"Wonderful" news on climate change

Remember the Waxman-Markey bill that was the first serious attempt for this country to address the problem of climate change and emissions? Remember that part where it got watered down and made terrible so it could get out of the House, with further worsening to come in the Senate? How everyone was telling us "No, no, you're just being too negative. This is really an important bill that tackles the problem head on." Yeah...about that. Experts are finally weighing in on the bill and...it's not pretty. Like Dr. James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute which studies climate change. He's read the bill, seen the debate in the House, looked at what's going on with G8 negotiations, crunched the numbers and isn't thrilled.

With a workable climate bill in his pocket, President Obama might have been able to begin building that global consensus in Italy. Instead, it looks as if the delegates from other nations may have done what 219 U.S. House members who voted up Waxman-Markey last month did not: critically read the 1,400-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and deduce that it's no more fit to rescue our climate than a V-2 rocket was to land a man on the moon.
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This requires nothing less than an energy revolution based on efficiency and carbon-free energy sources. Alas, we won't get there with the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.
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The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.

He's goes and lists the problems with the bill, some of the basic science of where we're headed, and even provides an alternate plan to the weakened cap-and-trade program, all the while heaping withering abuse on the bill. Remember how Paul Krugman didn't like the stimulus and didn't think it correctly addressed the problems the economy faced? It's sort of like that with Hansen, but about climate change. Let's hope he's not as correct as Krugman was.

Although if there's one thing that throws all his analysis into question (other than and Exxon-Mobil funded study) it's his belief and analysis that now that the bill is in the Senate there's a chance to make things better, and that public pressure as well as testimony from expert sources will help sway their opinion. Seriously? What Senate does he think this bill is going to? How could he misread so much obvious data that the Senate is a font of stupidity and awfulness? My faith in the man is teetering on the precipice. Hopefully it was just a simple mistake.