If It’s Good Enough for Boucher…
Evan Bayh’s not always the left’s favorite senator and stuff like this about how a climate and energy bill that’s been watered-down enough to make Rich Boucher (D-VA) happy may be too strong for Bayh is part of the reason:
Another senior aide said Waxman’s “pragmatic approach … will be appreciated in the Senate” but cautioned that the deal is unlikely to fully satisfy Senate moderates who are looking to temper the bill even more.
“Rick Boucher does not equal Evan Bayh does not equal Debbie Stabenow,” the senior Senate Democratic aide said of the Democratic Senators from Indiana and Michigan, respectively. Bayh and Stabenow have expressed reservations about cap-and-trade provisions, which would cap emissions and allow industries to trade for pollution permits.
Now that’s not Bayh speaking. And maybe the aide being quoted here doesn’t really speak for Bayh. I hope so. Representative Boucher isn’t anyone’s idea of a great progressive environmental hero. And it’s easy to understand why. He represents a coal-heavy Appalachian district that went 59 percent for John McCain. If the current version of the Waxman-Markey bill is a limb boucher can stand on, it’s a limb a Senator from a state Barack Obama carried can stand on. And of course if soi-disant “centrist” senators abandon what’s already a very centrist very moderate bill, then that cuts the limb out from under House Democrats like Boucher who’ve taken a stand in favor of doing something helpful to address the climate crisis.
45 Responses to “If It’s Good Enough for Boucher…”
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May 18th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Ah, finally a climate thread. The globe is cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn’t know. kim also doesn’t know why the Democrats want to steal from the poor and powerless and give to the rich and powerful. Why do the Democrats hate the poor?
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May 18th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Why is kim such an idiot?
May 18th, 2009 at 11:38 am
What is your opinion about evolution kim? We’ve estabished that you reject conventional science on ozone depletion and that you parrot nonscientific talking points on climate change. You’ve also demonstrated that you question whether the President was born in the USA, you support torture, and in general faithfully parrot republican positions.
So what is it?
May 18th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Let’s see, how does Paul Krugman trip lightly over the matter today? “But handing out emission permits does, in effect, transfer wealth from taxpayers to industry”. How smoothly he ignores that this bill is desperately regressive, hitting the non-tax-paying poor worse than anyone else. And for what? To encumber a gas that is so weak it can’t even warm the presently cooling globe? This bill is expensive, regressive, unnecessary and lethal. I don’t understand why anyone supports it and in another few years, when the globe has significantly cooled, everyone will denounce it.
Fortunately, I don’t think it will make it through the House or the Senate. But oh how close Pauline is to being crushed by the Gore Juggernaut.
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May 18th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Marc, 3. You significantly misrepresent my beliefs, but why am I surprised? I find the evidence for evolution to be extremely strong, but am amused that the creationists belabor the evolutionists about a point of faith, the mechanism for the development of a few highly evolved phenomena, like flagellae, and the clotting mechanism, which mechanism is presently UNKNOWN. I also find that presentation to school children of the creationist point of view represents a wonderful teaching opportunity in the study of ontology. I have claimed only that there is ongoing acquisition in knowledge about ozone and its role in climate and the development of holes. I only claim that waterboarding was legal and effective. I only claim that Obama hasn’t proved definitively that he was born in Hawaii and that he is spending a lot of money to avoid demonstrating that proof. And dozens of poster have tried to prove that I ‘parrot unscientific talking points about climate’, so far without success.
I have an alternative and always reasonable point of view, something that is fundamentally healthy to an echo chamber like you live in here. I’m certainly not infallible and some of the posters here might agree that I’m willing to learn and to yield a point on occasion. And until I wear out I very much enjoy pointing out the poor rhetoric involved when you misrepresent my views. Why do you insist on hoisting yourself on your own petard, and why do I so much enjoy the spectacle?
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May 18th, 2009 at 11:49 am
It’s true, kim, that the compromises necessary to bring moderate Democrats (and, one still hopes, a few Republicans) on board with the climate change bill has resulted in a less progressive bill. Waxman and Markey would prefer that industry pay for all carbon permits, and so would I. I’m glad to see that you would prefer this option as well because you realize that any monies collected can be returned to the non-taxpaying poor to offset higher energy costs.
