Politics

[fmtiger124]

It seems Mark Sanford may have to resign after all, he's now facing 37 ethics charges.

[blue cobra]

What do we say about global warming, cap and trade, and the meeting at Copenhagen?

I always thought global warming was a myth. And looks like they were indeed lying. It's just being used to gain power, and for the environmentalists to get rich. Cap and trade, or more accurately, cap and tax, will destroy the economy. A draft of the treaty can be found here. No where does it say 'vote' or 'democracy.' The word 'tax' appears ten times. This person articulates it quite nicely. What is the supposed outcome of destroying our economy and bowing down to a world government? One degree? Half a degree? In a climate in which the only 'normal' we are sure of is change. We don't even know if human emissions have anything to do with it. The EPA even suppressed scientific evidence suggesting CO2 should not be considered a pollutant (with part two here).
Have I ever that government intervention in peoples' live can really infuriate me...

[denmarksoccer]

I'm sorry, but global warming is an immutable fact. These researchers at the East Anglia institute slightly changed one aspect of the issue, and that in no way changes all the other studies done that show global warming is real. The only reason anybody would want to deny climate change is so that they can go on living in their safe little world, without having to think about the disastrous consequences their everyday expenditures bring about.

[gyourkoshaven]

Global Warming is real. Face the facts. Trust me, if it wasn't Bush would've done everything he could have to have the EPA shut down. Coming from someone who does ecology, I have every reason to believe that it's real.

[blue cobra]

Okay, let's "face the facts." What we know is that since 1850, there has been a general warming trend of a few tenths of one degree. This roughly correlates with CO2. As we all should know, correlation does not necessarily equal causation. There are three possibilities:

1) the increased temperature causes increased CO2
2) the increased CO2 causes increased temperature
3) they are not significantly related to each other, and other factors we are not considering are causing them to increase.

None of these have been completely proven. Call me crazy, but I'd like to prove what's going on before resigning our sovereignty and our money to a world government.

A huge problem with the theory is that the amount of uncertainty is so much that since 1987, there is no statistically significant change.

So, how do we know what them temperature was before we had reliable instruments? We use proxies. However, we know that at least some of the proxies are unreliable, since around 1960 they started to diverge from the actual readings. This is actually what "hide the decline" is- to hide the decline of the proxies which suggests they are unreliable.

And what the researchers at East Anglia did is hide the Medieval Warm Period, which definitely would mean the warming today is nothing to be alarmed about. Now, there is debate about the MWP, but if you average the data from different areas, there is still a MWP. A much better explanation of all this is found here.

So now to clarify, I don't deny that the Earth is literally warming. I just don't think it is significant. And cap and trade is a complete scam.

So, what do we think about cap and trade?

[AlphaTauri]

I really don't know about cap and trade. It doesn't seem that it's doing that much to reduce CO2 emissions, just putting a ceiling of sorts on it. It seems that to actually persuade people to produce less CO2, we would have to go with a flat tax. The more CO2 you put out, the more you pay. The less CO2 you put out, the less you pay. That simple. I believe that global warming is happening; that it's a natural process but we humans are making it worse by emitting large amounts of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels (among other things). 1850, by the way, nicely coincides with the Industrial Revolution, where industry started using coal as a fuel source.

By the way, when we're done with global warming, can we move on to students' right to privacy and that kind of thing? I'm really interested in that, because, well, there are a lot of other middle/high school students on here and I want to know what you guys think about it.

[amerikestrel]

So now to clarify, I don't deny that the Earth is literally warming. I just don't think it is significant. And cap and trade is a complete scam.

For one thing, the earth has warmed more than "a few tenths of a degree" since 1850. In the last 40 years alone, there has been a change of about .3 to .4 of a degree (Celsius).

Another thing you need to take into account is that global warming is going to have an effect on us, whether it's caused by man or by nature. Rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and other negative results of climate change are going to have much more of an impact on humans now, in the 21th century, than it would have a few hundred thousand years ago. Personally, I think that there is sufficient evidence to say that the current global warming is caused, or at least aided by rising levels of CO2, so if we try to control the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere it will significantly slow climate change.

Edit: Also, why is cap and trade a scam? True, maybe it's not very effective, but that doesn't mean it's a scam...

[gyourkoshaven]

I find it sort of like Cash for Clunkers. Cash for Clunkers was bad for the well-being of the car companies, but good for consumer confidence. Cap and Trade is good for the environment, but is bad for the economy in the same way.

[amerikestrel]

I find it sort of like Cash for Clunkers. Cash for Clunkers was bad for the well-being of the car companies, but good for consumer confidence. Cap and Trade is good for the environment, but is bad for the economy in the same way.

Hmm... so now it's a choice between the environment and the economy?

[AlphaTauri]

I say go with the environment. If we don't have a planet to live on, the economy's going to be down the drain anyways.