Proof that our current legal framework isn’t up to the task of confronting a new threat:
In a 5-4 decision that reversed a King County Superior Court ruling, the justices ruled that the city utility lacked the authority to use ratepayers’ money to compensate for its planet warming pollution.
Using ratepayer money in this manner is not “sufficiently related to the purpose of supplying electricity,” wrote Chief Justice Gerry Alexander.
In November 2005, City Light had boasted that it was the first publicly owned major utility in the nation to no longer contribute to global warming, that it was “carbon neutral.”
Back when City Light was founded, nobody thought about global warming. After all, it was 1902, and the automobile was still a curiosity.
I don’t fault the Washington State Supreme Court for ruling how they did. City Light was stung for “exceeding their brief” at least once before. This illustrates how our laws need to change to better fight this threat. Better we attack this problem now than wait for the Cascades to lose their snow pack, making our dams in the North Cascades artifacts of a by-gone era.
Doesn’t this remind you of the court determining that a corporation’s only mandate is to provide profit for shareholders and not to divert money for “acts that do good for society.” Something like that.
Some CEO was sued by the shareholders whose only interests were profits . . .
I guess it is pretty well spelled out in law . . . but what a blow to the common good.
“I don’t fault the Washington State Supreme Court for ruling how they did. City Light was stung for “exceeding their brief” at least once before.”
You do pretty damned good for a non-lawyer, Goldy. This issue has to do with what powers a government entity has — and not exceeding those powers. Some B-school jackass might say, “who cares? What matters is reaching the goal!”
Hmmm … I can think of a B-school jackass who could use some tutoring on Boundaries of Governmental Power 101.
Democrats Deliver On 100-Hour Promise!!!
“WASHINGTON (Jan. 18) – House Democrats crossed the finish line Thursday in their race to pass a six-bill agenda in the first 100 hours of the new Congress – getting there 13 hours ahead of schedule.
” … [T]he House had been in session 87 hours when … it passed the last of the ‘Six for ’06’ bills that Democrats promised to deliver within 100 hours of assuming power. …
“The bills passed by the House as part of the 100-hour agenda would:
“Slap a ‘conservation fee’ on oil and gas taken from deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico; scrap nearly $6 billion worth of oil industry tax breaks enacted by Congress in recent years; and seek to recoup royalties lost to the government because of an Interior Department error in leases issued in the late 1990s. Passed Thursday.
“Lower interest rates on federally subsidized student loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent in stages over five years at a cost to taxpayers of $6 billion. Passed Wednesday.
“Make the government bargain directly with drug companies with the aim of reducing prices of prescriptions for Medicare beneficiaries. Passed Jan. 12.
“Expand government-financed embryonic stem cell research. Passed Jan. 11.
“Raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over 26 months. Passed Jan. 10.
“Bolster terrorism-fighting efforts with more cargo inspections. Passed Jan. 9.
“Democrats also won approval of internal House rule changes dealing with ethics, lobbying and budgeting. They were passed on Jan. 4-5.”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://tinyurl.com/2eg98v
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Democrats accomplished more in two weeks than Republicans did in 4 years! If you want a job done, you gotta hire a Democrat to do it.
@2 Oops, my bad! Will wrote this thread. Well done, Will.
Actually… I think that this thread is a bit wrong in the first sentence.
There’s nothing wrong with the FRAMEWORK of the law; the framework of the law would be the Constitution, the form of government, etc.
That framework would, apparently, allow for Seattle City Light to do what it is that they’re wanting to do.
What’s wrong is that the *law* itself, the individual law, that creates and authorizes SCL to do what it is that they do, doesn’t allow for them to try and stop global warming.
So what’s needed isn’t a new framework; it’s a new law, or at least to amend the present law.
Now, if carbon-neutral policies were a requirement of the State somehow, then SCL’s activities in trying to provide a carbon-neutral source (or buying credits for emissions) would be part of the job of supplying electricity… but as it is now, it’s not; it’s social engineering. (Social engineering I agree with, but social engineering nonetheless.)