What’s that? You’re just being willfully obtuse and purposefully distorting Krugman’s point. Oh, sorry. My bad.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
You don’t argue in good faith kim. You’re a sophist. That was the point of the evolution bit – there is absolutely no scientific debate on evolution or on the role of CFCs in destroying stratospheric ozone. You want creationism taught in the schools – your examples are classic creationist fallacies.
When I saw you posting things about Obama’s birth certificate it fits a pattern of bad-faith behavior. There is a closed mind set of conspiracy kooks who think that Obama isn’t a real American or that there is some “doubt” about the issue. Not for anyone who isn’t a blind partisan. Full stop.
In short you’re here peddling partisan nonsense. There is no use for anyone to debate you because you’re not here to debate in good faith.
There are actual scientific issues related to climate change. Posting complete bullshit about how progressives hate poor people and how we’re experiencing global cooling is not an honest question or beginning.
But I wouldn’t expect anything different from someone who treats these issues the same way that a sports fan does. You’re on team red and they can do no wrong.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Kim, deal with it. Accept your blindness and find a new hobby.
You’re in a shrinking minority with no hope in the next couple of decades of recapturing the brief, wobbly moment when your side seemed to be on top.
You and what you represent are much like Communism…on the garbage heap of history, never to be rehabilitated.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Rob Mac, 6. Except that this bill is not returning the money to those from whom it is being taken. And how do I misrepresent Krugman’s point? By demonstrating that he didn’t explore it very thoroughly? Please.
Marc, 7. Ah, you go on misrepresenting my views. See above in 5 what I say about ozone, about creationism and about Obama’s court battles over his birth certificate, and compare with what you say I say in 7. Do you see your own sophism? How’s the view up there?
And oh, the globe is cooling. Check any of the temperature series from 2005 on. The real question is why we are cooling and for how long we’ll cool. But, obviously, the steadily rising CO2 concentration is unable to keep warming us. Really, you should wonder about it all.
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Stevie, 8. As I say, I represent an alternative, and granted a minority point of view. In my view, the majority is seriously deluded about a number of things, believing a fantastic ideology instead of empirical facts. Check this out, the three C’s. In Climate, in Capitol, and in China, Obama and the Left are confronting three forces which simply won’t yield to the manipulation of public opinion, which is the manner by which you have gained a temporary advantage. Keep talking from that Hill, Kings, which will soon be revealed to be an Ash Heap.
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
kim, 10. Aw, fooey, it’s Capital. Yes, I know the difference.
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Measurements have errors, and so of course no one with any integrity would claim that a 4 year trend is significant given the inherent noise in the system. You, however, do.
You said you want creationism taught in the schools.
You said that Obama hasn’t proven that he was born in Hawaii.
You said (in an earlier thread) that there were (vaguely unspecified) issues with the ozone depletion- CFC connection, and did not recognize (or answer) the fairly obvious rebuttal in the 1995 Nobel prize in chemistry citation.
You think that waterboarding is legal and effective.
I didn’t misrepresent you at all. You’re a down-the-line Republican, and absolutely nothing that anyone says will change your mind about anything.
I’m perfectly happy to discuss the science of climate change because I know something about it. I’m not willing to treat a dishonest propagandist who rejects basic science as being a useful participant.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
kim, that “the earth is cooling” baloney has been refuted again and again. There is no need for anyone to rehash all that.
Except that this bill is not returning the money to those from whom it is being taken.
You’re missing my point, which is that I don’t believe that you care one way or another about this. The current bill is structured the way it is because of compromises with conservatives. As Marc points out, you do not argue in good faith, so I don’t know why I’m bothering.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Marc, 12. Yes, in general a four year trend is meaningless, but, as I’ve made perfectly clear on other threads, and you would know had you been paying attention, and thus, wouldn’t misrepresent my position, that this four year trend has meaning because it is the first four years of a 20-30 cooling trend associated with the cooling phase of the oceanic oscillations, particularly the Pacific Decadal Oscillations. We see a similar 4 year trend at the beginning of the two previous cooling episodes of the PDO.
As to the other points, the reader can compare what I write in #5 with Marc’s poorly nuanced representations of it in #12.
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Rob Mac, 13. You make a completely unjustified assumption about what I ‘care’ about. In the whole climate debate I care a great deal about the poor of this earth who will suffer a great holocaust if carbon is encumbered. I also care a great deal about the integrity of science, which is being perverted in the service of this CO2 hoax.
