Oh, I just typed a nice retort and then hit something and it erased it.

quote:

Or think of it this way: there's a hole in your boat that is 5 inches wide. It grows every year. And the mechanic tells you the best way to fix it is to wait until 2025, when the hole gets to be 10 inches wide, and then don't let it get any bigger than that.

You'd laugh, because he'd be joking. But this is exactly what Bush is proposing.

So go ahead and laugh at him, too. He's also a joke.

As opposed to Barack and Hillary who are telling you to get out and swim.

42 year plan, I love it. No need for any kind of accountability. I would say that their failures would hurt future Dem candidates, but I think Clinton has shown us that that isnt the case. As long as they say the right thing, the Dems can keep making empty promises. yay!

Basically, what I wrote was that if you want to play "My guy is better than your guy," or Steve's favorite, "Everyone is the same and if I make a qualitative judgment between two unlike things my head will explode" I'm not that interested.

And if you think Clinton's global warming policy, led by Al Gore, simply amounted to "lip service" to the environmental lobby, I'd say that's a pretty crude approximation of reality.

I don't really think this can be summed up as the corruption of two presidents, only to separate interest groups.

Nor was the scientific, political, and public consensus about global warming the same in the 90s as it has been in this decade.

There are also targets in these plans that are in 2012 and 2015 and 2020 and 2025. Would that make you happy?

maybe. I'd have to see them. my interest in this thread was to see how outrageous the estimate really are. I'm pretty satisfied that they are outrageous. I'm not sure what conclusions I draw from that at this point, but at least I know something now that none of the candidates planned to tell me about their proposals.

I can see how it's frustrating to be a conservative like you (and the other rational ones) who acknowledges the science, but understands that your party's response has been to either pretend the science isn't good or to make token gestures that accomplish nothing. I'd be grumpy about it, too.

But I'd think that the proper response would be to acknowledge that your party has a real problem on this issue, and then maybe to argue that McCain's 65% goal is more realistic, or that some other goal is. (Other than freezing emissions in 2025.)

Sadly, all we get from the "Rah! Rah! America!" crowd is one editorial after another about how this is a problem America simply isn't creative enough to help solve.

Or dopey Lomborg "solutions" about focusing instead on malaria abatement.

Jesus.

Well, if we're going to hold policy platforms in an election year to the same criteria we use to debate actual policy, then yes, you're correct, these will all be over-hyped, over-sold, and eventually lacking in some respect.

Tupa, now look what you've done. My pledge didn't last 48 hours.

Damn you.

quote:

Originally posted by heckofajobBrownie:
Tupa, now look what you've done. My pledge didn't last 48 hours.

Damn you.

Victory is mine!

quote:

I can see how it's frustrating to be a conservative like you (and the other rational ones) who acknowledges the science, but understands that your party's response has been to either pretend the science isn't good or to make token gestures that accomplish nothing. I'd be grumpy about it, too.

What's frustrating to me is to see a huge issue like this and recognize that people favor government action to inaction - overreaching to a measured response. None of the candidates has convinced me that most of their measures are anything but grasps at straws. What will help? They arent sure, that's why so many of their solutions are tied into job creation - a sure fire winner that you arent allowed to challenge.

GOP solutions for health care get defeated because they arent sweeping enough - better nothing at all than too little. GOP proposals for testing school choice programs get defeated because it doesnt solve 100% of the problem - better status quo than incremental improvement. Even Dems have actually attacked Barack for not mandating coverage! Why reach for compromise when you can reach for complete government control and either fail or watch it blow up in your face?

I'm frustrated because my party has been stripped of the right to be cautious, and has duped itself into thinking that restraint in action must be accompanies by restraint in leadership. I'm frustrated because the Dems are winning the arguments by default with too many voters, and I dont have high hopes for their plans.

A Dem victory means one of two things to me: either the greatest growth in government since FDR or another failed presidency. Neither is very attractive to me.

And my rant of the day is complete...

Speaking of energy, people are already adjusting:

"Employers find that getting employees out of their cars and onto company-owned, Wi-Fi-enabled buses boosts productivity and morale.

Fewer and fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses, and public transportation ridership is at its highest level since the 1950’s.

Is this a temporary shift, or the start of something more far-reaching?"

These types of things are the benefits of high gas prices. (Among the costs.)

Another indicator I saw (last week, I think) was that sales in homes further away from cities -- i.e. with longer commutes -- have dropped a lot more than homes with shorter commutes.

Of course, sales of hybrid vehicles are particularly robust, while sales of less fuel-efficient models are sagging.

Hmm. It's almost as if a tax that raised the price of carbon-based energy, while shifting it away from work or investments, would change consumer and business behavior in positive ways...

Once again, Toop, it's time to retire to the smoke-filled room and hammer this out. Tell the wife and kids you'll be home late.

quote:

Originally posted by heckofajobBrownie:
Once again, Toop, it's time to retire to the smoke-filled room and hammer this out. Tell the wife and kids you'll be home late.

Shhhh...they dont know I left...

speaking of which, time to go home.

Enjoy your evening...

I'm not a big Tom Friedman fan, and I usually don't post editorials, but this is a good one and it's about what we're talking about:

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Dumb as We Wanna Be

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects.”

It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point “where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics” that it would turn its back on the next great global industry — clean power — “but that’s exactly what is happening.” If the wind and solar credits expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made.

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. “Last year, we were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets.”

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

Obama never makes a decision. Never committs to anything. He is always talking half ebonics on the stage about "change". What change? How you change your mind on your racist anti-white reverend? This gives me serious doubts about Obama's credibility. He supports a RACIST reverend and wants to be Commander in Chief. The guy is a walking disaster. God help us if he should win.

Well heck, I never thought I'd have to state that I don't think Bush's "wait til the boat sinks to fix the hole" is acceptable. But there, I did it.
I was simply praising his decision to not ratify something that doesn't address the problem. Very similar to Toop's frustration with "our party/side of the isle" being blasted for what essentially amounts to being cautious on numerous issues*. Exemptions for what could be the two largest carbon emmiters doesn't make any sense, is all.

*Excluding the "wait til 2025" approach, obviously - I mean, I don't even know how to describe that...

Dency, you're an English professor - any thoughts?

Dennis is an English professor? Cool.

I thought he said he was.... maybe... I've been known to make bold statements without any data or mechanical engineering analysis calculus algebra trig., ask rich.