H.R.2454 - American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009


All Bill Titles

  • Short: Safe Climate Act as introduced.
  • Short: Safe Climate Act as passed house.
  • Short: Safe Climate Act as reported to house.
  • Short: GREEN Act of 2009 as passed house.


Comments Feed

Displaying 601-630 of 724 total comments.

  • Comm_reply
    JMeadeRep 01/25/2010 11:44am

    First of all, the “overwhelming majority of the scientific community” does NOT agree that carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” are directly linked to climate change. For reference — Tim Ball and Tom Harris, “New Findings Indicate Today’s Greenhouse Gas Levels Not Unusual”; Lawrence Solomon “Limited Role for CO2”; Dudley J. Hughes, NOAA’s “Greenhouse Gases FAQ”;Casey Lartigue and Ryan Balis, “The Lieberman-Warner Cap and Trade Bill”; Phil Chapman, Christopher Booker, William W. Beach, etc, etc, etc…! There is no concrete proof (yet!) that humanity’s use of fossil fuels and other causes of greenhouse gases create climate change.
    There IS proof that our planet’s climate naturally goes through cyclic climate change.
    Until it is proven by science — clearly and irrevocably — Congress is absolutely correct to not place harmful, economically limiting sanctions on businesses.

  • Comm_reply
    JMeadeRep 01/25/2010 11:44am

    Moreover, I have serious issue with using the opinions of nine men and women, whatever their political allegiances, that were not elected by and are not liable to the citizenry as justification for revolutionary policy. It should not be the Supreme Court’s resposibility to define what a harmful greenhouse gas is — the idea is absurd. But since 1803 that’s just wishful thinking.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/25/2010 1:25pm

    You are the perfect example of a victim of the multi-billion dollar campaign by coal and oil industry lobbyists to convince the public that the science behind climate change is not decisive. In the late 1980s, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) was formed by many large oil and energy corporations along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to begin a massive disinformation campaign to try to make global warming into theory rather than fact. These companies, along with coal and oil industry lobbyists, have been using political pressure and huge amounts of money to convince (mostly the GOP) to undermine the science behind climate change in order to protect their business interests. After 1989, the mainstream media began to portray the issue as if both sides of the “argument” had legitimate claims, or fact-based arguments and that the reasons why the Earth has been warming are somehow ambiguous or not fully understood.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/25/2010 1:32pm

    Before 1989, the major media outlets had been settled in the view that the scientific community had come to the conclusion that unusual global warming is happening and human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are the cause of the most recent warming. But since then, the issue has been covered by the major newspapers and television networks as a controversy, especially by right-wing media figures like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity among many others. Even investigations and testimonies to congress by the environmental agencies in the Bush administration were heavily censored, in particular by Philip Cooney – then head of environmental policy who now works for ExxonMobil – if they suggested that urgent action needed to be taken to combat the effects of human-caused climate change.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/25/2010 1:39pm

    But where has your stance on the issue come from? Most likely, the mainstream media and Fox News. Equally likely, scientists on the payroll of major energy companies to do research into any possible ways to make it seem as if global warming is not happening or is happening for some other reason than greenhouse gas emissions. To this day, there remains not one article published in a refereed, peer-reviewed scientific journal that disputes the consensus that global warming is happening and is primarily caused by human emissions of heat-trapping gases. The articles that have been published have all been discredited and disproved thoroughly by a wealth of scientific evidence, and many of the conclusions drawn by global warming deniers in scientific papers have been disowned by their authors. If you can find a counterexample, please provide it.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/25/2010 1:50pm

    I don’t blame you. The information you receive is falsified, exaggerated, shoved down your throat, and repeated over and over and over again. For some reason it doesn’t help that the national academies of science in the U.S., the U.K., China, India, Russia, Brazil, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Japan (among many others) have all endorsed the findings of the IPCC. It doesn’t help that the science behind why greenhouse gases contribute to global warming is verified over and over and over again in hundreds of peer-reviewed articles across nearly every relevant scientific discipline. It doesn’t help that already we are observing increased extreme weather events like Hurricane Katrina and the drought in Australia, rapidly accelerating glacier melt in the Arctic and Antarctica, increases in forest fires caused by dry weather, and changes in migration patterns of insect and bird species caused by disruption of seasonal weather patterns.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/25/2010 1:59pm

    Like I said, I don’t blame you. Take a look at http://www.skepticalscience.com/ to have each and every one of your skeptic arguments systematically debunked. Then, come back here and talk to me about the issue.

