I've spent some time this weekend at the Econbrowser site where two posts have degenerated into the typical global warming "alarmists" versus "deniers" spat.
Most of the issues I had were with the impact of regulation on the economy. I pointed out that the bulk of the new regulations in the past decade that have had a potential severe negative impact have been centered around the notion of global warming and "controlling" the climate by reducing CO2. [see EPA under the labels list in the right column]
The issue, as I see it, is not whether there has been some warming since the 1880s... there has. The issue is the importance of such warming and whether or not it can be ascribed to man-made CO2 output.
For those of you who are truly interested, you can go to www.whereisglobalwarming.blogspot.com and spend some of your free days reading the Data and Analysis listing of posts going back to 2005.
For those of you who want the short answer it is, "No, there has not been significant warming that can be attributable to CO2 and what upward trend there has been is a result of the trend line starting point which was an abnormally cold period and data manipulation which has been further lowering late 19th and early 20th century observations by as much as a degree in many locations... start the trend in the 1930s and you will get a different result... especially in the United States which has a much more reliable temperature history than the one purported to be a "global" temperature record.
So, what if you don't really care?
US clean energy standard proposed in Senate
But not all energy would be treated equally under his clean energy standard (CES), according to a backgrounder provided by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "All generators of clean energy would be given credits based upon their carbon emissions," the document reads. "Greater numbers of credits would be awarded to generators with lower emissions per unit of electricity."It's baaaack! Watch your wallets!
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