*sigh*
We’re all adults here. We all know that there have been Ice Ages, and we know that it’s been warmer around here too. It’s pretty arrogant to ,not only think that we may be helping to warm up the planet, but to also think we can help mother earth cool back down.
And, if we could cool the earth…… at what point would we, should we, stop?
The ten years with the highest average recorded temperatures have occurred in the past thirteen years. We are in the midst of a twenty-five year trend of global temperature rise. That’s on Earth, of course, are you including some other planet in your “around here” assertion?
More fuel for the debate here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....clim06.xml
everytime we get “definitive” evidence of man’s influence on global warming, there is a “definitive” counter argument.
Too me, that means we really don’t know.
Good stewardship should always be practiced as we are only here for a short time.
@6
“It’s pretty arrogant to ,not only think that we may be helping to warm up the planet, but to also think we can help mother earth cool back down.”
No it’s not arrogance. It’s science. Science is about trial and error, and experimental results. Arrogance is just like ignorance, it’s stating opinions that have no facts to support them. But Global Warming is about facts, it’s about data, and it is about observation and experimentation.
A Theory is a “testable hypothesis” that is confirmed through evidence over time. Exactly what “Intelligent Design” is not, intelligent design is not a THEORY. It is CONJECTURE.
But Global Warming is a THEORY, that has EVIDENCE supporting it over time. Lots and lots of evidence.
Gravity is also a Theory. So is E=MC2. But if you look at the Atomic Bomb it’s a damn effective theory.
Theories are about peer reviewed. Pier review is the attempt of everyone in the scientific community trying to prove the author wrong.
In Science, the structure is such as to attempt to take personal bias, belief, and conjecture or opinion out of the system over time. Now I know that doesn’t always happen, and I have read books like “The Structure of Scientific Revolution,” so I understand the problems with Science as BELIEF. But the real problem with this Global Warming denial, is that you are not doing it in a Scientific manner.
If you want to disprove Global Warming, try to counter the overwhelming facts. Let’s start with these:
1. Why is it that the Bush Administration, people who are not scientists, felt that they had to “edit” actual Governmental Scientists Reports on Global Warming before they reached the public?
2. Why are the Glaciers all around the world melting?
3. Why are storms around the world increasing in frequency?
4. Why do the Cascades mountains on average have less snowpack than an hundred years ago?
5. Why do Ice Core Samples show that CO2 is going off the charts for anywhere we have ever been in the past? Past all scientific records for CO2 concentration back millions of years. The change that created the ice age is magnitudes less then where we are pumping CO2 to in short order?
6. What explains the Correlation between CO2 and Global mean temperature? If it is not CO2, what is it that is causing Global Mean temerature to rise, and CO2 levels to rise?
7. What is happening to all the CO2 we pump into the atmosphere? How many Carbon sinks are there in the world? How much CO2 volume in the world can these Carbon Sinks process?
8. Why are there 1000s of Giant Jellyfish appearing off the coast of Japan?
9. When you take a volume container, say a sealed fish tank, and you fill it with a certain mixture of CO2, Nitrogen, Oxygen and all the rest, in the same concentrations as you currently see in the common Earth atmosphere, and you place a heat lamp on the fish tank in relative similarity to the sun heating the earth, and then you pump up the CO2, does the fish tank trap A. More Heat, or B. Less Heat?
Bad Bob at 6 totally floors me. the asterisked sigh, as if the childish debate tires him. Is the reference to arrogance some sort of Christian assertion? I totally don’t get it. Yes there were ice ages and tropical periods in geological history, but recently, very recently the planet has been infested by greedy short-sighted people burning everything in sight.
The temperature is going up and we keep breeding and burning and it’s not going to get better unless we all try a little harder to walk a little more softly.
God’s not going to help us, the rapture’s not coming. It’s only up to people, potentially desperate people, who don’t always make rational communitarian choices.
yikes.
re 6: We’re taking “Personal Responsibility”. Isn’t that what you wanted?
