Breaking: House Narrowly Passes Climate Control Bill. Castle Votes Yes.

Filed in National by on June 26, 2009

By a 219-212 vote, the United States House of Representatives has narrowly passed landmark climate control/energy reform legislation. Rep. Mike Castle was one of only 8 Republicans to vote yes.

The legislation would require the U.S. to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by about 80 percent by mid-century. That was slightly more aggressive than Obama originally wanted, 14 percent by 2020 and the same 80 percent by mid-century.

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are rising at about 1 percent a year and are predicted to continue increasing without mandatory limits.

Under the bill, the government would limit heat-trapping pollution from factories, refineries and power plants and issue allowances for polluters. Most of the allowances would be given away, but about 15 percent would be auctioned by bid and the proceeds used to defray higher energy costs for lower-income individuals and families.

Allow El Somnambulo to praise Rep Castle for a courageous vote, one that was essential for the passage of this bill. He stood up to his own party in helping to pass this very important bill. That took guts, and the Beast Who Slumbers thanks him for it. Time to turn attention to Tom Carper…

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  1. I don’t to play favorites. You both get a comment.

  2. X-Stryke, in the words of ‘bulo’s first girlfriend, “Wow, that was quick.”

    ‘Bulo didn’t even see anything in the queue when he posted. Brilliant minds and all that…

  3. xstryker says:

    The statement he made in this morning’s NJ is classic Castle hedging. Instead of Castle’s famous “however” or “but”, he uses, “Having said that, I am concerned…”

    Kudos to Pelosi, the White House, and the environmental lobbies that dragged him on board.

  4. xstryker says:

    I wrote it out of the dashboard with the “Quick Post” feature.

  5. John Manifold says:

    Like Bill Roth in his 1994 vote for the Clinton-Biden Crime Bill, Castle saw trouble at home if he stayed home on this vote.

  6. anon says:

    And the wingnuts have pronounced this bill the worst bill since… well, since the last bill the Democrats supported.

  7. dghattierdc says:

    Castle is loser who is more concerned with staying in poer than looking at good science.
    The state of Delaware ought to be ashamed of voting for such a dork.
    We are now a one party country and we will all pay the consequences of it very soon.

  8. G Rex says:

    So what exactly does this “climate control” bill do to curb Chinese pollution? Just curious, since I’ve been there and it’s like Pittsburgh in the 1800s. Nothing whatsoever? Oh, so all it does is outsource every manufacturing job left that hasn’t been killed by unions. Just checking.

  9. RSmitty says:

    He did this and says, run for the Senate as a Republican…

    all I can say is,
    …and the walls, come tumblin’ down…
    …and the walls, come tumblin’ tumblin’ doooowwwwwnnnn….

  10. cassandra_m says:

    The wingnuts are destined to be the Pig Pen party for awhile — wondering around with dust clouds over their heads. This is what happens when you don’t care about getting anything done.

    But this is good news. It could have been better if they had gone to a 350ppm target. And left off all of the goodies for everyone opposed to this thing. But it is a start, and is for sure we have to keep pushing for better cleanup standards.

  11. Clean up! CO2 is not a pollutant that needs to be cleaned up. This monstrosity is taking resources away from efforts to reduce our trash and pollutants.

  12. Phil says:

    I hope this blog is still around in 10-15 years when its proven that all of this climate change crap is revealed as such. Cap and trade is one of the worst ideas i’ve seen in a long time. Al Gore is pushing this so hard because he stands to make billions from it. When will people wake up to the fact that man made global warming is a sham. Gore’s famous “hockey stick” graph turned out to be so wrong that he quietly edited it out of all of his speeches and seminars.

    If you really want to look at information, you would see from ice core samples that CO2 rised after the earth warmed. It is a known fact that one of the largest producers of CO2 is the oceans. As the temperature increases, it releases the stored CO2 dissolved in the water.

    Also, let us not forget the giant yellow orb in the sky called the sun and the impact that it has on the planet. NASA has reported that there has been an increase in temperature on mars and jupiter during the 90’s as well. I must of missed the missions where we luanched CO2 into their atmospheres.

