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If You're Serious About Climate...
Townhall.com ^ | March 8, 2019 | Mona Charen

Posted on 03/08/2019 4:49:05 AM PST by Kaslin

Do you ever wonder why people run for office? I mean, unless you're a total cynic, you must assume that at least part of the motivation is wanting to do good. Sure, those who run for office want fame and prestige, but they also have strongly held views and want to affect public policy, right? So why in the world would they engage in sabotage of the ideas they hope to advance?

That's undeniably what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey have done with their juvenile Green New Deal.

Consider: The caricature of environmentalists is that they are just using climate change as a stalking horse for their true agenda, which is to socialize the entire economy. And lo and behold, what does the Green New Deal resolution call for? Net zero carbon emissions in 10 years, universal health care, guaranteed jobs for all, paid family leave, paid vacations, refurbishing every single building in the country to meet environmental standards, eliminating nuclear power and on and on. In fact, most of the resolution doesn't even address climate change. Here's a flavor:

The Green New Deal seeks "To promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as 'frontline and vulnerable communities')."

Okaaaaay. So what Ocasio-Cortez and Markey have achieved, along with all of the Democrats who've endorsed this childish wish list, is to make themselves look like dummies and to reinforce the impression that they are totally unserious about combating climate change.

If they were committed to mitigating what they claim to believe is a looming catastrophe, you might imagine they would study the question for at least a few minutes, even swallow hard and make some tough choices about the way forward. That's what others have done.

Recently, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a statement noting that the "sobering realities" of climate change "dictate that we keep an open mind about all of the tools in the emissions reduction toolbox -- even ones that are not our personal favorites." In other words, they don't like nuclear power, but they concede that it is necessary.

As Samuel Thernstrom of the Energy Innovation Reform Project points out, renewables get all the love, but they are simply incapable of meeting the energy demands of our whole economy. It's not because the sun goes down at night and the wind doesn't always blow. It's because in some regions, the sun gets weak and the wind stops blowing for months at a time. Batteries are advancing, but not fast enough to make an all-renewables power grid practical for some time.

Other technologies, by contrast, are on the shelf and ready to go. Nuclear power, though it gives left-wingers the shakes, is safe and reliable. The accidents make headlines, but nuclear plants have not been responsible for a single death in the United States. Three Mile Island caused no damage to human beings. Even Russia's 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, which caused many to predict tens of thousands of cancer deaths in its wake, has shown nothing of the kind. A 2015 National Institutes of Health paper found that, "In spite of the best efforts of statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed Chernobyl-induced cancers and mutations have yet to manifest themselves." The U.S. has been using compact nuclear reactors in submarines and aircraft carriers for decades -- without a single accident, says Thernstrom.

The greatest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions were achieved by France in the 1970s and '80s when the country made a big switch to nuclear energy. They reduced their carbon emissions by 2 percent per year while still providing their people with affordable energy.

Carbon capture is showing promise, too. NET Power has opened a new natural gas plant in La Porte, Texas, that buries all of the excess carbon dioxide underground.

None of the choices we face is cost-free. But if people are serious about addressing climate change, they must, at the very least, acknowledge the simple reality that you cannot stamp your foot and demand that the entire U.S. economy be transformed in 10 years. Evaluate the trade-offs. Be serious, or risk becoming a joke and making your issue a punchline, too.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: aoc; carbonfootprint; climatechange; climatechangefraud; edmarkey; environmentalism; environmentalregs; greennewdeal

1 posted on 03/08/2019 4:49:05 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

I guess I’m a “total cynic.”


2 posted on 03/08/2019 4:51:16 AM PST by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
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To: Kaslin

Ocasio-Cortez created the Green new Deal in bar somewhere. That’s why it sounds so absurd. It’s a combination of virtue-signaling and hyperbole.
It makes the Global Warming conspiracy theory look...well..like a conspiracy theory


3 posted on 03/08/2019 4:52:36 AM PST by AppyPappy (How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?)
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To: Kaslin
"The U.S. has been using compact nuclear reactors in submarines and aircraft carriers for decades -- without a single accident, says Thernstrom."

Sorta like a Mr. Fusion, without the fusion....

4 posted on 03/08/2019 4:53:32 AM PST by Paladin2
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To: AppyPappy

I think there was smoking involved.

Why is it called Dope?


5 posted on 03/08/2019 4:54:35 AM PST by Paladin2
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To: Kaslin

I wish “conservatives” would stop agreeing that humans are changing the climate. Agreeing to that stupidity is the first step to agreeing with everything else these scientifically illiterates spew. CO2 is a naturally occurring gas that is VERY WEAK as a greenhouse gas. Water Vapor is a far more potent driver of the greenhouse effect. CO2 is NOT a pollutant AND is necessary for the survival of plants and animals. CO2 has been higher in the history of this planet AND at some of those times we’ve been in the middle of ice ages. We are in the warmer side of an ice age now and there have two recent periods where the temperatures have been warmer than they are today! AND, during this most recent warm period we’ve seen evidence of the ice caps on TWO other planets in our solar system shrinking at the same time we’ve seen the most warming. Are they trying to say that we are so responsible that we drive the climates on other planets to change too? I get so sick of “conservatives” who don’t know enough to challenge these idiots.


6 posted on 03/08/2019 5:03:21 AM PST by Dad was my hero
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To: Kaslin
Mona, Nobody needs to reduce "greenhouse emissions". i.e. CO2. It's a fools errand.
7 posted on 03/08/2019 5:12:16 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: Kaslin
The premise that human generated CO2 is bad for the planet and must be reduced to pre-industrial levels at any cost, is the problem.