You are simply wrong about the climate bill. You’ve not been paying enough attention. Conservatives and Republicans uniformly oppose this bill. It has reached its present form because of compromises made with Democrats from industrial and energy producing states, most of whom are liberal. Why do the Democrats hate the poor?
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Matty just drop your lying bullshit about the poor having to pay the rich guys’ carbon tax.
You invent this ridiculous fantasy that all the carbon permit fees collected by Washington would be returned as tax rebates of some kind to the poor. That is a tiresome fucking LIE.
That was NEVER your ObaFuhrer’s promise nor plan, rather sweetie he planned to use those fees to invest in “green” energy, remember?
You can’t have it both ways.
The simple fact is that any fees paid by industry will be passed on to consumers; thery are a carbon tax on all consumers.
Period.
Especially with utilities these pass ons amount to an especially regressive tax on the poor you claim to champion.
And the progs plan to use “health care reform” as their justification for this and further regressive tax schemes.
After all who else will pay for your ObaFuhrer’s giveaway to Wall Street?
It is this reality as much as anything else which moves anyone whose tongue is not firmly planted in the ObaCornHole to oppose your ObaFuhrer’s cap and tax scheme.
Sieg Heil!
May 18th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Can we get an agreement to just ignore kim at this point? I’m a lot more interested in the actual content of the post. Does Bayh actually have any substantive issues with this bill or is this just part of his apparent philosophy that it’s his solemn duty to move every bill that comes through the Senate further to the right, regardless of where it stands along the political spectrum, much less where it stands with respect to his alleged principles.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Now I recognize you, Marc. You are the joker who claimed to be a ’solar’ astrophysicist who wouldn’t accept that there is great ongoing acquisition of knowledge about ultraviolet rays and the formation by UV of ozone and the associations of UV and ozone with climate regulation. When I wanted to talk about that you disappeared in a puff of smoke. So, what are your bonafides?
And have you ever gotten around to reading Leif Svalgaard and the 10.7 radio flux and the coming vanishing of sunspots? C’mon, let’s see what you have.
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Interesting. The paid counter-blogging personas and their eristic (pretzel) logic greatly reduced their activity level in the liberal blog comments sections around September 2008, and disappeared almost entirely about the time the Madoff scam surfaced (presumably because much of their funding went way). Now this “kim” persona is here, going at the torture issue and and a few others with the old counter-blogging techniques. Have they dusted off a few operatives and put them to work? Telling what they chose to counterattack when they have constrained resources.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
mpowell, 17. I’m happy to talk about this bill, this regressive and ineffective sleight of hand. You’ll note that I was not the one to introduce the distractions from the topic.
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Bayh is obviously hoping to position himself as a challenger to Obama. He’s just scum.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Notreally, 19. Can’t hear an alternative view with out sensing a paid conspiracy, huh? Pitiful. Now, what do you have to say on topic?
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Jeffrey, 21. Bayh can smell hardship for his constituents and industry dying in his state. What is it that you smell? A whiff of Obama?
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May 18th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
What is it that you smell?
You, dear heart.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
The fact is this is a terrible bill. It is poor governance on so many levels, only succeeding on the grease each other’s pockets one. It is Humpty-Dumpty glued together again and won’t fit back on the wall. Everyone, except of course dear sweet Waxman, is suspicious of it, and given the rising tide of climate skepticism, the wise ones are going to wait and see. There will be much grinding of gears, but this one is a non-starter.
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May 18th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
19: Is this guy really dumb enough to believe he can do that when basically the only thing he’s going out on a limb to do is to stand with the party of ‘no’? To go the great moderate route you really do need a positive policy platform. You should look for a minimal set of issues where you break with your party on principle for well defined practical reasons. You may align with the opposing parties on those issues or not, but the important thing is that you make a big deal about how important based on content your alternative positioning is. Bayh hasn’t isn’t anywhere near a positive policy position at this stage. He’s just a jackass.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Re kim
So Mr. kim is also a birther. What a surprise! And he doesn’t think that waterboarding is torture. Well, Jesse Ventura, who, unlike Mr. kim, has actually undergone waterboarding begs to differ with him. I’m willing to bet Mr. kim that after 1/2 hour of waterboarding, he would confess to killing Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson and planting evidence implicating O. J. Simpson.
