Posted on 01/26/2013 7:51:06 PM PST by upchuck
[snip]
In addition to a groundswell of opposition to the 2,700-kilometer-long Keystone pipeline, 17 of his [James Hansen] fellow climate scientists joined him in signing a letter urging Pres. Barack Obama to reject the project last week. Simply put, building the pipeline—and enabling more tar sands production—runs "counter to both national and planetary interests," the researchers wrote. "The year of review that you asked for on the project made it clear exactly how pressing the climate issue really is." Obama seemed to agree in his second inaugural address this week, noting "we will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations."
At the same time, the U.S. imports nearly nine million barrels of oil per day and burns nearly a billion metric tons of coal annually. China's coal burning is even larger and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Partially as a result, global emissions of greenhouse gases continue to grow by leaps and bounds too—and China is one alternative customer eager for the oil from Canada's tar sands. Neither developed nor developing nations will break the fossil-fuel addiction overnight, and there are still more than a billion people who would benefit from more fossil-fuel burning to help lift them out of energy poverty. The question lurking behind the fight in North America over Keystone, the tar sands and climate change generally is: How much of the planet's remaining fossil fuels can we burn?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Money quote:the U.S. imports nearly nine million barrels of oil per day and burns nearly a billion metric tons of coal annually. China's coal burning is even larger and continues to grow by leaps and bounds.The obvious conclusion is that we need to put pressure on China to stop burning coal. Reportedly Obama is going to put pressure on Congress to impose a carbon tax; Congress should reply with a tax on Chinese consumption of coal. That is where the growth of carbon consumption is at - and there’s nothing the government in Washington can do - or even wants to do - about it.It’s much like liberals’ schemes to “reduce gun violence.” They define the problem as gun violence so they can pretend that what they want to do - disarm the public - would “solve” the problem. If you define the problem as violence in general, then they have to consider the real-world reasons honest people buy guns in the first place. Thousands of gun owners, in point of fact, for every annual gun murder. Which would drive you to the conclusion that the public is willing to pay for, and take trouble to secure, a "violence potential" equalizer.
If all you cared about is gun violence, you could reduce that by the mere expedient of eliminating the penalties for non-gun violence. Then muggers would spend time in the weight room so they could accomplish their violent ambitions without guns. And the victims would feel so much better, being battered by a club. </sarcasm>
In November I saw a Democrat let the cat out of the bag. The carbon tax is a trickle down tax. It is imposed on energy producers that raise their rates and then it is paid by all who buy energy.
The Democrats have painted themselves in a corner. They can’t tax the income of those who have been bought off. That is suicide. The trickle down tax gets to them. The masses who don’t pay, will pay.
For reasons I don’t know, they prefer the hidden tax to say the VAT or the Fair Tax or the Flat tax.
Oh boy, some people would get thirsty...
All of it we can recover.
What a silly question.
About the same as the last 10 years of the National Geographic...
US Refineries are investing billions of dollars into the equipment and infrastructure required to refine tar sands.
Stop tar sands now and you will set our refinery sector back 20 years and increase the price of fuel by a factor of 2 to 3.
Global warming DOES exist. It is documented.
The real question is: Does Anthropogenic (man caused) Global Warming exist?
It may or may not, and I say not. But for society to spend trillions of dollars based on the scientific evidence used to buttress their claims so far is absolutely ridiculous.
The Anthropogenic Global Warming Movement is merely a global scheme to redistribute wealth and inhibit industry and other human endeavors to satisfy the environmentalists and those who would benefit from the huge sums of money extracted from those who have any wealth or possessions worth taking.
And with liberals, any wealth or possessions accrued to an individual at all are worth taking, no matter how small. In the deep recesses of their limbic reptilian liberal brains, the thought of personal property is anathema.
Compared to what nature throws into the atmosphere through natural processes, our use of oil is a comparative drop in the bucket.
And if it IS a Scientific American article, well, we all know what they are all about. They are all in on it.
A GREAT book on this subject is “Red Hot Lies” by Christopher Horner.
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