Aye Of Newt

Climate Change: It was supposed to be a debate with John Kerry on global warming, but the former House speaker ended up being just a carbon copy, joining those tilting at windmills.

Calling himself a "green conservative" at a debate Tuesday, Newt Gingrich said he agreed with Kerry that human activity is warming the earth and that he differs mainly on whether the free market or government should solve the problem.

Sounding like Al Gore declaring the debate over, Gingrich said: "The evidence is sufficient that we should move to the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon." Along the way, he recommended a book Kerry wrote with his wife, "This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future."

“Newt is correct... Human activity DOES warm the earth “a little”.. not much but a little.. and the free market should solve the problem(s).. SO Newts correct..”

Aside from whether human activity actually contributes a measurable amount to warming, Newt’s actual proposal was not rally a free market proposal. See the following from Philip Klein in the American Spectator Blog:

On several occasions, Gingrich made sure to emphasize that he wasn’t advocating pure free-enterprise. “I’m not for a laissez-faire market,” he said. “I’m for an Alexander Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt incentivized market.” For instance, he said his proposals wouldn’t really be as voluntary as Kerry portrayed them. Gingrich suggested that the government go to GE and utility companies and ask them how much they would need in tax credits to make use of new technologies. After the discussion, I asked Gingrich whether basing a system on tax credits would create lobbying and bureaucracy, just as a system based on regulation. “It will. I just think it’s better for the economy to have tax credits than regulation. If you’re trying to shape behavior, I’m a Hamiltonian in that I think economic shaping works better than bureaucratic shaping. But it’s clear that it’s an interventionist model. It’s not a neutral model.”

Ok lets get the 5% wrong part out of the way. Both Newt and Kerry agreed that the current warming goes back 400 years. It only goes back about 200. Current reseach shows that there was a cooling period or mini ice age from the early 1400’s to the early 1800’s. Up until about 1810 the Thames River in England froze over sufficiently for London to have fairs on the river annually. After about 1810 those fairs ended. The ice was not solid enough to support the people.

Both Kerry and Newt agreed that carbon dioxide has gone up since the first industrial revolution which began in the 1830’s. Both seemed to suggest that man burning coal oil & wood was the principle reason for the upsurge. Scientists are saying these days that since Mars is currently warming its more likely that the reason the earth is warming has more to do with the suns radience.

More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is an effect rather than a cause.

Still the earth is warming on average and carbon dioxide may be one the reasons for the warming.

So why did Newt agree with Kerry and say not only that there is a problem but that the problem is so urgent that it calls for immediate and dramatic action right now.

Environmental concerns over carbon dioxide and national security concerns over oil dependence on regimes that wish US ill and monetary concerns over the current accounts deficits are three sides of the same problem.

The faster the USA can get out from under dependence on foreign oil the better all around.

The center of the arguement was how to drop carbon dioxide use the fastest and most cost effectively. Kerry was argueing for what he referred to as cap in trade or the Europeans call carbon credits. Cap in trade or carbon credits are disincentives in the form of taxes for carbon dioxide emmissions. Newt was arguing for tax breaks and more federal spending on research. Tax breaks and federal dollars for research are incentives for creating new technologies.

I agree with Newt’s line of reasoning. His arguement that any regime that doesn’t include the indians and the chinese won’t be effective in cutting world wide carbon dioxide emissions. He said the way for India and China to cut their carbon dioxide emissions and — also their dependence on mid east oil was to create the technologies that precluded the need for such things as oil.

He concluded his remarks by mentioning that 100 years ago no on could have imagined the LA that we know today. There simply is no water in the area. There is an amazing amount of technological adaptability at our disposal.

Newt didn’t say so but I think one thing that will happen in the next decade will be that the cost of water desalination will collapse to 1/10 current costs thereby making it possible to turn the deserts of the world green and doubling the size of the habitable planet and reversing the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere.

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