By the way, since Mr. kim questions Dr. Marcs’ bonifides, how about providing us with some information as to his educational and employment background. For instance, has Mr. kim ever published a technical paper in a peer reviewed journal (e.g. Physical Review, Science, Nature)?
Mr. Kim thinks that creationism should be taught in public school science classes. How about astrology? By the way, an excellent discussion of the evolution of the blood clotting cascade and the bacterial flagellum can be found in Ken Millers’ book, “Finding Darwins’ God,” as well as his testimony in the Dover trial and a number of presentations that are available on Youtube. Since Prof. Miller is a professor of biology at Brown, Un., and is the co-author of the most popular biology text book used in high school biology classes, I would be willing to bet that his knowledge and expertise in the subject is at least equal to Mr. kims.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
The fact is this is a terrible bill.
kim’s methodology: count the adverbs and stout assertions. If it’s got a lot of adverbs and stout assertions, it sways her everytime.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
SLC, 27. Yes, discussion of astrology and how it evolved into astronomy might be very useful in school. Also, great topic in the Theory of Knowledge. So, are you trying to claim the mechanism of development of those complex phenomena is known, or would you and Prof. Miller agree that it is a matter of faith that they developed through evolutionary mechanisms? And I demonstrate my bonafides constantly with my posts, something Marc failed to do.
Now, this Cap and Trade bill stinks. What say you of it? There is something for everybody to find wrong with it, from robbing the poor to enriching the rich to failing to bankrupt the coal industry to not lowering temperatures to any measurable degree. Oh, wait, temperatures are falling. Has the bill already worked, or is it not needed?
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May 18th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Jeffrey, 28. OK, so what is good about this bill? The whole spectrum of the political rainbow can rain on its parade.
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May 18th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
And I demonstrate my bonafides constantly with my posts
I can’t disagree with that.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
That’s the difference between Bayh and Boucher. Boucher represents a district in the mountains and coalfields of SW Virginia, but he at least *tries* to push the envelope of what one can do as a Dem from a district in the middle of Appalachia, and live to get re-elected.
Sure, he’s usually going to be more conservative on most things than we’d like (but not always – he’s pushed HARD for Net Neutrality), but he’s far, FAR better than the Republican who will replace him when he retires.
Bayh, OTOH, is, as far as I can tell, simply a shill for the corporate interests. His ‘centrism’ isn’t a matter of compromise with Indianan social conservatives, which I could at least understand. It’s simply kowtowing to whatever the big-money crowd wants this month.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Jeffrey, 28. OK, I need some help here. I’ve read and reread my comment #25 and can’t find an adverb.
Also, I encourage anyone to research my assertions. My technique is to stimulate curiosity and further examination. You don’t have to believe what I have to say. But if you want to refute what I have to say, successfully, you often have to check a few things out, first. Good luck. Sometimes, it can be done.
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May 18th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Jeffrey, 31. You should give up and go sit in a corner. This is weak rhetoric, and it’s too bad you don’t see it.
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May 18th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Ooh, I think I found an adverb in #25. Can you, Jeffrey?
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May 18th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Perhaps you can source how you have heard.
Until you do, I think you are lying.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Re kim
SLC, 27. Yes, discussion of astrology and how it evolved into astronomy might be very useful in school. Also, great topic in the Theory of Knowledge. So, are you trying to claim the mechanism of development of those complex phenomena is known, or would you and Prof. Miller agree that it is a matter of faith that they developed through evolutionary mechanisms? And I demonstrate my bonafides constantly with my posts, something Marc failed to do.
No Mr. kim, bonafides are established by publishing technical papers in the peer reviewed literature, not by copy and pasting text out of web sites which is what Mr. kim does. So I repeat, how many technical papers has Mr. kim published in the peer reviewed technical literature? As for the comment about Prof. Miller, has Mr. kim bothered to read his book or read his Dover testimony? I thought not. Miller presents a plausible scheme for the evolution of the bacterial flagellum and the blood clotting cascade which the creationists have failed to falsify. As with any scientific theory, the only faith involved is the assumption of methodological naturalism. Invoking the supernatural makes it impossible to do science at all because such explanations are unconstrained. As for presenting creationism in science classrooms, from a historical point of view, it would be fair game to present the theories of Rev. Paley and demonstrate how Darwins’ theories superseded them. It would be a gigantic waste of time to present the crap produced by William Dembski and Michael Behe.
