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United States News Title: Global Warming Argued Again as Congress Votes on Repeal of EPA Authority Climate experts argued again about global warming in Congress Tuesday while lawmakers rethink whether to penalize industries for greenhouse gas emissions. clearpxl A House committee is considering a bill introduced last month to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit emissions from factories and power plants. The bill is an effort to relieve the regulatory burden on industry and prevent jobs from being exported to China, where environmental regulations are less stringent. The committee vote on the Energy Tax Prevention Act could come as soon as Thursday, according to congressional aides. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), an author of the bill, said the trade-off for the economy of strictly limiting greenhouse gases was too great of a burden. “The Energy Tax Prevention Act, far from being an attack on global warming science as some have suggested, is in fact a repudiation of a regulatory scheme that will only harm the American economy and destroy jobs,” Whitfield said at the hearing Tuesday. The bill comes at a time Congress is bickering over how many budget cuts Republicans will be granted as they try to reduce the $14 trillion national deficit. Democrats say short-term budget priorities should never be a higher priority than long-term damage to the environment. “Protection of the environment is now a partisan battleground,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), said in remarks Monday to the Center for American Progress. “On climate change, we can’t even agree whether there is a problem.” In response to the Democrats’ outrage, the House Energy and Commerce Committee wanted to hear again from experts on global warming before moving forward with legislation to cut the EPA’s budget by $3 billion. The bill also would ban the EPA from enforcing its pending Clean Air Act climate regulations through the end of September. The first set of new regulations took effect Jan. 2. Others would be phased in throughout the rest of this year. Many of the regulations seek to reduce carbon as an emission. The carbon in carbon dioxide can trap the sun’s rays, making the entire atmosphere heat up, according to some climate experts. However, John R. Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, warned that drastically cutting carbon emissions could reduce the nation’s ability to produce energy from coal and oil. “Climate change alone is a weak leg on which to stand for such a massive undertaking,” Christy said in his congressional testimony. He also said “there is really no demonstrated technology except nuclear that can replace large portions of the carbon-based energy production.” Scientific evidence does not support theories that global warming is purely a result of human pollution, rather than a larger weather trend, Christy said. One example he mentioned was a heat wave in Russia last summer, which initially was attributed to global warming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) later determined it resulted from normal “blocking” of weather patterns that caused heat to concentrate. Another example Christy mentioned was the unusually heavy snowfall in the United States over the past two winters. Some climatologists originally said global warming was leaving more water vapor in the atmosphere that can convert to snow in the winter. However, NOAA investigators found no change in their indexes of climate change that would implicate global warming in snowfall, he said. Other expert witnesses disagreed with Christy during the hearing. Christopher B. Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif., said weather patterns leave little doubt human activity is creating global warming. “These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt and alterations in river flows,” Field said in his testimony. “The amount and rate of future climate change depends primarily on current and future human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases and airborne particles,” he said. Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/briefs/articles/90039016?Global%20Warming%20Argued%20Again%20as%20Congress%20Votes%20on%20Repeal%20of%20EPA%20Authority#ixzz1G3nuf4rA
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#1. To: A K A Stone (#0)
my favorite comment of the hearings today. If a Republican gets cancer I suppose they just deny that it's harmful.
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