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Climate Change Comments

April 2009

• I'd like to know why you are spreading false lies about "climate Change"
• It is cynical to use "Greenhouse Gases" as a reason to tax the citizenry.
• ...fluorescent lights are bad for our eyes.

February 2009

• Puget Sound Energy is selling 100% of their green electricity to California!
• Revenue neutral
• Cap and trade

January 2009

• Reducing CO2 is Folly and Will Be a Financial Disaster

April

I'd like to know why you are spreading false lies about "climate Change"

I'd like to know why you are spreading false lies about "climate Change" It is evident that you people seem to be following Al Gore blindly and are not looking at the other side of the debate of Climate Change. You people also need to stop harassing businesses with your damn fees that are just ridiculous. But seriously, start listening to both sides of the argument on Climate change and then maybe you might have a better understanding on what's happening in Washington AND the world, because I sure as hell am not feeling any "Global Warming" happening.

Tanner Waterbury

Fluorescent lights

First of all, I love your website. Great job. There is one problem I have with the suggested home lighting. I have known since the late 1960's that fluorescent lights are bad for our eyes. I don't believe we should use them just to save money or the carbon footprint when there are better alternatives. I have heard of a light bulb that has UVA and actually is good for you and gives you vitamins. My nephew (41 years old) came from the East coast and told me about them. I would much rather upgrade my lights and pay a little more than get something that is cheaper and helps the environment but hurts me and my family. Fluorescent lights should also be taken out of schools. They make children lethargic and depressed. Let's have a better, healthier, environmentally safe world!

Terry E. Box

It is cynical to use "Greenhouse Gases" as a reason to tax the citizenry.

It is cynical to use "Greenhouse Gases" as a reason to tax the citizenry. If one looks at the actual science, one can see that it is incredibly premature to tag "Greenhouse Gases" as the significant cause of "Climate Change." Our current climate is entirely within the range of normal climate variability.

Senator Carrell has done an excellent job of describing the situation on his website.  There are tens of thousands of scientists, perhaps even the majority of the world's scientists are in agreement with him.

The "consensus" of the IPCC does not exist.

W.P. Wooten

February

Puget Sound Energy is selling 100% of their green electricity to California!

I would like to express concerns that now Puget Sound Energy has been bought by an Australian company, now they have announced (As reported today in the Olympian) that they are selling basically 100% of their green energy portfolio -- clean energy from Washington State Windmills -- to California. At the same time Governor Christine Gregoire has proposed free allowances under her proposed "Cap and Trade Bill" to allow utilities to continue to pollute CO2 from their coal power plants and from their other fossil fuel plants. This also ties into our legislatures' current efforts to establish the Western Climate Alliance and its regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. It also ties into issues of fairness to PSE customers like myself who have been paying a premium to PSE for "green electricity" in order to support PSE's efforts to install clean energy windmills to provide clean energy to Washington State. And now PSE is selling the environmental credits to that green energy to California, so that California can claim those credits, rather than Washington State. And Washington State is left holding the Coal Powered Bag.

If you look into the federal records at EPA you will find, and I am happy to provide links to, information that shows that Washington State already generates enough non-CO2-emitting electricity in state to meet the needs of 98.7% of its citizens.

However, Washington State also exports about 20% of its electricity to other states -- we are a net exporter of electricity. It turns out that that 20% is almost identically the 20% of the electricity generated in Washington from Coal and other Fossil Fuel Power Plants. But are our utilities like PSE allowing Washington State to keep its clean energy? No, they are selling it to California and selling us the notion that they need to keep running their dirty coal power plants! This in turn interferes with our "Cap and Trade" initiatives before our legislature, and also gives California benefits under the Western Climate Initiative that we should be keeping for Washington State. Getting rid of coal is literally 200X less expensive for Washingtonians than other methods of getting CO2 out of our environment, such as plug-in hybrid cars and light rail.

We need to keep clean electricity in Washington State, not sell it to California! Please act to reserve clean energy generated in Washington State FOR Washington State, so that we can efficiently meet our emerging requirements under the Western Climate Initiative, the governor's Cap and Trade proposals, and under President Obamas' emerging April 2 announcement of CO2 regulation by the EPA!

--Thank You, James Adcock

Revenue neutral

With regard to HB 1819 and SB 5735, the decision to require all proceeds from the auction of allowances be deposited in the state treasury for appropriation by the legislature for other energy related purposes strikes me as a poorly considered revision from an economics standpoint. Most reviewers would agree that the costs of purchasing allowances will result in price increases and to that extent consumers will pay indirectly for the cap and trade program. Most reviewers would agree that the desirability of a cap and trade system is the proven efficiency of emitters' choices and responses under the program, leading to the lowest cost to society for the mandated reduction of emissions.

I can support a revenue neutral program, perhaps something like the Alaska Permanent Fund or perhaps flat rebates to residential power customers. I think adapting the cap and trade program into an indirect tax is a big mistake. While the bill is still in discussion, please get the reactions of Jim McIntire, Dick Conway, and the state team of economic advisors.

