Krugman: GOP To Attack Climate Change Legislation Based On Fake Economics
By Susie Madrak Friday Sep 25, 2009 1:00pmPaul Krugman says that the main Republican strategy to fight climate change legislation will be to attack it as hurting the economy:
By 2050, when the emissions limit would be much tighter, the burden would rise to 1.2 percent of income. But the budget office also predicts that real G.D.P. will be about two-and-a-half times larger in 2050 than it is today, so that G.D.P. per person will rise by about 80 percent. The cost of climate protection would barely make a dent in that growth. And all of this, of course, ignores the benefits of limiting global warming.
So where do the apocalyptic warnings about the cost of climate-change policy come from?
Are the opponents of cap-and-trade relying on different studies that reach fundamentally different conclusions? No, not really. It’s true that last spring the Heritage Foundation put out a report claiming that Waxman-Markey would lead to huge job losses, but the study seems to have been so obviously absurd that I’ve hardly seen anyone cite it.
Instead, the campaign against saving the planet rests mainly on lies.
Thus, last week Glenn Beck — who seems to be challenging Rush Limbaugh for the role of de facto leader of the G.O.P. — informed his audience of a “buried” Obama administration study showing that Waxman-Markey would actually cost the average family $1,787 per year. Needless to say, no such study exists.
But we shouldn’t be too hard on Mr. Beck. Similar — and similarly false — claims about the cost of Waxman-Markey have been circulated by many supposed experts.
A year ago I would have been shocked by this behavior. But as we’ve already seen in the health care debate, the polarization of our political discourse has forced self-proclaimed “centrists” to choose sides — and many of them have apparently decided that partisan opposition to President Obama trumps any concerns about intellectual honesty.
So here’s the bottom line: The claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax. The truth about the economics of climate change is that it’s relatively easy being green.
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but it seems from what you hear of what republicans are fighting for that they simply hate everyone and everything. they should dress up in combat fatigues, grab their rifles and move into a cave in tora-bora, I am sure they would feel very much at home.
same could be said of Republicans, couldn't it?
I have heard the false numbers from the right and also that jobs would go overseas. I thought most of the jobs had already gone there.
This fight will be ugly and make no sense but that hasn't stopped the republicans so far. They will be pulling facts from their asses at an unheard of speed.
being removed will leave enough room for their heads...
Let's turn the tables on Republicans. I hereby start the following rumor:
"Republican plans to deal with climate change would weaken our national security and set the stage for an Islamic takeover of America. AND make our beef taste bad!"
There, I said it. Now if only we were all slavering right-wing authoritarians, we'd all start parroting it and emailing newspapers and Bleck and Dudge and Knobbs would all start repeating it and within weeks Mike Ross and David Brooks and Chuck Todd would all start asking IF it was true, because, you know, CW and all... Let's do what we can to force Republicans to spend months chasing rumors and lies and trying to stamp out the little fires.
Considering what the Righties did to healthcare and the total lack of a forceful and effective response from the WH (until it was too late) I expect any climate change legislation to go down in flames.
Simplest thing I've heard recently - cheap, easy, makes sense - paint the roof of your house white. The more roofs painted white reflect light and heat back in the same way that snow in the Arctic does.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/ja...
Figure out a way to make roads white, along with roofs, and you'd increase the amount of sunlight bounced off our planet by 0.03%, which would cool the Earth enough to cancel out the warming caused by 44bn tonnes of CO2 pollution, wiping out the expected rise in global emissions over the next decade.
White paint. Cheap to produce. Painters, lots and lots of them, don't need any masters and PhDs in IT or astrophysics for that, just able-bodied people currently out of work looking for an honest job.
Seems sensible, cheap, and effective to me.
Which is probably why it'll never happen....
I heard someone talking about that either on the Daily show or Colbert's show. It made perfect sense to me and also made me proud that we have almost white shingles on our own roof.
.
your neighborhood polar bear.
Well, ask it when it finds a place to stop swimming.
Our houses aren't starting out frozen and I don't believe they are going to melt.
don't need paint.
Won't do anything about the acidification of the oceans, though.
California. Or the almost total pollution of the Gulf of Mexico by the filth from factory farms in the midwest and elsewhere. Or the perversion of nature by Monsanto with its Frankenfood concepts. Or the importation of toxic food, vitamins, medicines, toys, pet food, sheetrock, etc. from China. I could go on, but it gets too depressing.
that may be my biggest gripe with the whole global warming booga booga. everyone is so fixated on global warming and forgetting about all the other terrible stuff out there that really needs fixing. the arctic is fine, the cuddly polar bears will be fine. you better start worrying about all the pollution closer to home, and the food/agribusiness monsanto, et. all, mass bee colony death, etc.
so little time. When I go to a market, I feel like crying or kicking people who just obliviously buy corporate food. My yard is on the wild side, and I have not used chemicals since the early 70's. I have a very lively bee population, I am pleased to say, and woodchucks, opossum, squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits. I have seven crows this year who live in a tree and argue with each other every morning and late afternoon. I have sparrows nesting on my house, and bats living in my oak tree. Neighborhood cats frequent my garden as I let catnip run wild in it. All of these creatures amuse my cats, who are not allowed out of the house. This is because I live in a town, not in the country. I also cultivate large prairie plants to provide cover for the animals. I love my jungle. Everyone should grow one, because it is difficult to make people care about the pollution, but the animals appreciate your care and concern.
going to be fine.
