The Plan to Fix Climate Change in the Senate (only 11.52 years left)

The Atlantic ^ | 7/12/19 | ROBINSON MEYER

[Libloather]

It will be almost another 18 months until Democrats can even think of passing climate legislation.

In the 2020 election, they must defeat President Donald Trump, reclaim the Senate, and retain a majority in the House of Representatives. And then they have to find something to pass before members of Congress start getting cold feet about the 2022 election. Even in a best-case scenario, the moment will be a nerve-racking, high-stakes one for climate advocates. So Senate Democrats are trying to front-load as much of that work as possible.

Ten of them have formed the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis. Chaired by Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, the committee aims to get as much of the preliminary work out of the way as possible—the research and investigating and coalition-building—so that Democrats can start passing climate legislation as soon as they regain the upper chamber.

[Libloather]

“The goal is to lay down the factual basis for taking action, so that if we are in charge in 2021, we don’t have to go through 18 months of investigatory hearings,” Schatz told me during a wide-ranging interview in his office last month.

I'm hearing all about money, power and elections. Maybe they can spew a few ideas on how to actually save our dying planet - in advance. A running start, if you will. For example, begin by getting rid of energy-sucking smart phones. To save massive amounts of electricity, leftist propaganda TV networks should be reduced down to maybe two or three. Every dead tree publication will cease immediately. All dogs and cats will begin to be eliminated within one year. The majority of eighteen-wheelers will be removed from the road. You know, great ideas like that.

One small tip for Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii - you better get this right or you'll get hit with multiple fraud charges.

[rktman]

“....if we are in charge in 2021,” “IF!” Pretty much puts their plan away for a sunny day. Or rainy day. Or snowy day. Thinkin’ we have a plan to try to fix the senate. The actual fix is to get off that hell bound train and adapt as needed. Just as an aside senator, get back to us on these:

1. Define the “correct” temperature range for the planet.

2. Define the “correct” humidity range for the planet.

3. Define the “correct” mean sea level for the planet.

4. Define the “correct” amount of precipitation for the planet.

5. Define the “correct” makeup of the atmosphere.

6. Define the “correct” amount of sea ice at the N/S poles.

7. Define/explain past glaciation and subsequent warming without any input from humans.

[alancarp]

The amount of delusional thinking going on here would be breathtaking if it weren’t all about the real agenda: socialism and communism. In short: power and control.

[AU72]

And ground the airlines and use blimps.

[MAGAthon]

all the more reason to ensure President Trump wins in 2020.

[pepsionice]

Actually, we need to revert to stage coaches and horseback travel.

[Beowulf9]

How in the world are they going to get plenty rich now?

[MAGAthon]

gloBULL warming sceptics have been noticing these studies and Russia Today is now covering them:

12 Jul: RT.com: Finnish study finds ‘practically no’ evidence for man-made climate change
A new study conducted by a Finnish research team has found little evidence to support the idea of man-made climate change. The results of the study were soon corroborated by researchers in Japan.
In a paper published late last month, entitled ‘No experimental evidence for the significant anthropogenic climate change’, a team of scientists at Turku University in Finland determined that current climate models fail to take into account the effects of cloud coverage on global temperatures, causing them to overestimate the impact of human-generated greenhouse gasses...

Japanese researchers at the University of Kobe arrived at similar results as the Turku team, finding in a paper published in early July that cloud coverage may create an “umbrella effect” that could alter temperatures in ways not captured by current modeling.
https://www.rt.com/news/464051-finnish-study-no-evidence-warming/

Graham is not to be trusted:

12 Jul: CNN: It’s Lindsey Graham vs. Donald Trump on climate crisis
By Lauren Dezenski
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/11/politics/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-climate-change/index.html

[SkyDancer]

Of course it’ll mean taxes and fees and such but only for the US; climate change in other countries will be up to them.

[Fraxinus]

Actually, we need to revert to stage coaches and horseback travel.

Not entirely, but close.

