As far as I can tell, the Clean Air Act probably isn't ideal in regulating carbon emissions, but here's the thing: they're going to have to be regulated somehow. Businesses are worried about the EPA tackling the task? Fine, no problem. There's a preferable, more efficient, approach available anyway

Except that the business lobby's position seem to be that there is no problem to begin with, or perhaps there is a problem, but it's entirely beyond humans' control to do anything about. You cannot expect your neighbor to help put out a house fire when his official position is, "Fire? What fire?"

How about the "pretend the problem doesn't exist" option?

Oh, goody, another climate change thread! Cue Marler's dishonest skepticism in 3..2..

... U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue.

Why is it that all these guys are named Donahue? ie: president of the Catholic League, Bill Donahue. Any more of them out there?

American corporations are quite proud of the American peeps and the Clown Car Congress of the United States who consistently express their democratic freedoms by insistently and consistently voting against the laws of physics. Yahoo, whatta country!

I'm with Kanopsis - I can remember when the name Donahue evoked respect because Phil was the highest profile member of the clan. Now, with Bill, Thomas, and occasionally even Nora... it just means I'm about to be creeped out.

The deniers, delayers and obstructors have already won: cumulative anthropogenic GHG emissions have already pushed the Earth into irreversible, irrevocable, catastrophic warming and consequent climate change.

The time for action was a generation ago, when the seriousness of the problem was first recognized. Now it is too late. It is certainly far too late for meager actions such as those that are at the outer limits of what is being discussed as "politically possible" at Copenhagen to make any significant difference.

The time has come to accept the absence of a future for the human species, which will most likely be extinct by the end of the 21st century.

This is the great achievement of the deniers, delayers and obstructors. From the most powerful oil company executive, to the phony pseudoscientists of the "conservative" propaganda mills (a.k.a. "think tanks"), down to the most humble Ditto-Head drone, all of them have played an important role in ensuring the collapse of human civilization.

Irony alert: Richard Nixon created the EPA.

For policy, it doesn't matter if Climate data is true or not.
Going Green still reduces the trade deficit in Oil & cleans the air.

Usually when asked about your nests proximity to one of the other eightish or so planets sharing the Suns orbit , it is fully waxed with a waggish patrician humour . A subtle dig that being concerned with minutia beyond the latest hilarious rant from grotesque RNC chair , Lord Limbaugh , is just a bit Tooo to much . The thought that soon these complacent sneers may become a wail of pain with a wild hope of rescue , "Too late ? For What Planet !" . The resignation one feels at the loss of footsie PJ's projects most of the deadly seriousness possible with the privileged , doomed by a heartless rescission . This naturally follows from an idea cultured with a course of malign neglect into an assumption of personal privilege and a practiced loss of memory . These necessities honed at the stone of the all too wet , sharply hedged for the testilying before those presumptuous twits encroaching into the precious hours of feathered luxury , composed with dulcet voiced Lord Limbaugh , directing the chosen ones to please ignore their lying eyes .

This is a good place to offer the following for rebuttals if anyone bugs you about "Climategate." (Sadly, appreciating rebuttals takes intelligence and admitting to them takes honesty ...):

1. The modern theory of AGW (increasing CO2 absorbs more IR and leads to warmer temperatures) was laid out way back in 1896 in a seminal paper by future Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius. He wasn't trying to promote socialism or be a flunky for Al Gore, indeed SA thought the warming would be beneficial - so he didn't promote the theory to scare people.

2. Even in a case of actual cheating and cover-up, or even fabrication don't disprove an idea itself. Look at prosecutors "framing guilty men" by "improving" evidence to ensure conviction, look at the Piltdown hoax which sure doesn't mean evolution is false and other evidence couldn't be rounded up. (BTW what CRU did wasn't even that bad anyway, this just emphasizes the irrelevancy of ad hominem issues to the material point. In my bitter experience conservatives are very into projecting from personal factors onto imagined objective ones.)

