What the global warming issue is really all about

[RanchHQ]

The end of the fixer-upper?

posted at 9:30 am on September 23, 2009 by Ed Morrissey


Much of the news about the cap-and-trade bill this month concerns the internal analysis done by the Obama administration but buried until a FOIA request forced its release showing that the cost per household for the bill would go higher that $1760 per year. But what happens when you want to sell your household? Ryan Young of CEI highlights a few more costly aspects of Waxman-Markey, which could end the fixer-upper market and make resales both more expensive and more difficult:

That bill contains 397 new regulations. One of them would affect almost everyone who buys or sells a home. If Waxman-Markey becomes law, homes for sale that qualify as “federally related transactions” — which is almost all of them — would be required to undergo an environmental inspection. …
Inspections are not free. Nor is fixing the inevitable violations. Compliance with new energy-efficiency standards would make homes, especially older ones, more expensive. Selling one’s home would become even harder than it already is in this down market if Waxman-Markey-style cap and trade becomes law. …
Suppose you have a window that isn’t quite airtight or your appliances are a little too old. Maybe they’re not Energy Star certified. You’d have to replace them before you would be allowed to sell your home.
The result could be the end of fixer-upper homes; surely, this is not what Congress has in mind. Some families prefer to buy a home in less-than-stellar condition on the cheap and make repairs and upgrades themselves.
For people who don’t have a lot of money, or who enjoy working with their hands, or who want to customize their home, this can be a very fulfilling path to homeownership. Waxman-Markey would take that away.

Most sales fall under “federal” transactions because of the involvement of the FHA, Fannie Mae, and/or Freddie Mac. That gives the federal government jurisdiction to create these prerequisites. The Obama administration and its liberal allies explicitly hail this as a means to whip us teenagers into green shape, but the result is more intrusion and the removal of economic choices from American lives.

Before now, the relative modernity of appliances mattered to just two people in a housing sale: the current owner and the bidder. Those who wanted more modern appliances either bought more expensive and newer housing, or bought fixer-uppers and used the cost savings to replace them. Now that latter option will become obsolete. Not too many people will pay to maintain their energy efficiency while not fixing other things around the house that more directly impact livability, such as flooring, painting, plumbing, and the like.

What about foreclosures? If people can’t sell when they get in financial trouble — because financial trouble usually means one cannot replace older appliances and windows — then we can expect to see foreclosures rise as people walk away. Will banks be able to sell foreclosures without a similar inspection? If not, then we can also expect to see lenders get a lot more particular about their borrowers. It’s bad enough to get stuck with a foreclosure, which are usually not in sellable shape even without worrying about the Green Police. And if banks get a pass, why should they get more privilege than a responsible homeowner does?

If one had to write a prescription for a housing-sector depression, imposing the Green Police on resales would be one of the most effective. It’s a ludicrous encroachment of the federal government into private transactions, and it would seriously wound an industry already reeling from the government interventions at Fannie and Freddie over the last ten years.

SOURCE: Hot Air Blog Archive The end of the fixer-upper?

[RanchHQ]

When I was a little boy I was not able to wait for the next issue of National Geographic:

About that Arctic ice disappearance …

posted at 12:15 pm on September 23, 2009 by Ed Morrissey


National Geographic in summer 2008:

Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer, report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field.
“We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker. …
But this summer’s forecast—and unusual early melting events all around the Arctic—serve as a dire warning of how quickly the polar regions are being affected by climate change.

National Geographic this week:

This year’s cooler-than-expected summer means the Arctic probably won’t experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040, scientists say.
Some models had previously predicted that the Arctic could be ice free in summer by as soon as 2013, due to rising temperatures from global warming.

Scientifically, what does this tell us about the climate-change models used to make this hysterical claim?

1. They’re completely wrong and should be jettisoned — or,
2. They speak to a larger truth and should be used and heretics skeptics shunned

Which option would a real scientist choose, and which one would a political hack with interests in glomming onto big government grants choose?
Oh, let’s not always see the same hands …

LINK: Hot Air Blog Archive About that Arctic ice disappearance …

[Birdieman]

The morons in Washington just don't get it.