  • Comm_reply
    JMeadeRep 01/29/2010 8:30am



  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/25/2010 1:58pm

    Despite everything I’ve told you, you’ll refuse to believe that climate change is happening and we need to do something about it because we are the primary cause. This is because it’s easier to resist changing your habits than it is to rethink anything. People like you are the reason why the big oil and coal corporations are winning this fight – they’ve succeeded in making climate change a politically polarizing issue, and they’ve succeeded in smudging the way the public receives information so thoroughly that people have no way of knowing what separates fact and fiction. Heaven forbid you have to change your way of life, or spend a little money, to ensure that our economy becomes stronger, our air becomes cleaner, our electricity becomes more dependable, the Earth’s biodiversity is preserved, and your children and grandchildren live in a more prosperous and healthy environment.

  • Comm_reply
    JMeadeRep 01/29/2010 4:31am

    Excuse me, but I take offense that you would so easily lump me into a group of “people like me.” You assume that I am ignorant and inflexible, incapable of processing new knowledge and so stuck in my conservative ways and personal bias that I would confront your information with cynicism and disbelief.

    I strive to be aware of my personal biases and analyze information objectively. At the same time, my beliefs and ideology are very important to me and I will not sacrifice them without concrete, persuasive information.

    I have been reading more into this issue, mostly on your impetus. Thank you for getting back to me with so much information — I wish that you would keep in touch and help me continue to learn more. But please, do not categorize me. Do not simplify this issue. It is not black and white. I am not simply a statistic “on the other side”.

  • Comm_reply
    JMeadeRep 01/29/2010 4:38am

    Could you recommend a source for this issue that is bent towards people without a degree in science? I am currently reading the IPCC’s reports, but I would like one from a source that is less involved in the current political battle. I do not get my information solely from FOX News, thankyouverymuch. :)

  • Comm_reply
    JMeadeRep 01/29/2010 8:37am

    I’ve continued to read a variety of sources. I believe that yes, the climate is warming. However, hydrocarbon use is either uncorrelated or mildly correlated with temperature. Temperature rose for a century before significant hydrocarbon use. Temperature rose between 1910 and 1940, while hydrocarbon use was almost unchanged. Temperature then fell between 1940 and 1972, while hydrocarbon use rose by 330%. Also, the 150 to 200-year slopes of the sea level and glacier trends were unchanged by the very large increase in hydrocarbon use after 1940.

  • Comm_reply
    JMeadeRep 01/29/2010 8:37am

    Carbon emissions are naturally present. This doesn’t preclude us from seeking alternate fuel sources; it’s always a good economic idea to have multiple products available. However, there doesn’t seem to be just cause yet to go on a witch hunt against oil companies and the corporations. Let’s focus on using taxpayer money to fund research into a viable, economically feasible alternative rather than harming our already struggling economy. Nuclear power perhaps?

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/29/2010 2:26pm

    The research into “viable, economically feasible alternatives” has already been done. Wind, solar and geothermal technology are all ready for mass integration in to our electrical grid. Nuclear power is actually the least economically feasible alternative – which is why the nuclear industry in the U.S. has been in steady decay for the last couple decades. First of all, it’s incredibly expensive to build just one nuclear power plant: over 4 billion dollars. It’s also exceedingly difficult to secure locations to destroy the harmful radioactive waste produced by these plants for long periods of time. Public opposition to nuclear power is strong, due to the tragedies at Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/29/2010 2:31pm

    More than one third of the remaining nuclear power workforce in the U.S. is eligible for retirement by 2012. There are under 30 nuclear-engineering degree programs in the U.S. today. Also, bottlenecks in the supply chain for fissible materials required for nuclear plants, as well as the materials required to build the reactors, make this option very unfriendly to investors. For example, there is only one company in the world capable of building one of the parts needed for a nuclear reactor containment vessel, in Japan, and it can only produce 4 of these parts per year. There are many more factors that make nuclear power an unfeasible option, all combining to explain why the industry has been stagnant for so long.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/29/2010 2:22pm
    Link Reply
    + -2