The arctic and the polar bears are not fine.
But you are absolutely right about all of the other things that need attention.
Genetically modified food may be the end of all, if something else doesn't do it first.
The economy is a subset of the ecology.
Not the other way around.
... the environmental impact of making all that pain, may actually be worse than the one it is intended to alleviate.
It's hardly a complete answer, but if it hasn't already been debunked (which I'm doubting it has), why hasn't this been tried outside of some flat roofs in Cali?
in other cold climates, dark roofing is used to absorb heat to keep the cost of artificial heat as low as possible.
Nonetheless, even though I hardly claim to be the most informed guy on the planet, I do try to keep up. So why am I just hearing about this now?
Also, remember mood rings? Color can change.
Please, don't anyone start a Glenn Beck drinking game, if you do we will all be drunk as skunks. If we drink when he mentions ACORN or czars, we'll never make it to the second half of his show.
Afterall everything about the gop is fake. Do I need to list all the fake things?
Like being for lower taxes, that is a huge fake, fake caring, fake intelligence, fake faith, fake patriotism, it goes on and on everything republican is a fake.
republicanism is a mental illness!
But their desire for money and power is real. Especially if they get to keep the money and screw up the country with the power.
corporations have taken over completely, they will have no need for politicians. Hope they're saving their bribes in safe places. The long view, about anything, seems to be beyond them. Not so much with the corporate owners, though.
By adopting this argument, and by having to invent such transparent and shabby lies to advance their argument, it indicates that they have given up on their efforts to create doubts and confusion that global warming is real or that, if being real, is the result of human activities. Using the identical tactics that the tobacco industry deployed, where it spent decades delaying actions against itself by creating doubts about the science, when no doubts actually existed (including amongst their own company science staffs), the anti-Earthers were able to delay actions to corrct global warming. Their efforts worked for a couple of decades, until the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence crushed all of their arguments. The only people at this point who doubt the science at this point are those who are paid to doubt it, and they are a laughing stock.
In following that tobacco industry tactic, however, the anti-Earth/anti-life-on-Earth crowd played their trump card first, leaving themselves only shallower and weaker arguments for their reserve and fall-back positions. Now that their trump card maneuver has failed, they are reduced to trying to play one of those weaker cards. And, their ecomonic arguments are incredibly lame (not to mention that they betray incredible amorality of intent). This looks to me like the beginning of the collapse of their little house of cards.
Of course, if they win, we ALL lose which is a point that is completely missed by the deniers.
I believe that last week a CBO estimate came out concerning the cost to the average family of C&T. And that it was much lower than anything I'd heard before. Certainly no where near what the Republicans have been spinning with their deliberate distortion of the MIT study.
But the Dems better havve learned their lesson from health care. They weren't united, they didn't have a clear, persuadable message, and what began as a strong public approval in general soon started slipping away due to the Republicans attack squads.
If Dems allow themselves to get blindsided again with C&T, then they deserve to get their butts kicked.
And even without being blindsided, they'll have to have a great game plan to neutralize the lies from the Right.
As I quoted earlier today, The New World Order of the Bush Era is being rolled out under the context of 'maintain global economic order'. Reuters has a pretty good piece on how the "New world economic order takes shape at the G20." Or . . .
1. Another layer of government over America run by the corporate proxies.
2. A global super government which will eventually steal not only American autonomy, but will begin to take on a life of its own through the global public purse.
PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - The Group of 20 is set to become the premier coordinating body on global economic issues, reflecting a new world economic order in which emerging market countries like China are much more relevant, according to a draft communique.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUST...
The once Constitutional governance of America being usurped/replaced by corporate mastery of public policy which allows the very greediest of humans to hide their wealth and abuses behind the corporate veil on the pretext that it's really what's best for all of us; and they know what's best for us since they are so much better than us commoners.
yourself.
Hopefully the deniers will be the first eaten after the collapse of modern civilization.
it is already underway. When the rest goes down is anyone's guess.
Who cares what conservatives argue? They lie? Ya think? They are politically powerless (despite their stranglehold on the MSM).
On nearly every issue, the tactic seems to be to create a false reason for corporate Dems to
compromisecapitulate.http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/20...
starts slapping you with personal climate fee's you can't afford. Despite all your green efforts.