    This bill will do nothing for the enviroment. All it is going to do is make carbon hedge fund owners rich, including Al Gore. Don’t believe Gore and the other misled hippies when they say the debate is over, it has yet to begin. Here is a list of Holocaust deniers, oops, i mean global warming skeptical scientists:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

  13. cassandra_m says:

    You know those lists don’t mean much, right? They are opinions of people not studying the data, and certainly they are not conducting their own studies.

    The way to get into the conversation is to produce some peer-reviewed study that supports your case. There aren’t any, of course. But since is not done by competing views. It is done by following to where the data takes you. Data that other people can look at and punch around to see if it holds up. When the deniers start producing some real, peer-reviewed info they’ll have some credibility.

  14. Phil says:

    ok, here is a list of peer reviewed articles skeptical of global warming.

    http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2008/04/peer-reviewed-articles-skeptical-of-man.html

  15. DrunkInTexas says:

    OMG Cassy, he really stuck a BIG one in ur butt! OH, OH, OHHHHHHH

  16. Art Downs says:

    Castle wins because he is the lesser of the two evils.

    He may face a primary and the State may have a choice.

  17. That silly list of scientists is mostly economists. Republicans don’t like science, we get it.

    Uh…China? Since our government is not the government of China I’m not sure there’s much our Congress can do about them. So we’re supposed to wait and follow China’s lead then? Republicans are so weird.

  18. Art Downs says:

    Castle is an arrogant and elitist time-server.

    Perhaps he can do a party switch when he faces a primary challenge. He will be welcomed as a hero by the self-styled ‘progressives’.

    What does he do after he faces a primary in his new party?

  19. Republicans can keep Castle.

  20. Art Downs says:

    I was amazed to see Representative Bartlett of Maryland listed as a ‘moderate’. Who came up with this assessment?

    Bartlett was elected to the House when the incumbent ‘blue dog’ failed to campaign and lost her primary to a ‘progressive’. Bartlett trounced him in the General.

    While Roscoe Bartlett lists his occupation as ‘farmer’ he is neither a rustic nor a careerist. His career in science includes a long string of patents and a stint at teaching at Howard University.

    He is one of the few true Renaissance men in Congress.

  21. cassandra_m says:

    And apparently Phil doesn’t know that on the Internet, you need to make sure your links don’t make you look foolish.

    That so-called list of papers debunking global warming do nothing of the kind. I looked a a number of them this AM and the ones I looked at do work that refines the data and the multiple modelling efforts for this. In other words, they are working not at debunking much of anything — they are working at trying to nail down specific questions such as how fast the effects might occur, looking at specific geological questions that are ancillary to the global warming issue and detailed looks at the limitations of certain types of models and modeling approaches. The papers critical of global warming or the anthropogenic theory are in the form of commentaries, which do in science what they do in your newspaper.

    Basically, this is the usual tactic of the deniers — cherry pick some data and claim victory. All that does is provide evidence that the wielder of all hat cherry picking is an ignorant fool, without much capacity to actually judge the links he is throwing around so glibly.

  22. Phil says:

    Wow, talk about cherry picking.

    “…they are working not at debunking much of anything — they are working at trying to nail down specific questions such as how fast the effects might occur…”

    Some of the papers are addressing certain points, like CO2 levels, solar activity, and computer modeling errors.

    I didn’t know that when you pool information, and cite them in a paper, that is called a commentary? Boy am I foolish, I thought it was called a research paper. But I guess if it flies in the face of your misguided stance, it’s commentary.

    Speaking of your wonderful computer models, did you know that they fail to factor in water vapor and clouds? Yeah the big fluffy things in the sky that can affect temperatures here on the ground.

    The debate isn’t over, it hasn’t even begun. Its been getting progressivly cooler since the peak of 1998. 2008 wasn’t the hottest year ever like predicted. 2009 stands to be even cooler still. Some parts of the North America are said they won’t reach summer average temperatures.

    1998, the hottest year on record didn’t even come close to the warming period around the year 1000. It certainly didn’t even register with past highs thousands of years ago.

    Al Gore is the cherry picker of century for being able to take a 125 year trend and apply it as a global trend of a 4.5 billion year old planet.