3. CO2 is a stimulus similar to lowering interest rates are for an economy: the effect is not direct and linear, there are variations and other influences. Tell someone who says, "how come it got cooler during the last ten years" (it may not have, but play along here): How come we had a cool spell e.g. during April, before summer came along? Does that make you doubt the idea that changing axis angle causes seasons?!

4. Most of the things we would do to lower CO2 are good for the economy and national interest anyway: save money on gas and other non-renewables, reduce dependency on other nations (including Muslim ones!), it will run out anyway in decades to centuries, etc.

5. An effect doesn't have to be "certain" or uniformly and highly damaging to be worth trying to avoid - what about terrorist threats, the irony of Cheney et al's "One percent doctrine" etc.

6. The skeptics and doubters are way more dishonest and controlled by money interests. (You need to dig for the evidence there.)

(Similar to what I posted earlier, but was lost near the nod off of a tangential thread.)

I'd much rather EPA regulate than we have toothless cap-and-trade, assuming EPA doesn't get Congress stripping it of powers.

C02 lasts for 100s of years in the atmosphere.

We started pumping vast quantities of it when the Industrial Revolution discovered coal.

Then came natural gas.

Then came oil.

Add it all up, and we have altered the atmosphere for centuries to come.

Since we have altered the planet's atmosphere it will take a planet-wide engineering miracle to mitigate global warming.

We aren't going to switch to a carbon-free society any time soon
and few people even understand what "carbon-neutral" means.

We maybe able to slow global warming at some point in the future, but we can't magically wish it away.

It's real.

The most important thing to do is prepare for it.

Nobody alive today will see a decline in atmospheric C02.

As far as I can tell, the Clean Air Act probably isn't ideal in regulating carbon emissions, but here's the thing: they're going to have to be regulated somehow.

The Chinese government has announced that by 2020 it intends for China to be getting 15% of its energy from renewable sources. They also have (or are building) the world's largest demonstration CCS facility.

Meanwhile, href="http://www.news.wisc.edu/17436">
aspen like more CO2.

Carbon Dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere by trees .

So, once again MatthewRMarler proudly parades the fact that he is a deliberate, cynical, conscienceless liar.

Same old, same old.

Tom Nicholson wrote: "The most important thing to do is prepare for it."

I'm interested to know how you plan to prepare to starve to death when global warming causes a worldwide failure of agriculture.

SA:

The first step is to stop denying the reality of global warming.

Whose to say we can't adapt? We will. Yes, many will die, but humanity is tenacious.

Ah, nuts, forgot preview again. How embarrassing.

Neil b: 4. Most of the things we would do to lower CO2 are good for the economy and national interest anyway: save money on gas and other non-renewables, reduce dependency on other nations (including Muslim ones!), it will run out anyway in decades to centuries, etc.

So subsidize those things that are good for the economy and national interest. That's what I support. That's basically the Chinese strategy, though they also have CCS projects, jointly funded by the US and EU. And if you feel strongly, then buy CO2 offsets, much of which can go for Equatorial reforestation. That's something else that I do. Not that I am exemplary, but the opportunity is there for everyone.

Prepare for all manufacturing to go offshore.

More progress in algae-based fuels.

SecularAnimist: So, once again MatthewRMarler proudly parades the fact that he is a deliberate, cynical, conscienceless liar.

You should at least quote one purported lie.

You should at least quote one purported lie.

Oh, that's rich, Marler, considering the number of times you've been busted, and how familiar regulars like me, SA, trex and others are with your bullshit; so much so that it's predictable.

And yet you express embarrassment over bad formatting, but not your years of bad faith commenting here.

Get bent, Marler.

Neil B: 5. An effect doesn't have to be "certain" or uniformly and highly damaging to be worth trying to avoid - what about terrorist threats, the irony of Cheney et al's "One percent doctrine" etc.

AGG isn't the only proposed mechanism, or even the mechanism whose effects most highly correlate with temperature changes. If we spend "too much, too soon" on the wrong threat (as critics of Bush/Cheney say the US did in Iraq), then we shall have less capacity to adjust to or prevent the changes caused by the real mechanism.

Nice Barack Obama and the democrats paying back the trial lawyers with business. Who would have thought it.

Now we will have EPA Czars.