report. “It’s not just happening in the Arctic regions, but it’s beginning to show up in our own backyards.”
To which Milloy had this observation to make:
From Green Hell Blog
But, I got to looking. That chart was nearly a week old! How gauche! So, I decided to check out today’s chart:
It’s still cold. In fact, so far today we’re struggling to get out of the 70’s so far. It’s rained again, and just been plum-not-much-fun kind of weather. Used to I’d think whenever the weather was bad I would just jet to southern California. Well, it’s actually colder there than it is here. Phoenix? Nope, in the 80’s. Guess we’ll have to wait a little while longer for global warming to arrive in my backyard.
In the meantime:
Opposition was pretty focused:
National Petrochemical & Refiners Association Pres. Charles T. Drevna said, “While this may appear, in the short term, to be a monumental political success, ultimately it represents nothing more than an abject policy failure. The whole notion of capping carbon dioxide emissions, issuing allowances disproportionately to favored industries, and hoping that the false promise of ‘green jobs’ could gloss over the current and real jobs that will be lost should HR 2454 become law belies the complexity of fairly balancing energy and environmental policy.”
Now, everyone knows the intent of all this legislation is to basically kill the coal industry. Obama flat out stated that while running for President. There is no good coal in Obama’s eyes. By taxing the hell out of people who make or use coal, and rewarding energy sources and users that did not use coal, it would replace the coal industry in short time. So, what did Waxman and Markey do to make sure the American Clean Energy and Security Act do to get passed? They pretty much gutted all penalties on coal producers. The cap and trade idea is still there tho. What’s the first thing large energy producers did when this thing passed? They of course started asking for rate increases. Citing of course, the new climate change regulations.
And finally, while Obama is very visibly killing the coal industry while not allowing expanded oil drilling in Alaska or anywhere for that matter. How you wanna bet that gap is filled until the first nuke is built?
So, although the climate is cooler pretty much all over the country than it was two years ago and cap and trade passed without really demanding any change from CO2 based energy production, the costs imposed by those cap and trade regulations are justifying energy companies hitting people for more than 10% increases countrywide right now and our added demand for oil has not only INCREASED our dependance on foreign oil, it’s caused more pain at the pump with nothing to gain from it.
There’s your change so far folks. Next up, healthcare.
