@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Quote:Republicans want to fight climate change, but fossil-fuel bullies won’t let them
...Climate change became partisan in 2010, .... The timing is not a coincidence.
Big-business interests, particularly the fossil-fuel industry, led the charge. .....
The justices allowed the fossil-fuel industry to roll heavy artillery out onto the political field, ...
I have to think that Whitehouse's description of these dynamics is pretty accurate.
In fact it is filled with inaccuracies, the most obvious of which is the anual $700 Billion subsidy attributed to the IMF. To what corporations does it apply, and what are its constituents? Reported U.S.Federal "subsidies" to U.S. foissil fuel producers amount to about $40 billion, and they consist of $14 billion for production of ethanol supplenmented fuels; a foreign tax credit (a commmon practice) of $15 billion, and tax savings from the deductability of oil & gas exploration and development costs ( also a common tax exemption for a real cost of doing business) . Similar "subsidies" by various states add another $3 bilion. The stunning fact here is that compared to the operating costs of this huge industry these are trivial. As a percent of operatiing costs the subsidies to wind and solar power producers are orders of magnitude higher - and, because these sources cost about three times as much per unit of energy delivered, the yield is far less.
blatham wrote:There certainly are true believers of the climate denial variety but the majority of GOP politicos surely must grasp the reality of global warming and climate change. Still, the ethics here are abominable. To place your partisan desire to hold high office or keep your party in power as a value greater than protecting your nation's citizens humans worldwide from disaster - that's their choice?
=>The reality of climate change is that it has been a phemonon that has occurred continuously throughout the earth's geological history (~ 4.3 billion years).
=>The CO2 associated warming in the last century is real but has consistently lagged the doomsday forecasters estimates by large multiples. There is no "worldwide disaster ) coming and continued technological advances will further reduce CO2 emissions.
=> The CO2 savings achieved by nuclear power and increased shale gas production (both opposed by AGW zealots) have eclipsed those achieved by their favored wind and solar "solutions" by a factor of over 100.
The "ethics" of AGW zealots who would condemn vast segments of humanity to hunger and poverty in support of ill developed theory, and the forced application of backward technologies in the face of continuinf new innovation in other areas, are also very questionable.
The contrived argument you cited, claiming the nefarious "timing" of the USSC Citizens United decision with a partisan assault on clean energy programs led by big business political contributions is a bit laughable in view of the huge reductions inb CO2 emissions recently achieved by those same big businesses through advances in the efficiency of natural gas production. They alone dwarfed the savings achieved by huge relative subsidies to Solyndra and other favored solar industries (indeed the main result of these subsidies has been to decrease price competition and retard innovation and research.
