EtD has returned to action this week; I’d forgotten how fun it is to plunge into the left-wing inanities that we’re all inundated with. Usually I read a column by one of these colossal hacks until I want to punch a hippie and then I start the parody. Today’s Object of Ridicule and Scorn is unique, because it only took the title for me to be certain that it deserves ridicule and scorn. I hate you, Dana Milbank.
Without cap-and-trade, here's what's needed
By Dana Milbank
Sunday, October 17, 2010
It’s the 16th, big guy. This is the first time I’ve ever ridiculed a date…an auspicious start. What’s next? Getting your name wrong?
There is a hole in the Democrats' plan to fight global warming.
Is it the inability to address industrial and commercial concerns in a global economy?
A .270-caliber hole, to be specific.
Let me cut you off here. The Second Amendment is not to blame for Democratic incoherence. Some consider it nothing short of a modus operandi.
"I'll take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill, because it's bad for West Virginia," Gov. Joe Manchin, the Democratic candidate for Senate, says in an ad put out last week.
After previously supporting it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqX6tlsedgE (At :57 in, Manchin: “Now they’re going to have to pay for the carbons, whether cap and trade or whether it’s in a carbon tax.”)
To demonstrate, he pops what appears to be a.270 cartridge in his Remington 700,
This familiarity with guns indicates to me either a) Millbank is desperately trying to run away from a childhood in which he was a good ol’ country boy, b) Millbank hired outside consultants, or c) Millbank is a left-wing militant that needs to be tracked by Homeland Security.
then shoots a bull's-eye
Do you really believe Joe Manchin can shoot a bullseye?
through a piece of paper reading "Senate of the United States" and "Cap and Trade Bill."
Except he supported it. [See Above]
If you look closely, you can see that the bullet tears through the word "jobs" in the sentence "to create clean energy jobs."
Take-away message: Manchin kills jobs.
This was unsporting of Manchin.
Unsporting? Are we playing a game of cricket? In one word, Millbank just undercut all of the positives he amassed by showing a familiarity with firearms.
The bill was dead before he shot it.
Score one for the American people.
If it couldn't pass with 60 Democrats in the Senate, it surely isn't going to pass in the next two years.
Promise?
But Manchin's shot should ring in his fellow Democrats' ears, warning them that it is time to come up with an alternative to regulating carbon, a Plan B for climate change.
Brainstorming session:
1) Force registration of all cattle in the United States and give the EPA the authority to impose fines against “unapproved cattle emissions”
2) Cede sovereignty to the United Nations
3) Squander taxpayer money through a 4th stimulus on unmarketable and inefficient capital projects surrounding solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energies
4) Ramp up eco-terrorism efforts
5) Insult the American people
6) Enlist more celebrities (Maybe if Lisa Lampanelli spoke out…)
7) Expand educational indoctrination efforts
8) Mimic successful PETA campaign of throwing red paint on fur; throw shrubberies at electronics. “ENERGY IS MURDER!”
9) Falsify academic data. …wait…
10)Claim global cooling!
I suggest they try smoke and mirrors -- literally.
What an adorable play on words.
Scientists are already pondering the use of smoke (sulfur dioxide injected into the stratosphere)and mirrors (installing reflectors made of metal or lunar glass a million miles from Earth)
Jesus, this is just comical.
to cool the planet. It's time for policymakers to get serious about these and other "geoengineering" proposals to cool the Earth and remove excess carbon.
Really? It’s time to say “We don’t really understand how the global climate functions. Up until very recently we had completely written off the role of the sun in terrestrial climates, but we’re going to take some serious and irreversible steps to tinker with the planet. Trust us.”
None of this means giving up on carbon reduction,
“Cut your carbon emissions, or we’re going to fuck everything up.”
which remains the only sure way to prevent man-made climate change.
My foolproof method of preventing man-made climate change: Doing absolutely nothing.
But as the failure in Congress to reach consensus slows progress toward an international agreement, the wasted time could be used to create a fallback plan.
This would prevent other nations from gaining a lead in geoengineering technologies…
This nonsense argument is the same as we hear about green technologies. Spain based itself on a new “green economy” and has nearly imploded in economic collapse. Competitiveness isn’t generated by the government insistence on unmarketable concepts. It’s created through deference to the free market.
(while perhaps providing some focus to our aimless space program)
Out of the question. They’re busy reaching out to the Muslim world.
and at the same time put some cap-and-trade foes on the spot. Those who profess to care about global warming but balk at putting a price on carbon would have no justification for opposing geoengineering.
Really? You can’t come up with an argument against creating a massive, unaccountable government bureaucracy that makes decisions that could perminantly alter the face of our planet? You can’t pull the “Law of Unintended Consequences” out of your back pocket? You can’t find fault with the hubris of playing God?
Makings of a cross-ideological coalition have emerged. At the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Samuel Thernstrom wrote this year that "ignoring geoengineering is potentially dangerous and irresponsible."