Senate Democrats to offer climate bill - Yahoo! News

[RanchHQ]

What we really need is a new, huge Tax on Heating Oil and Coal.

Now!

Michigan: Record low temps -- breaks 1935 cold...

Record low tied at Daytona Beach...

Cold snap fills up homeless shelters in Idaho...

[RanchHQ]

Sir Christopher Monckton: Copenhagen treaty eviscerates U.S. sovereignity

By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
10/20/09 8:14 AM EDT

Sir Christopher Monckton is a global warming skeptic. Former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore has for years refused to accept Monckton's repeated challenge to a public debate on global warming.

He's also a very close reader of the proposed UN Climate Change Treaty President Obama is expected to sign along with other world leaders in Copenhagen in a few weeks. Monckton says that 200-page treaty cedes U.S. sovereignity to the UN, mandates a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. and Europe to pay our "Climate Debt" to the Third World, and creates a new enforcement mechanism to make it all happen.

Is Monckton right? I don't know because I haven't yet read the treaty (But I soon will be). Here's his warning about the Copenhagen Treaty, and here's the draft text of the treaty. Judge for yourself.

YouTube - Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty?

YouTube - Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty?

COMMENTS ON THE ARTICLE:

John

Oct 20, 2009
pg 139 of teh draft agreement has a program that pays the oil exporting countries money!!! Think about it, they stop pumping the oil that made them filthy rich, and they keep getting money to use to attack us with, even though they are no longer selling us anything. Bizarre.

Marylander

Oct 21, 2009
Where is the legitimate coverage of this issue? Telling us there's a debate without the counter-argument? B.S.
Why is there only one voice? Why is no one else coming forward? Surely more than one person has read the 181 page pdf?

Chase

Oct 21, 2009
It is telling that Al Gore has consistantly refused to publically debate his man-made global-warming theories with Monckton - and many other critics among the vast collection of so-called "deniers." Why?

[RanchHQ]

Apparently President Obama can't make this Heep Big Climate Change (Formally Known as Global Warming) Conference.

He will to be picking up his Nobel Check that weekend:



From The Times

October 24, 2009


President Obama won’t talk climate change in Copenhagen

From The Times

October 24, 2009


Barack Obama will be in Oslo for his Nobel ceremony, but not Copenhagen

President Obama will almost certainly not travel to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December and may instead use his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to set out US environmental goals, The Times has learnt.

With healthcare reform clogging his domestic agenda and no prospect of a comprehensive climate treaty in Copenhagen, Mr Obama may disappoint campaigners and foreign leaders, including Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, who have urged him to attend to boost the hopes of a breakthrough.
The White House would not comment on Mr Obama’s travel plans yesterday, but administration officials have said privately that “Oslo is plenty close” — a reference to the Nobel ceremony that falls on December 10, two days into the Copenhagen meeting.

The White House confirmed that the President would be in Oslo to accept the prize, but a source close to the Administration said it was “hard to see the benefit” of his going to Copenhagen if there was no comprehensive deal for him to close or sign. Another expert, who did not want to be named, said he would be “really, really shocked” if Mr Obama went to Copenhagen, adding that European hopes about the power of his Administration to transform the climate change debate in a matter of months bore little relation to reality. The comprehensive climate change treaty that for years has been the goal of the Copenhagen conference was now an “unrealistic” prospect, Yvo de Boer, the UN official guiding the process, said last week.

MORE AT: President Obama won’t talk climate change in Copenhagen - Times Online

[RanchHQ]

Oops!



"We're disappointed to see the Obama administration taking decisions that will threaten the Arctic. It might as well have been the Bush administration."