Or, did you really mean by “Personal Responsibility” that a man from a lower middle class background who never had the smarts or the chance to get a higher education, has worked hard all his life, had the Union that protected him from abusive employers crushed in Reaganite America, and now has no health insurance because of that: He should take “Personal Responsibility” if he needs a $100,000 cancer operation?
Which is your concept of being responsible? The latter example, I suspect. (SIGH) Freakin’ Bonehead!!!!!!!
That article is from May of 2003, you righties are always living in the past. Well, two can play that game:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....ing02.html
“Major news organizations did not publish a Harvard-Smithsonian Center news release that declared that the scientists “determined” that the warming trend is neither the hottest nor the most dramatic change in the past 1,000 years. But it was picked up by the Discovery Channel Online.”
“That article was copied and distributed by the staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, headed by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a climate-change skeptic. ”
Around the same time, WSJ reported that Hans von Storch, the editor of Climate Research, the journal in which “A Reappraisal” was published, resigned, along with two other top editors, to protest “irregularities” in the editorial process that allowed the paper to be published. But the fact that the paper itself wss widely criticized never slowed the naysayers down.
Have you any “counter arguments” that haven’t already been shredded?
Please provide peer reviewed scientific articles. There are a few that question the degree, but none that deny the reality of global warming. And, stay current, OK? 2005 was a watershed in research on this subject.
re 6: Bad Bob is bad at reasoning. (SIGH)
http://epw.senate.gov/public/i.....c37ec39adf
“I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them.”
“*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.”
Follow the fuckers who follow the money.. oh! hi there al.the.bore, howdy do san.fran.gran.nan…. how’s the Malibu SNOW, you nitwit?
C’mon you Neaderthals, even Exxon isn’t questioning the science anymore:
http://marketplace.publicradio.....01183.html
You gotta start helping your corporate paymasters in their efforts to push the costs of mitigating global warming onto individual taxpayers, you boobs.
Neanderthals, that is.
People who live in the Sunderbans don’t pay taxes into City Light. Why should we give a damn what happens to them?
All the glaciers are melting? No, they aren’t. Storms are getting worse? Really? Could it be that we are builing more in danger areas, which creates the illusion that they are worse? And don’t the methods and ratings systems of storms change once in awhile? They do.
There is global warming, but not HUMAN INDUCED global warming. But what we have here, which is expressed well on this thread, is scientific “ethnocentrism”. With global warming being the “race”.
Your view is the superior. And you only read material to support your own theory. If you read a theory contrary to yours, you trash it or ignore it. Sort of like algore (who will only take a podium to speak to a “captive” audience, but will not debate a real scientist.
I could add some links, but you haters won’t read them, just post your own links. This isn’t a discussion, it’s an argument. And apparently, the louder child wins. Like when I was 5, I guess…..
Stephen Hawking, Well Known Scientist:
http://www.theaustralian.news......17,00.html
My biggest problem with Global Warming Theory as someone who is ecologically minded, is that there are so many concrete arguments against pollution, that CO2 emissions could be reduced as a by products of concentrating on other emission controls, or other Green Technologies.
For instance, mass transit is good idea for all sorts of reasons, including moving humans and cargo more effeciently, less drunk drivers, etc., keeping industry like Boeing around, but when we focus on the Global Warming argument it turns into a much less concrete debate. Or say for security reasons, one could argue that Green energies, renewables, solar, etc, is a much safer power generation system, than the current system where electricity goes out in every wind storm.
However, the evidence is mounting rapidly supporting the Global Warming Theory. Simply stating that Global Warming is happening, but not as a result of human activity is not going to convince anyone. Is there any other explanation, or Theory that is gaining acceptance? For instance, I’ve heard the Sun Spot Theory proposed by more than one, but I’ve never heard it debated? Or maybe the Van Allen Radiation Belt is melting the polar ice caps? Are there any other Theories we should know about?
“Almost every one of more than 300 large glaciers studied worldwide — from the Andes in South America to the Himalayas — is in retreat, international glaciologists reported in October in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.”
AP 12/21/2006
“Mr. Schmitt… had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned… Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago… Would have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice.”