May 18th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I should read the comments more often. kim is my new favorite troll – the hubris-filled kind that thinks he’s intellectually above the masses. The hubristic troll will become increasingly indignant when anyone dares challenge him, for he’s doing the ungrateful, unwashed masses a favor by offering his wisdom for free. The overinflated ego is unable to reconcile basic factual challenges (”the globe is cooling” is clearly one of his most challenging fallacies to let go of) and invariably the troll will become unhinged by cognitive dissonance. At this point the formerly-hubristic troll is no longer interesting and should be ignored.
May 18th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Why does kim wait till a climate thread to spout this crap? The fact that it’s off topic in other threads will just round out the stupidity. Besides, I’d rather get spammed with confused climate change denialism than banality-of-evil style pro-torture shinola any day.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
The amusing bit about Kim is that he doesn’t even recognize when someone *has* actually read and understood something technical. Svalgaard, for instance, made a technical post about different ways that we infer solar cycle trends – and noted that two different ways of counting them agreed very well in the past but appeared to be diverging slightly in more recent data.
This is completely within the ordinary course of discourse, and in the very article in question he also mentioned that this has happened before for other indirect estimates, there are perfectly reasonable reasons why, and so on. The basic problem is that you’re trying to infer one thing (how is the Sun changing in time) by some rough approximations (such as, for example, “how many sunspots do I see”?)
Now somehow this is supposed to be some sort of “gotcha” on me, which is pretty funny – since I’ve read similar papers in the literature for a pretty long time.
Many of the prominent climate change skeptics were also skeptics about the connection between ozone depletion and CFCs, used in things like freon. There was a tremendous amount of work on this, it resulted in an international treaty to ban CFCs. The work was convincing enough to earn a Nobel prize. (The costs – I know you’ll be shocked to hear this – were also far less than the alarmist estimates.) We really dodged a bullet – the damage was more severe than we thought and it is recovering a bit more slowly than we had thought. For a good reference see
http://www.epa.gov/Ozone/science/sc_fact.html
Now this is an important “tell” – because if someone was completely wrong on a prior issue you get less likely to believe them on a subsequent claim. I don’t think, however, that our local apparatchik understands this.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Marc, 40. Not too bad. Maybe you are a scientist, after all. But I notice you still don’t want to talk about UV and ozone.
Tim B, 38. Don’t worry; I’ll not likely stick around. With a few notable exceptions, the commenters here are not very stimulating, intellectually. The signal to noise ratio is too low. And even the abuse isn’t very clever.
SLC, 37&DMonteith, 39. Such noise and fury, signifying nothing.
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May 18th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Re kim
Mr. kim still refuses to tell us how many peer reviewed papers he has published. I’m guessing that he hasn’t published a single such paper which indicates that he is no scientist, just a loudmouth troll trying to get a rise out of people. I’m willing to bet that Dr. Marc has published a number of such papers which puts him several up on Mr. kim.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Re kim
SLC, 37&DMonteith, 39. Such noise and fury, signifying nothing.
Translation: Mr. kim is too chickenshit to challenge Ken Miller.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Climate Change Kim! What, are you in a bad mood?
Oh no! Cap and trade is coming. The United States is no longer torturing. Bush and Cheney will soon be dragged into court only to leave in stripe pajamas and shackles. The Republican Party has lost its last, tenuous grip on insanity and slipped into total madness. Things are bad, eh, Kimmy dude?
You seem depressed. So I will find a point of agreement to cheer you up. Let us as a Nation teach Creationism. For the ontological aspects! I think it is a great idea.
For instance, our children should know that each Apache tribe, be it the Kiowa, the Chiricahua, the Mescalero; had differing views on the roles that the Tarantula, Big Dipper, Wind, Lightning Maker and Cloud Rumbler played in the Creation of the Universe. They were subtle differences but important in defining the characteristics of each group within the Apachean peoples.
Our children should know this.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
SLC, 43. Oh, please, remember, I agree with evolution. But your invoking Miller just underlines that the mechanisms are still unknown, even though there are ‘plausible’ candidates. I continue to be amused that the creationists point out the ‘faith’ of the evolutionists.
Max424. All great stuff. Geronimo! But would it have the immediacy of a lesson about Intelligent Design? Would you get a better class discussion with Apaches or ID? Which would cause more kids to ponder deep mysteries?
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