US gives Shell green light for offshore oil drilling in the Arctic

Conservationists say the decision by the Obama administration to allow drilling in the Beaufort Sea repeats Bush era mistakes

Ed Pilkington in Anchorage, Alaska

Conservationists fear the decision to allow Shell to drill for offshore oil in the Arctic will threaten polar bears and endangered animals. Photograph: Hans Strand/ Hans Strand/Corbis

Conservation groups based in Alaska have accused the Obama administration of repeating the mistakes of George Bush after it gave the conditional go-ahead for Shell to begin drilling offshore for oil and natural gas in the environmentally sensitive Beaufort Sea.
The Minerals Management Service, part of the federal Interior Department, yesterday gave Shell the green light to begin exploratory wells off the north coast of Alaska in an Arctic area that is home to large numbers of endangered bowhead whales and polar bears, as well as walruses, ice seals and other species. The permission would run from July to October next year, though Shell has promised to suspend operations from its drill ship from late August when local Inuit people embark on subsistence hunting.
Environmentalists condemned the decision to allow drilling, saying it would generate industrial levels of noise in the water and pollute both the air and surrounding water. Rebecca Noblin, an Alaskan specialist with the conservation group the Centre for Biological Diversity, said:

Whit Sheard, the Alaskan expert with the environmental group Pacific Environment, accused the US Interior Department of "again trying to implement an overly aggressive Bush-era drilling plan in one of the riskiest areas on the planet to drill".

The question of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic was one of the controversial environmental issues that confronted the Bush administration. Its permission for exploration in the Beaufort Sea, widely condemned by environmentalists, was struck down last year by a federal court on grounds that it had failed sufficiently to consider the impacts on bowhead whales and the subsistence activities of Inuit populations.
The ruling was later set aside and Shell withdrew its drilling plans.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, there are between 30,000 and 50,0000 bowhead whales in the world, with up to 9,000 of them feeding in the Beaufort Sea. The whales migrate twice a year through the area and are crucial to the subsistence economy of the Inupiat people.

Whale experts warn that the bowhead stocks are sensitive to noise and could be driven further off shore by the disruption of drilling. That in turn would have an impact on their chances of survival, which have already been harmed by early side-effects of global warming.

There are also fears that any drilling could lead to oil spills which would be impossible to clean up amid the Arctic's broken sea ice.

Shell must now satisfy the authorities that it has met air and water quality standards and safeguards for whale protection before it can begin drilling. The oil company's head in Alaska, Pete Slaiby, said objections had been taken into account.

"We sincerely believe this exploration plan addresses concerns we have heard in the North Slope communities which have resulted in the programmes being adjusted accordingly," he said.

[Maximus]

This global warming jive (oh I forgot - it’s called "climate change" now because the earth isn’t warming like Al Gore and company thought) will eventually touch every geographic and demographic part of the world. Check out this article on the disproportionate carbon footprints left by dogs.

Owners should consider doing without, downsizing or even eating their pets to help save the planet, according to a new book. It claims that the carbon footprint left by domesticated animals is out of proportion to the size of their paws.

A medium-sized dog has the same impact as a Toyota Land Cruiser driven 6,000 miles a year, while a cat is equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf. But rabbits and chickens are eco-friendly because they provide meat for their owners while a canary or a goldfish has little effect on the environment.

At the same time a pair of hamsters do the same damage as running a plasma television, suggests the book Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living.

New Zealand-based authors Robert and Brenda Vale base their findings on the amount of land needed to grow food for pets ranging from budgerigars to cats and dogs. They say an average Collie eats 164kg of meat and 95kg of cereals a year, giving it a high impact on the planet. But a pair of rabbits can produce 36 young annually, which would provide 72kg of meat and help decrease the owner's carbon footprint.

Mr Vale, an architect who specialises in sustainable living, said: "There are no recipes in the book. We're not actually saying it is time to eat the dog. "We're just saying that we need to think about and know the (ecological) impact of some of the things we do and that we take for granted." He explained that sustainability issues require us to make choices which are "as difficult as eating your dog".

Mr Vale added: "Once you see where cats and dogs fit in your overall balance of things, you might decide to have the cat but not also to have the two cars and the three bathrooms and be a meat-eater yourself."


Pet dogs as bad for planet as driving 4x4s, book claims - Telegraph

[RanchHQ]

Hands cupped to the side of my mouth.........

Oh, Lisa..........Lisa.........Lisa?

[RanchHQ]