I believe it's a false premise, or at worst nowhere near as serious as the Left have depicted it.
It may even be beneficial.

The Left is using it as a battering ram to bring down western civilization.
That's the real goal.

8 posted on 03/08/2019 5:22:52 AM PST by BitWielder1 (I'd rather have Unequal Wealth than Equal Poverty.)
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To: Kaslin

The sort of people who run for public office don’t want to do good ... they want to do well.


9 posted on 03/08/2019 5:23:02 AM PST by Mr Ramsbotham ("God is a spirit, and man His means of walking on the earth.")
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To: Kaslin
TownHall Mona Charen

Useful idiots for the Left.

MAN has NOTHING to do with “climate change”

During the “Global Warming” cult hysteria, we saw global warming on the OTHER planets in the system also. WHY? Because the Sun is an inconstant star, some times warmer, some times cooler. Now we are leaving a period of high sunspot activity for a low sun spot activity cyle. And just like ever single other low period the planets are now cooling.

Get you head our of your butts “Conservative inc” you do NOT win anything by giving creedence to your enemies Neo Marxist poltical dogmas pretending to be “Science”.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/news-articles/solar-minimum-is-coming

10 posted on 03/08/2019 5:26:39 AM PST by MNJohnnie (They would have to abandon leftism to achieve sanity. Freeper Olog-hai)
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To: central_va

They run to become rich and tell us what to do...they will spend a lifetime there...they only want to help us but it never happens...it only gets worse

We are the fools...we are slaves to Washington DC


11 posted on 03/08/2019 5:29:20 AM PST by Hojczyk
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To: Kaslin
"Let's get serious"

First, define the problem:

Climate Change - Systematic changes in the earth's environment that have gone on for at least 4.5 billion years.

Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming (CMMGW) - An unverified hypothesis that mankind's burning of fossil fuels must be halted immediately because it will warm the earth's environment to catastrophic levels, destroying earth as we know it.

Mankind can't do anything about Climate Change.

The only way mankind can stop CMMGW, if it is real, is to stop burning fossil fuels. If it is real, CMMGW cannot be stopped using any plan requiring inventing new things.

It can only be stopped in the near term using technology we already have. Solar panels and wind turbines demonstrably don't work adequately. Hydro power and nuclear power do.If it is real, CMMGWcan only be mitigated with crash programs to vastly accelerate implementation of hydro power and nuclear power. Submarine sized nuclear power plants could power ships, trains, and local electric plants. With a little development, they could power semi tractor sized road vehicles.

The biggest hole in this is aircraft. There is no known technology that can fly airplanes in the short term without gasoline or jet fuel.

Anyone who claims they can stop Climate Change is simply either ignorant or stupid.

Anyone who claims CMMGW is real and can be quickly stopped without using hydro and nuclear technology is either ignorant, or stupid, or lying. I'll go for all three.

12 posted on 03/08/2019 5:48:39 AM PST by norwaypinesavage (Calm down and enjoy the ride, great things are happening for our country)
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To: Kaslin

A good question to ask the Warmists is this:

If your compatriots hadn’t blocked nuclear power plant production over the last three decades, how much further along might we be towards reducing your imaginary problem, and how much closer would we be to having a solid infrastructure in place now for the electric vehicles you plan on shoving down our throats?

(might want to paraphrase some of that) ;)


13 posted on 03/08/2019 5:55:00 AM PST by chrisser
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To: Kaslin

14 posted on 03/08/2019 6:38:56 AM PST by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: Mr Ramsbotham

That’s right. Even the grammar police got it right back then. They’re nere-do-wellers, not nere-do-gooders.


15 posted on 03/08/2019 6:44:53 AM PST by tenger (If we don't stay on 'em, they'll get it wrong. - Joe Soucheray)
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To: Kaslin

What is she smoking? Politicians, winners and losers, are amoral. They seek the means to steal, lie and pervert while being unaccountable. They have lost the right to “govern with the consent of the governed”. They deserve no respect, no title, no obedience.


16 posted on 03/08/2019 7:02:25 AM PST by NTHockey (Rules of engagement #1: Take no prisoners. And to the NSA trolls, FU)
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To: Kaslin

:: To promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as ‘frontline and vulnerable communities’). ::

In promoting the Green New Deal, Congressman Markey intoned, “This deal MUST come to pass so that I, as a white male, can be taken away in chains and instituted in a gulag for wyepepo. Wait....WHAT?”


17 posted on 03/08/2019 7:05:02 AM PST by Cletus.D.Yokel (Catastrophic, Anthropogenic Climate Alterations: The acronym explains the science.)
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To: Kaslin
The kicker for me that the Green New Deal is not about climate change was the part about providing a livable wage to those who are unwilling to work.

No amount of argument or rationale will convince me that has anything to do with climate change and everything to do with the socialist revolution.

Green on the outside. Red on the inside.


18 posted on 03/08/2019 7:07:52 AM PST by HotHunt (Reagan was good but TRUMP IS GREAT!)
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To: Paladin2

“The accidents make headlines, but nuclear plants have not been responsible for a single death in the United States. Three Mile Island caused no damage to human beings. Even Russia’s 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, which caused many to predict tens of thousands of cancer deaths in its wake, has shown nothing of the kind. A 2015 National Institutes of Health paper found that, “In spite of the best efforts of statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed Chernobyl-induced cancers and mutations have yet to manifest themselves.””

James Conca must have ghost-written that portion.../s


19 posted on 03/08/2019 8:02:21 PM PST by logi_cal869 (-cynicus the "concern troll" a/o 10/03/2018 /!i!! &@$%&*(@ -)
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