Forming a grammatically correct sentence is not the same thing as performing the action said sentence nominally describes. Your statement is analogous to something like, “I can imagine a round-square and guarantee that it is pink.”

In order for your claim to even be meaningful, much less possibly true, you would have to be in possession and control of every single variable to every relevant degree of possible influence. Unless you’re prepared to not only assert, but conclusively demonstrate, an especially close relationship with the Divinity, such an assumption is nonsense.

Ronald,
48 – 38 was the vote on cloture. 10 Democratic Senators who voted for cloture publicly stated their opposition to the actual bill.

I agree with much of your criticism of the Breakthrough Institute. I visited their website when they first popped up at climateprogress and it seemed to me their main interest is grabbing as much government R & D money as they can. Although I think Joe too narrowly defines the word breakthrough, I am in complete agreement with him that current and in the near pipeline technologies and efficiencies are sufficient.

The one thing I think BI has right is that is more effective to lower the cost of deployment than to raise the price of carbon, a view I expressed here long before knowing BI even existed. It is not a panacea, just a better way to approach the problem. Raising the price of carbon to the high cost of alternatives could well mean the consumer can afford neither.Once they’re in place alternatives are very cost competitive. The very high cost of initial deployment is the roadblock. I have laid out on this thread a number of ways to reduce that cost. I have previously described a truly market based cap/trade system that would go a long way in reducing the cost of deployment. I am putting the final touches on a method of exerting downward price pressure through association of the people which is very exciting.

Let’s talk about exhortation of catastrophe as a method of persuasion. The latest in climate science is that temperatures will remain relatively stable until perhaps 2015. Ocean temperatures are not rising, nor are sea levels (NASA is launching new satellites to more accurately measure sea levels so we’ll have better data soon). The hurricane warming connection has been broken. It is hard to sell catastrophe when not much is happening now. Maybe that’s not how it should be, but it is the way it is.

I think you had the wrong totals on that senate vote, it was 48-38, 48 votes for the bill and 38 against. Given that there was no way that Pres. Bush would vote for it, some senators may have decided to not vote for it who were up for reelection in coal states, but would vote for it if it actually meant something. But some may have voted against it if it was to become law also.

You keep saying that we should move to non-carbon energy anyway and just mentioning global warming gets in the way, but if we try to find ways to make non-carbon fuel energy cheaper, then people would get behind that. Would they really? So if the debate is about Global Warming and the destruction of our planet for the next 50 genrations, fossil fuel people, states, companies and politicians are going to be against finding fixes so that doesn’t occur. But if we say that we want to make non-carbon energy cheaper than fossil fuel energy by increased research and new favorable infrastructure, all those fossil fuel groups are not going to be working against that?

Fossil fuel groups are listening to the debates!

If you start coming out with a bill that increases research on ways to make non-carbon fuels cheaper than carbon fuels the fossil fuel groups will oppose that. They will not sit by and let their industry and way of life and personal wealth go away just because you want to make non-carbon energy cheaper.

There were 48 senate votes in favor of a bill to increase the cost of carbon fuels tied to Global Warming Destruction. How many votes were there for a bill to increase research and infrastucture changes on non-carbon fueled energy so it would be cheaper than carbon fueled energy just because some people feel that would be a great idea, no threat of Global Warming involved? No bill? Zero support?

Nobody goes thru major surgery unless there is a real need for it. (some cosmetic surgery aside) What is needed to save the next 50 generations from tragedy is the equivalent of a kidney transplant and just saying that
it would be nice to have non-carbon energy cheaper than carbon energy is not going to fire up the base support for such an idea and you are still going to have carbon fuel energy opposition.

What the Breakthrough Institute gets wrong is they think they can get enough support for more increased funding for research and non-carbon fueled energy without using the very real threat of Global Warming and they are wrong. Smart politics is not about breaking away from the most significant problem the planet has ever had and saying that’s not important, but we should do something that people would like to have, cheaper non-carbon fueled energy. Breakthrough Institute is about self promotion. Their stance on how groups who are trying to slow greenhouse gas release is misguided is widely quoted in conservative books, and then their claim that it is all about technology is picked up on for delaying, but not picked up on to then actually do anything about the problem.

The needed effort to head off Global Warming is great. Don’t cut it off by claims that all we need to do is reduce the cost of non-carbon fueled energy and the world will be fine. That idea has opposition also. The way we got rid of smog in our cities was thru a law, not by making non-smog emitting engines cheaper than smog emitting engines. You’d still be working on the problem if you thought that would work.

the planet literally does not care if we live or die. it’s just a rock. the biosphere is just a cloud. the oceans are puddles. there’s nothing in any of them that requires our presence or our participation. intelligence and society are another assay of organic tests in the tube.

a person comes up to me and says, “get what you want by lying,” i say, “what will it cost the person i lie to.”

“that’s their business,” says the voice of the last 30 years of american politics.

and i think that voice, i think that voice has no place now. so i think, you go ahead, and you try to get us to 2030, so your miracles can happen, ok? and you go ahead and try in that time to keep up your own illusion, whatever it really is, and good luck to you.