Senate unveils climate change bill

[Startraveler]

The Senate bill, authored by Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), has a mix of provisions targeted at both liberals and conservatives.It calls for cutting the nation's emissions 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 -- deeper reductions than in the House bill. It is also deficit-neutral and would make carbon offsets more affordable.

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The House of Representatives passed a historic climate change bill in June. Now the Senate is rolling out its answer to that bill. However, I'm not sure about this bit of the article:

It calls for cutting the nation's emissions 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 -- deeper reductions than in the House bill.

The House bill calls for the same thing:

The goals of the Safe Climate Act are to reduce steadily the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions such that--

‘(1) in 2012, the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions does not exceed 97 percent of the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions in 2005;

‘(2) in 2020, the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions does not exceed 80 percent of the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions in 2005;

‘(3) in 2030, the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions does not exceed 58 percent of the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions in 2005; and

‘(4) in 2050, the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions does not exceed 17 percent of the quantity of United States greenhouse gas emissions in 2005.

The article's worth a read anyway.

[SQLserver]

If this is change, it's on par with 16 cents, and you can't buy a Big Mac with 16 cents.

Seriously. I wonder if the US government is ever going to get serious about climate change. It seems to me that any hope for ending this country's carbon pollution will have to come from a miraculous break-through in tech by the private sector.

[whitelight]

I want those goofs to legislate a reduction in sunspot activity.

[danielost]

utah passed a law stating how high the great salt lake could get,

[Mr Honeybadger]

It got down in the mid '30s (f) in temperature here last night.

Maybe that's why the Enviros dropped the term " Global-Warming "

You sure don't hear them saying that phrase much anymore.

[AROCES]

Why call it climate change bill?

One country now can actually change the climate thru legislation?

[Wickian]

Before voting on a bill to save the planet, they should probably read some recent news. A recent scandal has popped up over the Yamal tree ring data(past temperature mapping) and the fellow scientists blindly supporting the work without checking it and using it in their own doomsday studies. Not to mention the flat out refusal of many scientists to post their raw data for others to check.

Look what happens when, after 10 years, one is finally forced to release it.

link

Temperature record with the 12 cherry-picked tree's in his data set;

Temperature record with the entire data set used after someone checked his work(the black line);

All of a sudden it doesn't look like the end of the world.

If you want a good summary of the current scientific method, then read this quote.

The Royal Society's motto from the enlightenment era is Nullius in verba. "On nobody's authority" or colloquially, "take nobody's word for it". In 2007, the Society's then president suggested this be changed to "respect the facts".

[Startraveler]

A recent scandal has popped up over the Yamal tree ring data(past temperature mapping) and the fellow scientists blindly supporting the work without checking it and using it in their own doomsday studies.

You should read this.

[Wickian]

You should read this.

There definitely are a lot of hockey stick graphs, more than one has already been shown as false ormisleading. It's very likely that more will follow in the coming years. Here's a few quick notes on some of the ones listed;

Kaufman et al 2009 Arctic reconstruction - uses only 6 of the NSF 30 sites available = incomplete data.

The MBH hockey stick - All original data was lost and deleted. Since it was never publicly released(in 2005 Jones said, "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"), the work was never checked by an "outsider."

Oerlemans derived from glacier retreat since 1600 - Aside from the fact that glaciers are constantly changing, I believe the little ice age reached it coldest point around 1600 when it then started warming up again(hence melting glaciers).

Average sea ice has remained fairly stable lately, with the Antarctic gaining as the Arctic lost. Check here for graphs of the loss, gain and average of both poles as well as a global sea ice average

Before you get the wrong impression, I'm not saying any of the data itself is wrong. Data is just data. Sometimes though, the way it's represented is misleading, "processed(with the raw data sometimes not released)" or just a small part of a larger data set to push the results the scientists wanted to begin with.

A very common example of media bias would be the Polar caps. Ignore the Antarctic that's growing and show and mention only the parts of the Arctic that's shrinking.