Black Hole Thoughts » Cap and Trade

Are We Listening to our Founding Fathers?

Andrew — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:59:16 +0000

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” –George Washington

“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.” –Thomas Jefferson

Our founding fathers were trying to warn us, their words echoing into our present. But are we listening? We would be wise to heed what they said lest we be doomed to repeat the history of those that came before us.

The liberals in power today proselytize about minorities and the under-privileged. They seek to resolve all of the wrongs of yesterday and today by creating government programs that, like Superman swooping in to save us all, will make everyone have the same opportunities.

In fact, their record shows just the opposite. They are, in fact, more aligned with big banks and the upper echelons of the labor unions, and have no interest in really helping the underlings on whose shoulders they stride. Their programs of welfare and handouts serve only to create a far larger group of people who will be more incentivized to suckle the government’s teats, whose milk comes from our hard work. The more who are unemployed, the more who are benefiting from government programs, the more that will vote for liberals to institute new government programs. All of this ensures that liberals will receive more and more votes.

They wish to eradicate the idea of “individual responsibility”, and along with it, “individual liberty”. That is what is behind the health care bill, the cap and trade bill, the stimulus bill, and more to come. They are trying to change our country as quickly as possible before they lose their majority, because they know that once a bill is passed into law, it is far harder, if not impossible, to undo it. And the sooner this country becomes one large mass who is dependent on the government for everything from breakfast to dinner, diapers to coffins, the more entrenched their party will become, until we are a single party government. A politburo, to be exact.

Allow me to show you, remembering all the while that it is small business that has been the backbone for our free market, introducing new ideas, new inventions, innovating past obstacles, and employing our workers:

Health Insurance Bill. Let’s start by making sure we are using the right terms. This is not about health care reform. All Americans have access to health care, some of the best health care in the world! If the liberals were serious about this, they would ignore the money that was being jammed into their wallets by lobbyists working for the lawyers, and begin with something that really matters. Talk to your doctor the next time you go in for a visit and say these two words: “tort reform.” When you are done ducking, you will understand their pain. Nor have the liberals addressed competition of insurance companies across all 50 states. This bill will raise taxes on everyone, threaten fines and jail for those that do not pay into the system, and force small companies to lay off people, increasing unemployment. Remember, small businesses will be the most hurt by this bill. And the major piece, the real sticking point, is that it will put a bureaucrat between you and your own freedom of choice. And yes, Wilson was right. Obama lied. The liberals want the illegal immigrants to be covered by this new health insurance bill. Why? That’s another piece to the puzzle, because by having this in the bill, illegals will continue to vote for liberals.
Allowing Felons to vote. Speaking of voting, several states, including Washington, are considering legislation that will let convicted felons vote. Why? Because these folks generally vote for liberals.
Maxine Waters. In 2008, Maxine Waters let slip what she is all about: socializing the oil companies (go to 1 minute into the video). Taking over the energy companies is crucial to the liberals’ plans. If we have to be dependent on the government for our own personal health and access to energy, we become slaves to the government.
Pelosi. Pelosi has become rather brazen lately. She has openly attacked Americans, you and me, for exercising our right to question those that serve us in elected office, and our right to protest decisions we don’t like. She might need to be reminded of what when on during Bush’s 8 years in office. When she became Speaker, she committed to have an open House of Representatives, and to ending slimy politics and corruption. Under her watch, sleazy deals have been negotiated for the health insurance bill. And it has been anything but open, isolating Republicans, even changing the locks on doors. Have you seen President Obama go to closed door meetings with the liberals. Are any Republicans allowed in? Any cameras? And with Rangel as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, she looks silly. After all, he is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars. How ironic?! If he were a Republican, the press would be having a field day with this one.
President Obama. Where to begin? He has endangered the security of this country. When the Christmas Day Bomber incident broke, it took him three days before he addressed the nation. Three days?! And it took him 3 or 4 speeches before he found the right tone. Closing Guantanamo Bay sends a strong signal to our enemies that we are weak. Mirandizing them sends an even stronger message that we aren’t willing to fight. Calling these attacks the work of ‘lone nuts’ and saying that we are not in a War against Terrorism defeats us before we even begin to fight. But the absolute worst thing Obama is doing now, the thing that will weaken us the most, is giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others a criminal trial in New York City, costing that city hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, insulting the innocent people that were killed on 9/11 and the families that survive them, and giving KSM a platform to voice his ridiculous propaganda. Clearly, as Cheney says in this interview, we have a precedent for a military trial. But no, instead we afford this horrible man, who admits to being the architect of 9/11, the rights reserved for our citizens, the very ones he plotted to kill. And all the while a Navy SEAL, who was charged with allegedly punching a terrorist he captured, basically a national hero, is being sent to Iraq for a trial there. How does this make any sense? And no, there are zero witnesses to corroborate the terrorist’s claim he was punched, but his claim is however, straight out of Al-Qaeda’s playbook.
President Obama Redux. It doesn’t end with national security. President Obama wants to pass a Cap and Trade Bill that will once again hit small businesses the hardest, and send millions of manufacturing jobs over to countries like India, Mexico and China, who have already said they will not follow Obama’s strict regulations on pollution. So, we lose jobs to other countries creating more unemployment, Goldman Sachs and other ‘fat cats’ make money off of companies trading off their excess pollution, and the overall pollution of the earth is not changed one iota. Hooray for Obama.