    Even if you take the entire .6 degree increase since 1900 and atribute it all to mankind, CO2 would of caused .17 degrees.

    So you go ahead, you and your ilk rape the economy and the american people of your pseudoscience/brainwashing so people like Al Gore can get even richer. This energy bill if made law will do nothing but increase this recession. I hope you are sill around 20 years from now when historians are looking back and wondering what we were thinking for passing such asinine legislation.

    And I love that word denier. Just shows how brainwashed you are by Al Gore and his flukies at the IPCC. But then again, I guess its fitting to completely try and discredit anyone who tries to have a different opinion on a subject. So enjoy labeling a substance that we exhale, and is one of the most important building blocks of life on this planet, a pollutant.

    edit:

    Do some research instead of watching MTV news:

    http://icecap.us/index.php

  23. cassandra_m says:

    Well thanks for proving my point — you haven’t even read these papers much less have any understanding of the scope of the science you think you are questioning.

    You have to understand the science to debunk it. And at this point all you are doing is just trying to use a list of (some) interesting papers to prove your political point — which still goes to show the depth of what you simply don’t know.

  24. Phil says:

    Nice, a classic deflection without proving or showing anything. The same applies to you, you have to understand the flawed science to support it.

  25. cassandra_m says:

    As I certainly do — certainly enough to be able to read some of those papers to be able to tell you that the list is stupid. Then again, I have employment that requires that I be able to make sense of geology and science. But the list is meant to be stupid — it gives some a thing to link to so you can pretend to have an answer. When in fact, it just highlights how unprepared you are to be in this conversation.

  26. Phil says:

    The fact that you are an elementary school teacher (which your post points to) hardly proves your “science and geology” background. Just because your only two scources of information are the IPCC and An Inconvenient Lie doesn’t mean that you have all of the “facts”.

    The fact that you take the word of a man planning to make billions from legislation shows how short-sighted you are. Its ok, I know that you keep calling me for proof, and since every source that I can even show you flies in the face of your gospel, you are going to dismiss it.

    Again, back to the core point of these posts:

    The legislation will do nothing but hurt our economy.

  27. cassandra_m says:

    Definitely not an elementary school teacher. But you can be excused from not knowing since I gather you didn’t graduate from one.

    It won’t hurt the economy — any more than cap and trade for acid rain did.

    When all you’ve got it chicken little-ism, you really ought to quit.

  28. How many times do Republicans have to play chicken little before people stop listening to them? This is the same old warmed-over BS they used on the Clinton tax plan.

  29. Did you forget the recession we went into afterwards? The acid rain did hurt, but it is nothing compared to the wide scale scope of this one. It is geared to roll back to below 2005 levels.

    The technology already existed with the acid rain scrubbers. What we were doing was giving a financial benefit to those who made the investment and shift the true cost of the pollution to the polluters. It was not a disguised tax hike with U. S. cutting himself in to redistribute huge sums of wealth to the preferred. It was poorly designed Thursday, I can’t say what the final bill looked like because that wasn’t given to us until after the vote.

  30. Phil says:

    You can put your man-made global warming hype in that same category. Maybe I should take one out of your playbook:

    “…produce some peer-reviewed study that supports your case.”

    Even democrats admit that it will cause electricity rates to rise.

    UI, stop placing everyone in the republican party who disagrees with you. I have never even been registered as a republican. Ever.

  31. xstryker says:

    Castle is an arrogant and elitist time-server.

    Every time Art Downs and I agree on something, an angel loses its wings.

  32. John Manifold says:

    With MJ gone, will the remaining wackos target Mikey?

    http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/26/the-8-cap-and-tax-republicans/

  33. Stop echoing Republican talking points and we’ll quit comparing you to one. I don’t call everyone who disagrees with me a Republican, there are plenty of Democrats I disagree with on a routine basis (Carper).

  34. John Manifold says:

    It’s astonishing how quickly the dead-enders have fastened onto the “climate-change-is-a-hoax” chant.

    It’s threatening to become a necessary credential for advancement in major sectors of the GOP.