Could you give us a link to facts for that?
" "
If you can't find it on the Internet of your own initiative I can't be of any help to you.
... but we're just too lazy or dumb to find it?
Kinda like that irrefutable proof of bigfoot....
The net is kind of like the bible in that you can find some part of it to backup almost any theory. Of course facts might get in the way, but who needs facts when you can just make claims out of thin air.
... you can even just make up the air (as long as you've already made the firmament to hold it in).
Well, perhaps you could share with the rest of us where you got your information. I'm not sure I am going to spend time chasing around the net for information I'm not sure exist.
Give over. We've got enough fear-mongering conspiracy theories to deal with as it is.
or is that hear hear? anyway. i agree.
That is truly cool as hell, but because Al Gore's name is associated with it, it will be kicked to the curb by all the global warming deniers.
Tonight Beck is having a bunch of mothers who were mostly all tea baggers and I walked by the tv just as one mom mentioned cap and trade. She said it would put us in the poor house and lose many jobs. I can't remember her exact words to quote her but that was the sum of her thoughts.
Being a teabagger, was she already in the poor house?
... she paints the roof of her poorhouse white.
... at least she has a roof.
We don't know for sure that she has a roof but we do know for sure that she drinks Kool-Aid from the tea party pitcher.
Another mother said she home schools her kids but the government still demands she teach a pro homosexual agenda and get her kids the shots they would be required to get if they were in public school. I would like to see the part in the rules that says she must teach her kids a pro homosexual agenda.
children vaccinated. And I would also like to see what a homosexual agenda actually is.
Shouldn't it be paint the roof on her trailer white?
I have no idea about the shots but I sure do have my doubts about the "agenda" and just what she believes it to be.
headache. Someday when I feel silly, I'll think about it.
I have one, it has a nice big rainbow sticker on it.
The GOP markets fear.
They might as well say BOO!
There's a lot of subtlety in this article. Just the act of making Glenn Beck the spokesman for the entire GOP is an insult of infinite magnitude.
:)
um,...let me see... how about an insult to anyone using any part of their brain...?
All any right wing kook with a blog needs do is lie. In no time it will be spread throughout mass media. Next, the same mass media will expose the lie, upon which the right wing will repeat the lie. It will be blasted 24/7 by the same media until time to refute it comes around again, and the wheel goes round and round and the painted pony goes up and down.
My (dumb-ass) Senator, Ladies and Gentlemen,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jX_v89_2vU
Gore proposed a carbon tax, Politico (gag) here.
It makes for some strange bed fellows, Bloomberg here
The Cap and Trade proposal makes a new market for carbon credits that Government Sachs will love, so says Matt Taibbi in the Great American Bubble Machine here
Another topic in play is carbon capture, a terrible idea. Anyone reciting CLEAN COAL probably has this in mind. The Economist here
Scientific American blog here
One thing is clear to me, from a purely environmental standpoint these proposals do not go far enough.
China has now passed the US as the worst emitter of CO2. They are also looking at sales 12.6 million cars in their internal market this year.
Show me where the great push is on to educate everyone on how we all can and need to conserve.
Environment News here
United Nations Environment Program report here
I found the abstract to this peer reviewed study done by Rudolf W. Gunnerman of the Energy and Environment Laboratory, University of Southern California and the Institute of Oceanology of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Let me read for you the abstract of this study, "The writers investigated the effect of CO2 emission on the temperature of atmosphere. Computations based on the adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect show that increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere results in cooling rather than warming of the Earth's atmosphere."
link to the study here http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~cont...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/732...
the main quote i would like to make note of. "This would mean that temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world."
Indeed, but right after your quote is this:
You will need to do much better.
There has been no warming since 1998. none of the alarmists predictions concerning the environment have proved correct. their models are wrong. they like to talk about variabilities and such, but in the end, their predictions often do not match the observed data. and then they have to go back and figure out why the climate is not behaving as it should.
for example, all the scare about arctic ice and predictions of open water at the north pole and we have this article http://www.dailytech.com/Arctic+Sees+Massive+...
also note when they say, "Most concern has focused on the Arctic regions, rather than Antarctica. Recent research has indicated Antarctica is on a long-term cooling trend, for reasons which remain unclear."
reasons which remain unclear? hmmm
ever considers that maybe just maybe, there is a corporate greed factor in this "global warming" fiasco. Is the climate changing? Yes. Has it always been changing? Yes. Can they make money hand over fist, trying to convince people to go "green"? Yep. So, who to believe? People that deny the climate is changing, or people that will make HUGE profits off it?
Who to believe? do your research, practice arguing the position from opposing view points as classic debate teams would. use logic, reason and all that good stuff.
