Last year a group of six scientists and journalists began compiling a list of the most important science-related questions the presidential candidates should answer. The result was Science Debate 2008, a project that eventually expanded to include input from 38,000 scientists and citizens, who sent in 3,400 questions. Working with various scientific organizations, the six founders narrowed the submissions down to 14 questions about health, research, the environment and science.
Both Senator McCain and Senator Obama answered the questions, and their answers can be read here. However, it’s easy for a politician to make promises, so Popular Science investigated both senator’s voting records to see if their history matched up with their promises for the future. Each day for the next two weeks we'll present an analysis of the candidate’s voting records as compared with their answers to the Science Debate 2008 questions. You can follow the entire series at popsci.com/election, where you can also sign up for an RSS feed.
In true political fashion, the candidates have come miles to near-agreement, and now haggle over the remaining inches. Both candidates agree that global warming poses a serious threat and needs to be tackled immediately with carbon emission reduction. Both candidates want to institute a cap and trade system to make carbon reduction market friendly. But do they have the record to back it up?
Most recently, Senator McCain and Senator Obama punted on the final version of HR 6, the 2007 Energy Bill. They, along with Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton (gee, what do all those people have in common?) joined Chuck Hagel as the only members of the Senate to abstain from voting on the motion to concur the Senate bill with the House bill so it could be sent to the President and made a law.
The bill contained $3.8 billion in tax credits for advanced coal technology, the export of which Obama featured prominently in his Science Debates 2008 answer. The bill also contained an order to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020. In Senator McCain’s Science Debate answer, he specifically says, “I will strengthen the penalties for violating CAFE standards, and make certain they are effectively enforced.” Senator Obama did vote for amendments to the bill that added money for the research of alternative fuels, but those amendments mainly supported ethanol, which contributes to global warming. So while neither candidate voted against the final bill, neither of them supported it either.
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Both candidates seem to be true believers who think that global warming is a problem and it is human-caused. Of course they're both wrong. It doesn't take much intelligence to analyze graphs of CO2 levels and global temperatures over the last 100 years or so and conclude that there is little connection, if any, between the two. That doesn't stop politicians from proposing pie-in-the-sky schemes to cap carbon emissions and trade carbon credits even though it will have no effect on global temperatures. As Bjorn Lomborg has suggested, we could do so many more useful things with all the money wasted on this issue.
From laurenra7:
"It doesn't take much intelligence to analyze graphs of CO2 levels and global temperatures over the last 100 years or so and conclude that there is little connection, if any, between the two."
1. Put down the crack pipe
2. Look up "critical thinking" someplace other than Wikipedia
3. Try again...
Laurenra is correct. If you dont understand these concepts, look them up on your own time before you mount an argument influenced by the mainstream media or tree hugging activists.
1. There is no scientifically valid mechanism for CO2 causing global warming.
2. Oceans regulate the amount of CO2 in the air through absorption equilibrium.
3. Water vapor would swamp any effects by CO2, if greenhouse gasses were really creating global warming.
4. The public is being misled through propaganda to assume CO2 is like a sheet of plastic holding in heat.
Once again I think Obama kicked McBush right to the curb!
www.anonymity.at.tc
Did I miss something along the way? I thought the weather specific scientific community had already decided we were about 2 years into a cooling cycle headed toward the next Ice Age. Can't remember where on the Internet I saw it; but, some world wide consortium of weather scientists, and a think tank in Florida couldn't find the global hot spot that should be present should man-kind or animal-kind be the cause of Global Warming. The have analyzed polar ice thickness, surveyed average temperatures, and several other indicators that they utilize, and decided by about 2040 we will be in a dangerously cool summer situation which will adversely affect crop growing seasons. They have come up with a theory that the planet goes through a 300 to 400 year cycle of heating and cooling and we passed the high temperature point in the cycle about 2 years ago. I think I found the report somewhere on a link, off about two or three other links, while perusing the National Hurricane web site.
from New York, New York
Great comments guys! Let's get this discussion rockin' the new Popsci.com Elections forum: http://www.popsci.com/forum. Go ahead in and help kick off our great debate.
Taylor
Popsci.com
Confucius say: "In room where everyone is lying, who do you believe?" Time for everyone to learn enough science, math and logic to begin debunking all the lies, from both sides. Lets start with "Cap and Trade". How does it work, and is it good or bad? Simplify an example to a world with only 2 electricity producing plants: one is very clean and the other is a big polluter. The first is awarded millions of dollars in green-tag credits it can sell to polluters. The second has 2 choices: 1) spend billions on smokestack scrubbers and carbon sequestration equipment, or, 2) buy green-tags from company one. If our dirty producer picks option number 1, then it will also be paying gigantic fines at the same time it is paying billions for the "cleaning" equipment for its plant - not a likely choice. So it buys green-tags. Same pollution, but company number one gets millions for selling its green tags, and the directors all get million-dollar Christmas bonuses. Some will say "Eventually things will change", but why wait for "eventually"? Wouldn't the world be better off if we just legally required companies that emit too much to spend the money on equipment to fix the problem, now?