I believe it would be possible to have a US economy without use of fossil fuels, but it would both not be an economy I would want, nor would the US be a world power. Once you realize that this means converting all transport to animal, wood fired, or vegetable oil fuels with all the restrictions this would impose on range, 70%+ of the population would need to live on farms which would use minimum 50% and in some cases 90% of their land for either fodder for the draft animals or oil crops. Electricity would be restricted to industrial use and the urban rich. For overwhelming majority of the population they would go on at most 3 great trips during their lifetime.

Within a generation all forest within a days haul (approx 10 mi.) of a train station, river pier or canal tie-up point would be cut for fuel. Yes there would be steel and other refined metals, but the cost would reflect the need to source high quality charcoal in very large quantities.

[butlerweave]

They want to suck the CO2 out of the Air and pump it back into the ground where we found it ,LOL

[abclily]

OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a giant nuclear furnace that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the sun’s planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?

[laweeks]

https://www.tickcounter.com/countdown/1249085/earth-goes-poof

Website with the final countdown constantly calculating.

11.48 years left . . . Jan 1, 2031 to be exact

[RipSawyer]

“Within a generation all forest within a days haul (approx 10 mi.) of a train station, river pier or canal tie-up point would be cut for fuel. Yes there would be steel and other refined metals, but the cost would reflect the need to source high quality charcoal in very large quantities.”

Being 75 years old and having grown up on forty acres in the midst of nowhereland I have some acquaintance with the reality of living with very, very little in the way of “fossil” fuel. I’m not sure that you do. Having pulled my end of a 65 inch two man crosscut saw and swung an axe as a child in grade school as well as plowing with, first a draft horse and then a mule and a team of two mules, I can tell you that without “fossil” fuels all that timber within ten miles of transport would never be cut as fast as it will grow back because there is no source for people who can handle that kind of labor now and if they were available it would take huge numbers to cut the amount of wood that a few old men can cut now with chain saws and it would take a huge manufacturing operation to produce all the axes, handsaws and other tools that have not been needed in quantity for the past eighty or so years and someone would have to set out to produce millions of draft animals which would take years under any imaginable plan. I can’t see the possibility of returning to that fuel source without an unimaginable drop in population. Of course that drop in population is entirely possible but I hope not to see it.

[freedumb2003]

>>Actually, we need to revert to stage coaches and horseback travel.<<

All those horse farts? No way!

[Fraxinus]

All that wood would be cut because the demand would be that great. I expect that in much of the country the regrowth you are thinking of would not happen because the new local small farmers would convert the former wood land into crop land. From ~1880 much of the forests in the eastern half of the US regrew as marginal land was abandoned and the development and adoption of gas or electric stoves reduced the demand for fire wood in cities. Aside from those operations that can use direct drive water power, or can accept the vagreties of wind; Your only options besides animal power would be hydro driven electricity, wood fired steam or diesels burning vegetable oil. I am assuming that refineries can produce acceptable lubricants in acceptable quantities using either waste derived methane or vegetable oils as feed stock. I would expect that the Rail Roads would be using wood fired steam locomotives as I suspect that cord wood would be cheaper than vegetable oil in the quantities needed.

The fact that just breeding the animals required for the transition would take over a decade (I will leave it to experts in animal husbandry to give a better figure), combined with the fact that working on a semi-subsistance farm is a lot of work I do not see how you keep majority support long enough to complete the transition in an orderly fashion when the peasants know there is an easier way.

[RipSawyer]

“From ~1880 much of the forests in the eastern half of the US regrew as marginal land was abandoned and the development and adoption of gas or electric stoves reduced the demand for fire wood in cities.”

True, I live in the Southeast and you can find old croplands being returned to forests in some areas and forests returning to croplands or being developed for housing or commercial use in other areas. Much land was cleared for farming long ago by people who used handsaws and axes, water power is of no use in felling and limbing trees and the work was done by men of a sort very hard to find now and they were supported by women of a sort even harder to find. Old records indicate that the average logger was around five nine and 155 pounds and consumed 7000 or more calories daily to maintain that weight. They were supermen compared to the average modern American male. Many men today do less hard physical labor in a year than those men did every day. I fear that a huge percentage would die off before we had the slightest chance of returning to that sort of life.