Obama to unveil climate plan on Tuesday

[Valin]

Washington Examiner:

 

BRIAN HUGHES

JUNE 22, 2013

 

President Obama in a video released by the White House on Saturday announced that he would release his much-anticipated plan to combat climate change Tuesday, looking to press forward on a second-term promise to significantly reduce carbon emissions.

 

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Obama did not get into the specifics of his climate blueprint, but his framework will include tighter rules for power plants, a push for more energy-efficient buildings and appliances and additional green energy development on public lands, a White House official said.

 

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Obama has faced mounting pressure from environmentalists to focus on climate change after largely ignoring the issue in his first term. At the same time, Obama is weighing whether to block the Keystone Pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

 

 

 

 

[Valin]

Via Meadia: Will Obama Moderate His Green Initiatives?

6/23/13

 

The Economists Democracy in America blog has an excellent post titled Climate Change: A Cooling Consensus thats well worth your time this weekend. Its a very well-written essay encapsulating more or less what weve been saying all along here at Via Meadia. It also notes some important ways in which the debate has shifted. A taste:

 

 

As a rule, climate scientists were previously very confident that the planet would be warmer than it is by now, and no one knows for sure why it isnt. This isnt a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus.

 

Mr [Nate] Cohn [of the New Republic] eventually gets around to admitting that in the end, the so-called scientific consensus on global warming doesnt look like much like consensus when scientists are struggling to explain the intricacies of the earths climate system, or uttering the word uncertainty with striking regularity. But his attempt to minimise the political relevance of this is unconvincing. He writes, The recent wave of news and magazine articles about scientists struggling to explain the warming slowdown could prolong or deepen the publics skepticism. But the consensus never extended to the intricacies of the climate system, just the core belief that additional greenhouse gas emissions would warm the planet.

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Were hoping he uses this opportunity to move to some common sense ideas: accelerate the switch from coal to natural gas by developing sensible fracking regulations that allow us to move ahead as quickly as we prudently can; switch alternative energy funding from costly and ineffective subsidies to research that can develop technologies that actually work well enough to succeed in markets on their own; promote telework and generally promote the emergence of a low-footprint information society that increasingly shifts from the movement of stuff to the transmission of ideas; continue research into energy efficiency.

 

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[nickydog]

I'll probably miss it.

[Valin]

Lets see IRS scandal...NSA scandal...James Rosen...Immigration reform...Debt/Deficit...Benghazi....A Weak Economy....Healthcare Reform. And what does our Community Organizer In Chief thing he needs to address the nation on? Climate Change, you know something he can't really do anything about. Why does this not surprise me?

[nickydog]

You forgot total foreign policy failure.

[Valin]

You forgot total foreign policy failure.

Failure? What failure? Everybody loves America now that, that stupid cowboy is gone.

[Valin]

London Mayor Lampoons Climate Change

 

Boris Johnson often is mentioned as a possible future Conservative Prime Minister for Britain. Whether that ever happen, the ruffle-haired blond Mayor of London has a sly satirical wit that should endear him to the voters.

 

His column on the case suburban swimming pool builders in England have against the threats--make that the "promises"--of global warming makes delicious reading. So do the comments that follow it.

 

(Snip)