This is absolutely classic. Millbank reads only until the second sentence of the synopsis. Thernstrom’s justification for geoengineering is that a) knowledge of geoengineering is cheap and that ignoring it leaves vulnerabilities and b) some other country might unilaterally engage in geoengineering and that we must be able to respond. (I recommend using nukes.) Neither is a ringing endorsement of the process.
At the liberal Center for American Progress, Andrew Light tells me that because "research is already starting in some parts of the world, we would be foolhardy not to be looking into it."
First, he’s a liberal and his opinion is therefore invalid. Second, this is virtually an identical argument to Thernstrom: if this technology is developed, America ought to be on the cutting edge as a national defense initiative, not as a “heal the world” initiative.
Retiring Rep. Bart Gordon,
(D-TN6)
chairman of the House science committee, wrote in Slate a couple of weeks ago that the United States should begin spending on geoengineering research.
Why do “solutions” from the left always hinge on more spending?
The British government has already begun.
Isn’t the insistence that we be the best about everything the type of jingoistic xenophobia over which liberals continually impugn conservatives?
The ideas range from simple to sci-fi. To remove carbon from the atmosphere, we could bury wood and agricultural waste,
Yeah, that sounds cost-effective.
or burn them into biochar.
Ditto; plus, from Wikipedia (because I’m a lazy Googler), “Biochar is charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass, and differs from charcoal only in the sense that its primary use is not for fuel.” Really? The plan is to use charcoal to cool the environment?
We could "weather" soil by mixing in carbon-devouring minerals,
Really?
or make oceans more alkaline by adding lime.
I’m sure the oceanic fauna would love that.
Chemical solutions could capture carbon dioxide from the air;
Creating worldwide acid rain.
"fertilizing" the ocean with nitrogen or iron could promote carbon-consuming algae;
[Flash forward to sentient algae devouring submarines]
or high-carbon water from the ocean surface could be pumped to the depths.
Just bury the problem. It’s not like water is fluid or anything.
To keep the Earth from absorbing warmth, we could paint roofs, roads and pavement white.
Sherwin Williams needs a lobbyist.
We could plant lighter, more reflective grasses,
Or we could just cut down the dense, dark green rainforests.
or cover the deserts with reflective aluminum.
This is a fucking joke, right?
Boats or planes could spray ocean clouds with sea salt to make them whiter;
This is a fucking joke, right?
pumping tiny particles into the atmosphere could mimic the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions.
I need to punch another hippie.
Then come the gee-whiz ideas.
Really? The ones you just listed aren’t stupid enough?
Sun reflectors could be put into orbit, or a ring of dust, like Saturn's, could be built around the equator using satellites. Metallic "sunshades" could be placed between the Earth and sun, or, as Britain's Royal Society described it, 10 trillion refracting disks could be "launched into space in stacks of a million, one stack every minute for about 30 years."
I need to start punching Brits too. The inanity speaks for itself.
Some of these ideas could bring unwanted side effects, including catastrophic droughts, famine and the destruction of ocean life –
Oh now you tell us that these mad-scientist ideas will bring certain doom.
all the more reason to spend time and money on researching the alternatives before we reach a tipping point that requires us to try one.
I’ll take my chances.
Some environmentalists think geoengineering will give opponents an excuse not to pursue carbon regulations, but since when has the opposition been in need of an excuse?
I, for one, oppose global warming because it is a concept reliant upon the hubris an insular cabal of in-crowders reassuring each other that they’re the special ones who have the unique knowledge and perspective to save the planet. I emphatically oppose because the solutions proffered by advocates are identical to those advocated by anticapitalist social engineers. I like both capital and capitalism.
The strategy also sidesteps conservatives' paranoia about international climate talks.
I’m not sure Millbank really understands the opposition. The “paranoia” about international climate talks center around a few important issues. The first is sovereignty. As a nation, we have fought hard, long, difficult wars, military and otherwise, to win the right to national self-determination. I’m not going to have Laotians and Paraguayans tell me that I eat too much meat. (If they ever do, I’m going to change my diet to include exclusively endangered species and Koalas.) Secondly, international agreements are unenforceable and routinely neglect China and India, who are smart enough to threaten to walk out.
There should eventually be multilateral cooperation on geoengineering,
Yes, because nothing says “let’s all work together” like someone having the ability to literally reshape or destroy the world.
but even a unilateralist can't object to some all-American research.
What part of the “NO NEW SPENDING” conservative platform is confusing to this dolt? The government spending that Americans routinely object to are scientific in nature, like the study that gave cocaine to monkeys. That very well may have scientific merit, but I don’t want to pay for monkeys’ nose candy.
Geoengineering isn't a magic bullet.
It isn’t any sort of bullet.
But at a time when a Democratic Senate candidate is firing live ammo at the cap-and-trade bill, it's worth a shot.
Because when your ideas are roundly rejected by the public, it’s time to get even crazier!
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