Personally, i wouldnt be surprised if it all was just a lot of scurrilous windbaggery getting us to spend all our time and precious resources looking at a non-issue all the while our bee colonies are dying, crazy dead zone in gulf of mexico is getting bigger, trash island in the pacific is getting bigger, we are eating way more GM foods, pesticides, pharmaceuticals in the water supply, etc, etc.
Usually when groups of people are pushing something, there are many reasons, the highest in priority is usually some kind of greed. For decades we have been indoctrinated into the mindset that we have to get vaccines for damn near everything, we go to the doctor with our children, and are given prescriptions to pump them full of pharma cure-alls, and what has it done? Created super viruses. Human interference in nature, has created a clusterf*ck of major proportions. So posters will have to excuse others that don't jump on the fear factor of the week/month. Like I said, just the sheer profit that is possible from greening mankind, is massive. So being skeptical is probably with good reason.
You seem to be arguing against your own point.
What is your point?
There is Corporate greed factored into anything where the factoring is good.
But as a whole, climate change and the parallel converging catastrophes of peak oil, peak energy and peak ecology are going to be very bad for Corporate greed.
No combination of renewable energy as it is understood now is going to get us anywhere near the energy production we are at currently. Today wind and solar are a tiny fraction. The EIA chart is here. This includes biomass which is burned and produces CO2.
Krugman is altogether too sanguine. To confront what is coming at us we need to seriously downsize our economies and continue to ramp them down.
That is economic catastrophe. The primary reason the G20 meeting took the ecology off their agenda.
No politician can say: vote for me, we must shrink the economy.
But it the is lesser of the catastrophes that will befall us.
You pick a paragraph which is refuted in the next paragraph.
It is the very article you brought forward.
I point this out to you, still, you continue to clutch the refuted paragraph.
You brought the article forward. It disputes what you are saying.
heres another http://www.mcclatchydc.com/257/story/74019.ht... in it they state categorically that we havent been getting any warmer since 1998. they spend the rest of the article talking about well, most scientists think that warming will resume.
oh really? i should trust them because they've been right so far?
You are most careless in your arguments.
are scratching their heads wondering where all the warming is. oh sure, they say they think warming is just around the corner. they don't have a clue.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-w...
the world will get colder before it gets hotter.
really?...its gonna get colder.....and then hotter. yeah
You come up with one crackpot after another.
And you continue to cite articles in which what you say is refuted.
good to know
When you cite something as peer reviewed you might do well to link the reviews.
The reviews that I found trash your guys. Completely.
Werner Aeschbach-Hertig, professor of environmental physics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, debunks your adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect here
Eli Rabett debunks it here
You really must do much better than this.
thanks for pointing that out. but that is hardly the only sticking point regarding global warming.
we havent warmed at all....at all....since 1998. and there are scientists saying it will get colder? im referring to the New Scientist article. they try really hard to say they aren't skeptics and yet they have this data that doesn't care if you are a skeptic or not.
You put it up as fact and yet it is debunked.
As the view from space has shown for some time, and now ground level movies reveal, the polar ice caps and the Greenland ice caps are rapidly melting.
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect...
Watch the video. Feel free to begin freaking out.
in 2012 anyway. There are things you have absolutely no control over. Did man cause the ice age? Help solve it? Can the stoppage of vehicle and corporate emission influence hurricanes? Heck, mankind can't even accurately predict the weather, how could they ever predict climate change?
planting of too many trees is slowing down wind, so windmills are a bad investment. Right. Nothing will be done, except lip service, until corporations can figure out how to make money from any changes. Watch the video, "Death on a Corporate Farm." And know that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is caused by this kind of behavior. Do not EVER eat seafood from there. The gulf is also poisoned by chemicals and run off from the oil rigs and the chemical factories on the gulf coast of Texas. Fucking bastards. I really hate corporations.
...are revealing themselves to be crooks and liars.
Hey!
What a crew, what a crew, what a crew!
What on earth, what on earth, will they do
With cap and trade?
It's Waxman-Markey charade
Whose virtues cf. liabilities are few.
What a crew, what a crew, what a crew!
What on earth, what on earth, will they do
With cap and trade?
It's Waxman-Markey charade
Whose virtues cf. liabilities are few.
When you review the scientific papers out there you find that nothing has done more to "GREEN" the planet over the past few decades than elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 together with moderate sun-driven warming of the planet. If you should doubt this assertion, simply Google "Biological Effects of Carbon Dioxide Enrichment" and "Solar Inertial Motion (SIM) model of global warming". Then review the basic documents and a sampling of the scientific bibliographic references. One has to ask the question, "Why have environmental groups and our government turned this obvious gift of nature on its head and buried us in propaganda designed to convince us of just the opposite reality?" As a consequence, I have stopped all donations to environmental organizations and to their favored political party. I highly encourage you to do the same. All my financial donations stay within 25 miles of my home, where I can keep an eye on their use.
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