    I just can’t say any more about this. I can’t explain it in easier terms: We are dumping over 90 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere per year, and the growing concentration of these gases (CO2, methane, black carbon, halocarbons and other industrial pollutants) is causing the earth’s atmosphere to trap much more heat than during pre-industrial levels. Again, the scientific consensus states that human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the recent warming. Not one scientific article published in a refereed, peer-reviewed journal refutes this claim. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion – but not their own facts.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/29/2010 2:01pm

    Sure, try any of these:
    That website offers a report with comprehensive analysis of the science post-IPCC’s report. It’s from a team of scientists who make up the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of South Wales in Sydney. It was drafted before the conference in Copenhagen to inform policymakers about the state of climate science after the IPCC’s report, and points out several key underestimations in the IPCC report including showing how quickly arctic ice melt has accelerated since that 2007 report. It’s long, but it’s very helpful.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/29/2010 2:14pm

    If you want to read about the issue without needing a good scientific understanding of what’s at stake, check out some of the following books:
    Hell and High Water by Joe Romm
    Our Choice by Al Gore
    Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman is the book that got me motivated to work in renewable energy tech. Friedman does a great job of showing how reducing our dependence on foreign oil and investing in clean energy technology as well as significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a plan to make America stronger and more secure as well as to preserve the Earth’s diverse ecosystems and stop the most sever effects of climate change.

  • Comm_reply
    JMeadeRep 01/30/2010 4:45am

    I really appreciate the change in your tone. Thank you! I will check out Friedman’s book.

    I have a question — what does Cognress mean about geologic sequestration of carbon emissions?

  • Comm_reply
    cyberbs52 02/14/2010 4:39pm

    Why do you keep calling it climate change. Climates change all the time. Within dayys minutes, or hours. Global warming has no substantiated facts from science. The earth goes through changes and man can not control the weather. Since when is carbon emmsion a pollutant? Plants absorb it and release oxygen.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 02/14/2010 7:33pm

    ::sigh:: same old, same old. once again,
    Climate change, global warming, whatever you want to call it – we’ve just emerged from the hottest decade in the instrumental record and probably in the last 2000 years according to the NOAA and NASA. 2009 was the second-warmest year on record and 2010 is expected to break the record.

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  • JMeadeRep 01/30/2010 5:06am

    It would definitely be beneficial to move away from fossil fuels. We will eventually run out of accessible fossil fuels (not for a while, but why not plan ahead?) and there is a significant portion of the scientific community, that believes there is a strong correlation between carbon emissions and climate change. Simply because it has not been proven yet (the IPCC states only that it is “very likely” that humans have had an impact) does not mean that we cannot move towards responsible change. If we could find a way to do so that stimulates our free market economy while maintaining a limited government, we could please both sides of the political spectrum.

    The massive expansion of the bureaucracy with this bill remains one of my few apprehensions about it. Why not simply provide stimulus for independent movement towards energy reform rather than encumbering the move with unweidly, unproductive federal bureaucracy?

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/30/2010 7:45pm

    How can investors have any confidence in putting their money into renewable energy if there is no government guarantee that the renewable energy market will be competitive in the near term? Right now, because of the way our economy works and the way our energy production and distribution works, fossil fuels are cheaper to use than renewable fuels. So without intervention from the government that creates an economic incentive to decrease fossil fuel dependence (cap and trade, floor tax on gasoline, flat-out emissions caps), companies are not going to change their habits until they have to, and this is not an acceptable scenario if we want emissions to peak in 2015 and then decline afterwards in order to prevent a global surface temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius this century.

  • Comm_reply
    cerebralscrub44 01/30/2010 7:49pm

    Of course there are better ways than cap and trade- I’d advocate a floor tax for gasoline – that way, energy companies know that gasoline prices will not drop below a certain level as they did after the Arab Oil Embargo, and are confident in making informed decisions to invest in renewable sources of energy. But the committees in congress have determined that cap and trade is the most politically viable option, considering the massive opposition to any environmental reforms by the republican party. What we need are clean energy job creation in the next decade, increased incentives for companies to invest in renewable energy technology, and a marked decrease in U.S. C02 emissions. This bill will aid in the process of achieving these goals, and that’s why I support it.

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