There’s more. Lots more. Tonight, I am hopeful that Scott Brown will be elected to Massachusetts’s open Senatorial seat, breaking the super-majority that the liberals have in the Congress. That may be enough to stop this monstrous health insurance bill, and maybe even the cap and trade disaster too.

Obama, Pelosi, Reid, they want to create a country where a small political elite lives well off the backs of everyone else. There will be no innovators. No awe-inspiring agendas like going to the moon. The U.S. dollar will descend into oblivion. We will no longer be a super power. With equal opportunity for everyone, comes equal results from all of us. Equal results. Nothing extraordinary.

We, all of us, need to take back this country. I see artists, musicians and actors wearing “Che” t-shirts, and now even “Mao” t-shirts. They clearly don’t know their history because both men would have these very same artists, musicians and actors be the first people executed if they were in power today. What’s a few more to the slaughter when you have killed 10 times the number of men, women and children that Hitler did?

If we do not study history, if we do not learn from those before us, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Follow the Science on Climatology, wherever that may lead us

Andrew — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:54:59 +0000

Let’s begin this discussion by first establishing a basic lexicon:

Scientific Method. This is the basis for all science. To paraphrase, it is based on objective observation of reality in an attempt to increase understanding. It is an iterative process, constantly refining the conclusions, holding them up for peer review, and even discarding them if they unravel under scrutiny. Scientists follow the evidence, without bias, to form theories which can be used to predict outcomes.
Religion. This begins with a set of conclusions and beliefs passed down from a higher authority with the understanding that no evidence or proof will be provided. The expectation is that we humans should accept these beliefs on faith.
Nonsense. This begins with one or more conclusions, and then sets about to find evidence to support the claims. It rejects that which directly opposes the aforementioned conclusions, usually attempting to discredit those putting forth the arguments, sometimes through vicious personal attacks.

Global Warming is an issue that should be defined by the Scientific Method, and only the Scientific Method, because if we are going to make political, economic and legal decisions that will affect millions, if not hundreds of millions of lives, then we need to be absolutely certain that we can predict our planet’s long-term future. The Religion and Nonsense approaches were provided to help us recognize that sometimes folks slip between the realms of science and non-science. Sometimes this happens unconsciously, especially around a divisive issue that inspires great passion. But when money and power are also involved, people often slip on purpose, and we need to be able to recognize when this happens.

So, political debating, fear-mongering, CAPITAL LETTERS and other tactics of persuasion will not be found here in this article. Instead, we will simply follow where the facts lead us, which may be nowhere.

