John McCain’s recent speech
Junkscience.com - May 15, 2008
I was about to write a review of John McCain’s recent speech. I was reading other comments on it first to make sure that I had my thoughts put together and I found Steven Milloy’s review. He has done an excellent job of discussing the speech.
I am going to pull the highlights from Steven’s article. Click through at the end to read the whole commentary.
Next to solar power, however, wind power is the most heavily subsidized form of energy. Taxpayers cough up an astounding $23.37 per megawatt hour of electricity produced, according to the Wall Street Journal. In contrast, coal and natural gas are only subsidized to a tune of $0.44 and $0.25, respectively.
“Our economy depends upon clean and affordable alternatives to fossil fuels,” McCain stated. What he’s talking about is not quite clear since our current economy is about 75 percent dependent on fossil fuels and will remain that way for at least the next 25 years, as solar and wind technologies remain only marginal sources of energy.
“No longer do we need to rely on guesswork and computer modeling, because satellite images reveal a dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets. And I’ve seen some of this evidence up close…” Global warming alarmism, however, is entirely based on the “guesswork and computer modeling” that McCain says isn’t necessary. The reason that the United Nations relies on “guesswork and computer modeling” is because the glaciers that are receding have been doing so since at least the 19th century, before significant human output of greenhouse gases.
McCain touted a so-called cap-and-trade system for controlling greenhouse gas emissions, citing the supposed success of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments’ cap-and-trade system for the sulfur dioxide emissions linked to alleged phenomenon of acid rain. But even if acid rain was a genuine environmental problem — and studies leading up to the 1990 law cast significant doubt — controlling sulfur dioxide emissions is many orders of magnitude easier than controlling greenhouse gas emissions. The volume of sulfur dioxide emissions to be eliminated is much smaller, the sources (coal-fired power plants) are relatively few and the smokestack technology is comparatively inexpensive.
McCain said that “A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy.” This is unlikely since cap-and-trade’s economic harms have been exposed and condemned by the likes of the Congressional Budget Office, the Environmental Protection Agency, and renown economists such as Alan Greenspan and Arthur Laffer. Even the Clinton Administration warned of the economic harms that would be caused by cap-and-trade.
This is only a portion of Steven’s article. Please click through here to read the entire opinion.
Did you know that you can have these articles emailed to you? Click on the Subscribe to email link in the upper right corner, fill out the details, and you are set. No one will see your email address and you won’t get more spam by doing this.
Popularity: 99% [?]
Filed under: Politics
Similar articles that you may enjoy:
- McCain wants $30B for clean-coal research, 45 new nuclear reactors
- Administration Releases EPA Report, Then Repudiates It
- Remarks of Senator Barack Obama, 4/3/06
- Government must deal with greenhouse gases: US Supreme Court
- Carbon-Market Concept Moves to Mainstream
- Car Makers Mobilize Over CO2 Curbs
- Senators to Watch on Global Warming
- Climate bill shaves $533 billion off economy
- Meet Captain Climate - John McCain
- Senator says ‘global warming liberals’ threaten economy
- Kyoto Destroying European Economy
- Politicians sign new climate pact
- Bush Wants to Beef Up Earth Monitoring
- Duke in solar-development talks with BMW
- Administration pushes market-based plan for global warming
Leave a Reply