--Eleanor Hungate

Cap and trade

I was just reading your cap and trade resolution, and I must ask to stop for a moment and revaluate what you are about to enact. Your measuring the climate by a 150 yrs of weather, out of a 3 or 4 billion year total. That is like trying to judge a persons life why the speed by you at 500 mph. How can you accurately judge or find out who somebody is by this small glance. This is a simple, very simple contrast of how people that claim man is creating global warming. The science is nothing more then a guess, not a factual review of earth's weather by measuring one tenth of one millimeter of length. Again it is just like trying to figure out how many miles is it to Japan from Seattle by just looking at that small measurement. Please, stop and look at the weather objectively, not emotionally. The earth geologically speaking as warmed up and cooled off more dramatically in shorter periods of time. Please look at the facts, educate yourself and the public before starting a costly cap and trade program.

January

Reducing CO2 is Folly and Will Be a Financial Disaster

I am a 59 year old engineer and have been studying this issue for 5-6 years. It is all nonsense. Even a non-technical person has only to ask three or four simple questions to cut through all the hype:

1. Has the earth ever been warmer in the recent past (in geological time), and did the Greenland or Antarctic ice caps melt then?
   Answer – YES there were warmer periods, and NO the ice caps die NOT melt.
   1. The Medieval Warm Period – from the years 900 to 1350, a 450 year period when grapes were grown in Scotland and the Vikings established colonies on Greenland, where grain crops were grown, and where they raised sheep and cattle on pastures. Temperatures were 1-2 degrees C warmer than today.
   2. The Roman Optimum Warm Period – about 2500 years ago, which also lasted several hundred years. Temperatures were 2-3 degrees C warmer than now.
   3. The Holocene Optimum – a period lasting over 2000 years from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. Temperatures were 3-4 degrees C warmer than today.
2. Have there ever been periods when the CO2 levels were higher than today?
   Answer – YES. In fact, we are in one of only TWO periods in the past 600 millions years, where the CO2 levels were LOW. Most other times, the levels were as much as 5-20 times greater than today.
3. Does rising CO2 cause the global temperature to increase, or do rising temperatures cause the CO2 levels to rise?
   Answer – Changes in CO2 Levels Always FOLLOW Changes In Temperature.
   1. The Antarctic Vostok ice core samples clearly show that CO2 levels remain high thousands of years after the Earth enters an ice age.
   2. Therefore, CO2 can not be the driver of climate, but a result.
   3. Cold water stores more CO2 than warm water, so as the globe warms up, CO2 is released from the oceans causing an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. We are still coming out of the “Little Ice Age”, and warming oceans have been releasing stored CO2.
4. How much of a temperature increase can one expect if the CO2 levels are doubled from present levels?
   Answer – Only About 0.3 Degrees The effect of increasing CO2 levels is logarithmic, that is - a Decreasing incremental effect as the CO2 levels Increase.
5. What causes changes in global climate?
   Answer – The SUN. This is the one many people have trouble grasping. The combination of the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit around the sun, the axial tilt of the Earth, and the precession of the Earth’s orbit, result in an ice age approximately every 110,000 years, with warm periods only lasting about 12,000 to 15,000 years.
   1. Just examine the Vostok ice cores, which show the temperature and CO2 levels of the Milankovic Cycles, especially the last peak of about 120,000 years ago. The graphs clearly show that as the global climate temperature plunged from its high, the CO2 levels remained high for several thousand years. This is the cause of the long term climate changes.
   2. Shorter time period climate changes are controlled by the sun-spot activity levels, and by the length of the sun-spot cycles. When there are periods of very low sun-spot numbers the earth cools, and when there are periods of high numbers of sun-spots, the temperature increases. The best theory I have seen is that high levels of sun-spots shield the Earth’s atmosphere from some of the cosmic radiation, which reduces the formation of cloud cover, allowing more sunlight to reach the surface of the Earth. Conversely, when there are low numbers of sun-spots, more cosmic radiation reaches the lower atmosphere, helping form more clouds, which reflect more sunlight, resulting in cooler temperatures. See the work of Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), the DNSC report of 3/2007 by Christiansen, Haigh, and Lundstedt. Also read the article by Dr. Kelvin Kemm, in the 31 Oct 2008 article of Engineering News Online.

Two last questions one might ask –

What are the benefits of increased CO2 levels? Plants love higher levels. Commercial green-houses inject CO2 into the enclosure and raise the levels to 1200 – 1500 parts per million (vs. the 385 ppm we now have).

Why do they do that? There are literally hundreds of University studies which show the plants grow more root mass, more above ground mass, produce more of the “stuff” we grow them for (fruit, grain, wood mass etc.), are more resistant to insects, more resistant to disease, more resistant to drought, and require less water!

Where is the crisis in that?

We need to keep members of the Washington State Legislature informed and accountable.

-- Allen Rogers