There are two major sources of heat for our planet, just like any other planet in any other solar system: our planet’s core, and the star(s) our planet orbits. Exactly how much heat our planet’s core puts forth at any given time is still not completely understood, though we are learning more every day. Likewise, we know less about the cycles of the sun, and the heat it generates at any given time. While it is clear that variations in the sun’s energy has a profound impact on our climate, predicting these changes have not yet been mastered.

This means that predicting the long-term trends of our climate cannot be made with any certainty with the knowledge we have today.

We could stop here, but let’s keep digging a little more.

When you begin to add in all of the other numerous factors that contribute to our climate, such as weather patterns, variations in sunlight absorption by our atmosphere, changes in the water temperatures of our oceans, the gravitational pull of the moon, the stresses on earth’s core, how fast our planet rotates on its axis, the angle of the axis, and the proximity of the earth to the sun, it becomes an even more complex problem.

And we haven’t even gotten to the greenhouse gases yet.

It is hard to imagine that our planet has been around for over four and a half billion years. That’s an incomprehensibly long time. When our planet began, it was essentially one large, molten blob. And yet, geologists have a theory called Snowball Earth, which describes a period of time when our planet was covered entirely in ice, from pole to pole. True to the Scientific Method, other research discounts this theory. In any case, our earth has enjoyed drastic changes.

One important question is: do these environmental extremes reoccur? Well, we know there were several ice ages. We also know that the earth was warmer than it is now; for example, during the Mid-Cretaceous period –about 120 to 90 million years ago –and during the Mid-Pliocene –about 3 million years ago. Are there patterns to these changes?

As noted above, we don’t know enough about our planet’s history to make accurate predictions about what is to come, with or without human intervention. We’re still unraveling the evidence offered up by this planet’s past. And remember, we know even less about the patterns of the sun.

And while we theorize as to what extent greenhouse gases contributed to the climate changes in the past, we don’t know exactly what drove the earth’s climate from one extreme to the other, what was the catalyst. So while we can easily see and smell and cough the pollution our industry and vehicles produce, we cannot predict with any certainty how this will affect the future of our planet’s climate.

Of course, no one wants to make the planet unlivable for ourselves. But the notion that we could destroy our planet has been raised with vigor over and over again. This, of course, is a debating tactic. Fear is, as we all know, a great motivator, and it can only be defeated with truth and fact. The truth is it’s a human conceit to say we will destroy the earth. It is far more likely that the earth will destroy us through natural disasters, disease or other phenomena. Regardless, all we could ever do is make this planet inhospitable, or at the very worst, uninhabitable for us in our current evolutionary and technological state.

And since no one would want that to happen, it would make common sense to reduce gases that are biologically harmful to us, just as it makes sense not to farm crops on top of radioactive waste. It also makes sense to investigate ways to make our industries and vehicles produce fewer chemicals that are harmful to humans, whether or not they actually impact our climate.

But far more importantly, it makes even more sense to explore other habitable planets, and to consider how to terraform them for future human colonization. It defies all common sense and logic to put all our eggs in one basket.

On the other hand, what does not make sense is to mandate these changes to our daily lives and our industries through laws, taxes, fees, tariffs and fines. The Cap and Trade bill being discussed today would place a tremendous financial burden on everyone’s life in this country, though it would do little to change the overall output of these chemicals world-wide. That’s because this bill would have little or no impact on the production of the so-called greenhouse gases produced by other countries. The only real outcome is that our taxes would see massive increases, and we would lose manufacturing jobs to countries like India, China and Mexico who do not share our goals of reducing the production of these chemicals.

The moral of this story and the key for all of us all is to keep our eyes and ears open to the real facts. Follow without bias where the science leads us. Be vigilant. And most important of all, discern when those with something to gain (e.g., Al Gore, who stands to make billions from the Cap and Trade bill) slip from science to non-science, or just plain nonsense, in order to muddy the waters on our climate issue.

Additional Sources: http://www.climatechangefacts.info/