You can forget AGW once this happens. OK so the USA needs to find alternative fuels but its infrastructure is more than likely to drill for more oil and even go to war to secure supplies if it has not already done so. Its a messy future and not one where AGW might feature.

Leland Palmer says the biggest problem is coal, which should be addressed by direct government action. I agree, except I would not go so far as to nationalize the coal industry. The grid, OK.

Direct action on CFCs made a difference. A big plus to Leland Palmer’s approach is that it works on defined sectors. W-M is far too big and unfocused and subject to alligator shoes to have any hope of demonstrable success in the near term. So why not a short, focused bill on CO2 emissions from coal power generation, only? That’s the big problem for world CO2 emissions. Why drag in auto emissions, biofuels subsidies, etc., in a bazaar of squabbling pleaders?

I also agree with Ronald. Why not use tax credits down the road to give an incentive for the power generation industry to make the adjustment to a low carbon future? Why raise money up front from a credit-strapped industrial sector? Maybe I’m unduly suspicious of our honorable Congress, but there might be the possibility that the revenues from pollution auctions (cap-and-trade) will not go to emissions mitigation. Even a “lock box” approach might fail (e.g. Social Security). Better not to take any money at all up front, but make clear that there will be fines as penalties to laggards some time in the future.

Critics of Waxman-Markey might have a point that this concoction of the coastal elites is insensitive to the plight of the coal states and the Rust Belt.

There are advocates of reducing carbon dioxide emissions who are for Cap and Trade, enough to bring the Cap and Trade proposal farther along than Carbon Taxes.

But there are many who are not advocates to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, who would go for a Carbon Tax that trades carbon taxes for other taxes, such as carbon tax and lower income or property taxes. Such as Arthur Laffer, who was a Professor at some University in Los Angeles, who was the academic behind Pres Reagan’s tax cuts and is famous for the Laffer Curve. Laffer was for a Carbon Tax and trading it for other taxes, than a Cap and Trade that increases business costs.

A Carbon Tax can be supported by a larger number of people. I’ve convinced conservatives I know of that the benefit’s of a Carbon tax over all other taxes in our area where the arguements are not connected to the Global Warming issue. Cap and trade only is conducive to talking about the Global Warming issue, much less flexiability of argument.

The argument that Hansen’s letter is used by deniers and therefore just plays into the hands of the deniers is wrong. If the Carbon tax was pushed by the Obama administration over the Cap and Trade bill, the Global Warming deniers would be using the arguments of Cap and Trade advocates against the Obama bill also. Don’t listen to the enemies of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to decide what should be done, they will only want to divide the Carbon dioxide Reduction Advocates anyway they can.

Frankly Joe, your using a denier against Hansen is just the kind of thing that the deniers want you to do.

We need to seize the coal plants and forcibly convert them to “carbon negative” biocarbon / oxyfuel / HiPPS / CCS power plants. These converted power plants could also have solar and engineered geothermal components added to them, to decrease biocarbon use and biocarbon transport costs.

Another big problem is transportation. We need to use the electricity generated by the carbon negative and renewable energy power plants to run plug in hybrid vehicles, mass transit, and high speed rail.

Another big problem is wildfires. We need to clear the forests of flammable undergrowth, and cut firebreaks through them, in order to limit the size of the huge wildfires we have been seeing lately. The biomass generated in this way could be locally carbonized and pelletized into biocarbon, and then shipped like coal via railroad or coal log pipeline to power plants.

Another big problem is landfills. We need to cap existing landfills, and burn the methane they evolve. It might be possible to convert old landfills into biocarbon, but the water content and degraded nature of the carbonaceous matter in the landfills might preclude this. We can certainly transform all paper, cardboard, and other carbonaceous waste into biocarbon, and prevent this carbonaceous waste from ending up in landfills.

Another big problem is cow manure and cow farts. We should deal with manure by carbonizing it into biocarbon, before it has a chance to decay and evolve methane.

Each specific problem has to be dealt with, IMO. We have the science and the technology to do this. Biocarbon and electricity can serve as energy transmission mediums to move energy through the society.

The hope of cap and trade, and of a carbon tax, is that it will indirectly stimulate solutions to each of these problems, or make it profitable for business to implement solutions to all of these problems.

Let’s pass cap and trade and carbon tax programs- they might even work, in many cases.

But let’s also address each one of these problems by direct government action.

Our self-regulating climate system only understands billions of tons of carbon, not “political reality”.

Only directors of energy firms have made fortunes with it and during cap and trade our emissions have risen 2% per year (plus manufacture partly pushed in China).

You must have carbon tax with cap and trade, pure cap and trade is idiocy.

I will be certainly promoting this as the way forward and I hope others will realize sooner rather than later that the situation is too dire to dither over C&T or Tax Fees. Obama will have to sell this to the US (and the rest of the world). Its almost like he was chosen to fulfill this task.

The EPA will certain play a big role as it gets more and more mandate from the judiciary, the government and the people.

Top prize for the understatement of the post:)

You and I can agree that time is of the essence. What I am saying is that it’s time to get pragmatic and stop wishing for a government that doesn’t exist.

The government we actually have is, as I stated, far from ideal, but it’s the best shot at large-scale action we have right now. And attempting to make this government as it exists do something that’s legislatively impossible is, at this point, dithering.

Listen to the Climate Realists, like Jim Hansen and Chris Field, like the folks at MIT and the Met Office Hadley Centre. We’re fast running out of time.

Comment to this second article: Joe, how can you confuse the Montreal Protocol with the Waxman-Markey bill? The first required nations to agree to cut Ozone emissions; the latter creates a cumbersome, unstable appendage to our economic system. A climate crisis is indeed looming. One year from now, according to the science I’ve been reading, the world’s climate will be greatly changed. I’ll mark my calendar to email you a reminder then.