NYT January 16, 2007
18.
So what is causing global warming, copper. Help Stephen Hawking out here. Is it sun spots, the Van Allen Belt, that is causing the average global temperature to rise, and why so much in the past forty years?
@6 The earth doesn’t give a shit about global warming and its impact on humans. On the other hand, if human activity is affecting the global climate in ways that may have adverse consequences for humans, it makes perfect sense for rational humans to discuss altering the behavior that is creating those consequences. Of course, not all humans are rational …
@6 P.S. – you’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.
@10 “God’s not going to help us, the rapture’s not coming.”
It’s not? I was SO hoping it would get here, and soon — WHAM! — 144,000 Republicans gone in a flash-and-bang!!!
@14 “I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them.”
I take it this is the wingnutters’ rebuttal of the scientific evidence of global warming?
@18 “There is global warming, but not HUMAN INDUCED global warming.”
You’re wrong. Even Exxon now admits it.
re 14: And if you keep followin’ the money it’ll lead you back to Exxon Mobile. Yer so stupid I bet your underwear are streaked.
Why don’t you sissy liberal Democrats just man-up and admit that you don’t know what the heckamcgiver you are yammering about.
“Oh!!! I’m so scared!! The planet’s goiung to warm up a few degrees!”
Geez Louise, Spanky! Lighten up! Go get a twelve pack of “Skullcracker” ale and mellow out.
Poster Child says:
………. Is the reference to arrogance some sort of Christian assertion?
God’s not going to help us, the rapture’s not coming.
Wow, Poser, that is quite a stretch. If I were a particularly religious individual, I might have been offended. But I’m not. I don’t feel threatened by religious people either, though you seem to be. I consider myself fairly tolerent of religiuos people, again, you don’t seem to be.
There is one religion I can’t see eye-to-eye with, and that is the Religion of Global Warming that most on the blog seem to “worship”.
Gentry said,
“Science is about trial and error, and experimental results. Arrogance is just like ignorance, it’s stating opinions that have no facts to support them. But Global Warming is about facts, it’s about data, and it is about observation and experimentation.”
Science will use trial and error, to try and support thier hypothesis….. but it isn’t about “experimental results”. It’s about repeatable results. If they can’t repeat it, it isn’t verified.
Cold fusion is a theory. A number of years ago a couple of groups said that they had produced cold fusion in their labs. But, when the harsh glare of science turned it’s collective eyes on the lab…. they couldn’t prove that they had done it. Their results weren’t re-produceable.
The numbers that you all are using aren’t scientific data….. they are statistical data. Big difference.
I will say here that it isn’t that I don’t believe we are warming up. I just doubt that we have made a significant contribution.
@23- Hey, Bugs, I saw no facts in #6, much like most of the other posts. But here is some.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-329es.html
This is from the CATO Institute. Written by Patrick J. Michaels, a professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, and a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.
It is a good read. It does not conform to what the global warming alarmists want to believe, but it is well written and researched.
@26 Exxon doesn’t admit anything of the sort:
The link: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/.....091010.htm
Key excerpts:
“ExxonMobil has promised investors it will “soften” its public image in an attempt to rid itself of a reputation as the green campaigners’ public enemy number one.”
and
.“Greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors that contribute to climate change. This is an extremely complex issue but even with the scientific uncertainties, the risk [of global warming] is so great that it justifies taking action,” the company said.”
A FACTOR IN CLIMATE CHANGE… Climate change, meaning the rising and falling of tempatures….
30.
Date of linked article: December 31, 1998.
You don’t seem to get it, Copper, 9 years ago there was a controversy, now there isn’t.
Take you Frank Luntz “framing” (otherwise known as lies) and smoke them, along with the other weeds you obviously smoke and inhale AKA Republic Party toilet paper.
@32 If we were dinosaurs, way back when, we probably would have had the same conversation: If we don’t do something life as we know it will end…
Of course, life as they knew it DID end. The Earth cleansed for it’s next cycle, but the Earth moved on and got better. Hence, we are what we are today….
My last comment. Just some thoughts….