“Worldwide temperatures haven’t risen much in the past decade…. If you are a climate-change activist pointing to year after year of mounting climate crises, you might want to rethink your approach.”
– Richard Kerr, Science, May 2, 2008.
There has been a flurry of activity in recent weeks in the discussion as to the significance (scientific, political, social) of the evolution of the global average surface temperature during the past 10 years or so.
For those of you who don’t know, the surface temperature of the globe, as a whole, has not warmed-up by anyone’s calculation since at least the turn of the century (January 2001) and depending on your dataset and statistical technique of choice, perhaps as far back as January 1997. And all of this non-warming occurred over a period of time during which the global emissions of CO2 increased faster than ever before (thanks primarily to China).…
“Yes, you read that correctly. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Laureate, writing in America’s paper of record, just accused nearly half of the House of Representatives, including both Republicans and Democrats, as guilty of treason against the very planet—along, presumably with the many thousands of scientists, policy analysts, economists, and environmentalists who have raised objections to the Waxman-Markey energy bill.”
– Ken Green, “Is Paul Krugman Inciting Violence?” The Enterprise Blog, June 29, 2009
New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman recently praised the passage of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill by the House of Representatives as a “remarkable achievement.” But rather than just congratulte House members voting aye, Krugman disparaged the nays as having undertaken “treason against the planet” for choosing “willfully, to ignore that threat [from climate change], placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about.”…
Yesterday, on a strict party-line vote (34 Nay, 21 Yea), Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee defeated Rep. Fred Upton’s (R-MI) amendment to protect workers from potential job losses due to the Waxman-Markey legislation.
Upton’s amendment is short and to the point:
After section 2, insert the following section and make the necessary conforming changes in the table of contents:
SECTION 3. MAINTAINING DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENT.
…The Administrator [of EPA], in consultation with the Secretary of Labor, shall annually prepare and certify a report to Congress on the average national employment rate for the prior year. If the Administrator determines, in consultation with the Department of Labor, that the unemployment rate for the prior year meets or exceeds 15%, as a result of the implementation of this Act, the provisions of the Act shall cease to be effective.