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Pasco County News | Breaking News

Rising fever of warmism alarmism

Posted Nov 4, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Nov 4, 2009 at 05:55 PM

Global warmism alarmism is much with us as the planet lurches toward an even larger and more pressing worry: the global emissions summit scheduled next month in Copenhagen.

The Obama administration’s handwringing reached a fever pitch Wednesday when chief climate negotiator – who knew? – Todd Stern climbed Capitol Hill to put the latest worst face on the calamitous condition of Mother Earth, infected as it is with the virus of evil human activity.

Comes this from the Wall Street Journal (note the appropriately explosive salvo from Bay area Rep. Gus Bilirakis):

With a big global summit on climate change just weeks away, the top U.S. negotiator in talks aimed at forging a treaty urged Congress Wednesday to move as quickly as possible to enact caps on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, warning of “catastrophic” consequences if the world doesn’t stabilize such emissions.

Todd Stern, who was testifying before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the Obama administration intends to seek the “strongest possible” agreement to curb emissions at a United Nations conference in Copenhagen next month, but added that any deal would have to be “consistent with the science and mindful of the necessity to be practical and pragmatic.”

He complained that some poor countries “prefer to focus more on citing chapter and verse for dubious interpretations” of past climate agreements “designed to prove that they have no responsibility to take action … than on thinking through pragmatic ways to find common ground and start solving the problem.”

Mr. Stern encountered tough questioning from Republicans, some of whom challenged the idea that the earth is warming. Others expressed fear that the administration will commit the U.S. to an economically ruinous schedule of emissions reductions.

“The longer we wait, the worse it gets,” Mr. Stern told the panel. “At some point, people are going to recognize there’s too much carbon in the atmosphere.”

There is a word for this, and that word—increasingly expressed by climate scientists—is: nonsense. Earth temperatures have been flat for a decade even as atmospheric carbon has surged.

Mr. Stern was testifying a day after Senate Republicans largely boycotted a meeting of a Senate panel weighing a proposal to cut U.S. emissions roughly 20 percent beneath 2005 levels by 2020. The Republicans complained that the bill’s potential impact on the economy had not been sufficiently vetted by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Echoing similar concerns, Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R, Palm Harbor), told Mr. Stern, “The last thing we need coming out of Copenhagen is an energy tax.” Mr. Bilirakis said he feared the Obama administration will commit the U.S. to a deal that “will severely disadvantage American business and shift jobs abroad” to countries such as China and India that don’t cap emissions.

Mr. Stern spent much of his testimony trying to persuade lawmakers that those countries are willing to do more to cut their emissions than they let on.

Yes. Just like Iran’s mad mullahs are willing to do more to limit their production of nuclear-weapons-grade uranium than they let on. Or are they ... ?

He noted that China’s current five-year plan calls for reducing the energy intensity of its economy by 20 percent by 2010, and that its government has implemented increasingly stringent automobile emissions standards.

Democrats on the panel largely expressed support for Mr. Stern, though Eni Faleomavaega – a Democratic delegate who represents American Samoa – complained about what he said was a shortage of specifics from the administration on how much money the U.S. should spend each year to help developing countries reduce their emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change.

“There’s been a lot of rhetoric but no real substantive commitment,” Mr. Faleomavaega said. China has suggested that rich nations contribute the equivalent of one percent of their gross domestic product – a figure that Mr. Stern has said is “untethered from reality” and would mean $140 billion in the case of the U.S.

Just what Americans need: Another massive mandate to be funded with more debt. more taxes or more of both, extracted in pursuit of a goal that is essentially irrelevant (a potential fraction of a degree change over a century). Stick to your guns, Gus. Tuesday’s election results suggest reinforcements less prone to warmism panic are on their way.