Barbara, I read the whole post. It did read biased and/or out of context to me. On the other hand, there is no doubt that elected officials would try and get some of any tax for their district or their state and some of this would be for things that should not be supported. But, exactly what do you plan to do about the massive debt and ongoing deficits that have largely been run up by the present POTUS and also by Reagan? Clearly, W.J. Clinton was the fiscal conservative compared to what came before and after. A good chunk of the high price of oil is because the dollar is so weak. If I had to decide whether to convert Euros to dollars I would have to think seriously about whether Obama would be more of a fiscal conservative that present POTUS. I think he would.

I don't want to go into Carbon cap and trade now and don't know enough about it. Maybe another day.
Here is what I am interested in: I am completely stunned and fascinated by those Geologists and other earth scientists who don't believe that rising CO2 is going to affect earth's climate. Most, or maybe almost all, of these earth scientists work in the oil industry. I believe it has to do with wanting to feel good about your life's work, supplying energy, so you selectively absorb information. Being aware of selective absorbation of information is important for me to recognize in my own work. In the proposal we just submitted we had to present alternate models. But, for the deniers, they just don't even make sense. I blame ExxonMobil for a lot of this. Really. In the most sleazy way they funded front organizations to provide the anti-science information that allowed petroleum geologists/geophysicists to feel good about their work.

I should just ignore the deniers, but the situation is interesting and it is a problem. What would be more interesting to discuss on this page is what the effects of the measured and forecast increase in CO2 are really going to do. I am helping with 2 proposals due June 6, one of which I'm supposed to be reading right now, to core into Ross Sea, one project from a ship and the other from the ice shelf. The cores would be used to study past climates. The data would be used a ground truth for GCMs, which sometimes stands for Global Climate Models and sometimes General Circulation Models. GCMs are also used to forecast future climate. I think there are lots of interesting questions to how sensitive these area: how little changes in input might make large changes in prediction.

One of the proposals says that CO2 might have been slightly higher than today a few million years ago when the Antarctic ice sheets partially retreated. I don't know if this is true or not. But, it does seem there is some controversy for past CO2 levels, before 1 million years ago. I doubt there is any real uncertainty for younger than 1 million years because there are now ice cores of ice that old and you just measure the levels in the bubbles in the ice.

OK, back to work..it's 6:30 AM now. 7.4 foot tide predicted for this evening for San Diego.
Chris...still in Long Beach