  35. That certainly would be fun, John if the dead-enders went after Castle.

  36. callerRick says:

    Our naivety must have the Russians and Chinese laughing their asses off.

    “The sky is falling, the sky is falling…….”

    The rest of the world doesn’t give a crap.

  37. nemski says:

    callerRick, do you bathe in ignorance?

  38. Rich Boucher says:

    callerRick said: “..the rest of the world doesn’t give a crap…”

    I’m sorry, callerRick, I forget, um, WHEN were you appointed to speak for “the rest of the world” again?

  39. Dear Caller Rick: The Beast Who Slumbers knows that several ‘conservative’ blogs have bitten the dust lately, and that has left you bereft of people who ‘think’ like you to talk to. But, seriously, there ARE therapy groups, some especially designed for whack jobs, even challenging cases like yours.

    Please, for your own sake, for the sake of mankind, and for the sake of the sanity of those who read blogs or at least try to sound out the words, get help!

    No one knows who you are. So, no one will ever say, “That used to be the mentally-unstable Caller Rick.” Nobody.

    You can rebrand yourself something like…”Gandhi”, and people will no longer fear for your mental health and might actually consider your posts worth reading.

    You may suddenly even find yourself back in the dating pool. Who knows, you might even have the good fortune to ‘hook up’ with someone going Cold Turkey from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s been known to happen.

    You can grow organic veggies. You can put solar paneling on your state-of-the-art impenetrable compound. You can install cable, they don’t even have to come inside. The possibilities are limitless. Just, for once…give your brain a chance to think on its own. Once you do, you’ll never go back.

    Your Compadre Y Amigo
    El Somnambulo

  40. anon says:

    Our naivety must have the Russians and Chinese laughing their asses off.

    The Russians are counting their money… they are an oil and gas exporting nation after all, so they cannot believe their good fortune that America turned away from conservation 30 years ago and chose to enrich Russia instead. Talk about selling us the rope to hang ourselves… yup, Russia is laughing.

    And China would laugh if they could stop coughing from their smog.

  41. callerRick says:

    We don’t really enrich Russia that much…yet. That’s Europe’s job.

    When I say ‘the rest of the world doesn’t give a crap,’ that’s not my opinion, but rather an observation. They are building nuclear power plants, they are exploring and developing oil and natural gas fields at an unprecedented rate, and they are laughing at our stupidity as they bankroll our ludicrous debt.

    If it feels good do bury your head in the sand, go for it…..if name-calling makes you feel important, ditto. Nevertheless, much of the world is moving on- with oil, natural gas and nuclear power, our ‘sky is falling’ hysteria notwithstanding.

  42. cassandra_m says:

    Nevertheless, much of the world is moving on- with oil, natural gas and nuclear power, our ’sky is falling’ hysteria notwithstanding.

    That would be Bullshit. The Saudis and other Arab states are moving out on alternative energy research and apps in a very big way. Why? Because we’ve already demonstrated that energy leadership is beyond us. We’ll buy energy from them no matter what form it takes. Or at least that will certainly be the case if we keep listening to these luddite fools.

  43. callerRick says:

    The Saudi’s can afford it….and they get quite a bit more sun than we do. We, on the other hand, are broke and cloudy. In any case, you’re cherry-picking.

    Don’t take my world for it…..Google ‘new nuclear power plant construction’ and ‘current oil and gas exploration.’

    Toss the talking points and learn something new. Reality is a wonderful thing.

  44. cassandra_m says:

    It isn’t cherry-picking (although you don’t really know what that means in the first place) to point out that there is much work ongoing on alternative energy — and not just solar. The oil states are funding much of it and that means they’ll own the patents and the rest to make us pay — just like oil. This is an industry we should be leading — and getting ourselves organized so that the Saudis have to buy their alternate energy needs from us.

    But long-term thinking isn’t possible from someone who is only worried about his next tank of gas.

    And there isn’t that much gas here anyway. The entire business of plumping for new drilling or new nuclear is about helping these industries get tax subsides.

    But limited thinking is your stock in trade.

  45. X Stryker says:

    And China would laugh if they could stop coughing from their smog.

    China just introduced an electric car that’s cheaper than anything made in Japan.