The Ghost of Greenhouse Future
SACRAMENTO--Proposition 10, a ballot initiative suspending California’s groundbreaking anti-pollution law, The Global Climate Disruption and Water Vapor Management Act of 2026, is losing ground and appears headed for defeat in next week’s midterm election. According to a Savage Research poll released today, support for Prop 10, which has hovered near 50 percent for three weeks, is now down to 40 percent, with 55 percent of likely voters opposing the initiative..
The polling trend parallels the effort twenty years ago to suspend AB32, California’s then-revolutionary climate control bill, with early support evaporating after well-heeled venture capitalists and alternative energy entrepreneurs kicked-off a homestretch media campaign in favor of strict limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Savage Research pollster Stuart Drippel credits a similar media blitz by the Recyclable Water Council--bankrolled by vapor recovery technology and bottled water investors-- for Prop 10's precipitous decline in the polls. “The latest ads are effectively focusing voters on the potential for high-tech hydroponic farming and home vapor-recovery systems to perform a hat trick: address California’s structural unemployment rate, stubbornly mired over 17 percent for the past decade; recreate a sustainable agriculture sector for the first time since President Obama’s controversial 2016 Wilderness Water executive order; and mitigate global climate disruption by standing up to Big Water.”
Supporters of Proposition 10 claim that AB3200’s mandated cap on the net use of bulk-delivered water will destroy many of California’s remaining private sector jobs—now 25 percent of total employment. Advocates also highlight unpopular energy supply disruptions associated with the move to renewables together with the lack of any noticeable effect on the climate from AB32’s carbon dioxide controls. Opponents argue that investment in high-tech vapor recovery systems will spur economic growth within Wilderness Water conservation limits needed to address Global Climate Disruption. “Water vapor's climate disruption potential is roughly 100 times carbon dioxide's,” says San Jose State University climate scientist Lars Vazne. “We now realize that man-made water vapor emissions—irrigation, car washing, excessive bathtub use—are the real drivers of calamitous disruptions around the world. CO2 was a good start, but only a start on saving the planet.”
In a move to regain momentum, the Proposition 10 advocacy group Water Freedom today endorsed civil disobedience, scheduling a “candlelight vigil” rally beginning at blackout this evening in front of the Capitol. Organizers deny any intent to provoke California Air Resources Board riot police into a violent response, insisting that approved chemo-luminescent (CL) sticks provide insufficient light for participant safety, leaving open flame candles--banned as particulate pollution and wildfire ignition sources—as the only means of ensuring adequate lighting after the scheduled 9 p.m. power shutoff. Proposition 10 opponents plan an environmentally-friendly counter-demonstration nearby. CARB police spokesman Ashley Dimyn urged Water Freedom to move the rally to an earlier hour when electric lighting would be available, adding that officers would be out in force with a focus on maintaining order and public safety.
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Comments :
Aug '10
Re: The Ghost of Greenhouse Future
It isn't climate scientist, it's climate "scientist." Climate isn't science; it's history. It's happened already. Yes, there will be more of it; but you can't do science with climate because you can't perform interpretable experiments with climate. There cannot be arranged "experiment" climate and "control" climate.
As for sustainability, or rather "sustainability," I've already erupted elsewhere.
Semantics is the pastime of the grouchy, and I ordinarily eschew it, but I do feel that on the envirofascism front in particular, the battle is anything but pedantic. Words themselves have to be fought over, and won back.
Re: The Ghost of Greenhouse Future
John H.--Of course you are correct. Just the notion that carbon dioxide today--water vapor tomorrow?--can be classified with a straight face as a "pollutant" is pretty rich. And politically-driven climate "science" offers up the non-disprovable hypothesis--not that anyone is trying very hard on that front anyway, but still--which pretty much takes the field as practiced today out of the realm of science for me also.
Aug '10
Re: The Ghost of Greenhouse Future
Oops, a nonfunctional link. Sorry. The mouseover shows it healthy, but a click is disastrous. Well, never mind. Just imagine someone coupling both the axles and wires of two electric motors, the one to serve as generator for the other, and claiming - declaring, mandating - that it'll run forever, substitute "corn likker" for "electricity," and you have got the idea.
Re: The Ghost of Greenhouse Future
I sometimes think that the good people of California have a death wish.
Jun '10
Re: The Ghost of Greenhouse Future
The first time I read this I didn't comment because I thought it was parody. You're serious!
Re: The Ghost of Greenhouse Future
As serious as a heart attack. I read that Prop 23--the initiative that would shelve our ruinous CO2 cap-and-trade bill, signed by the Governator four years ago when the unemployment rate was 5% or so--is now trailing in the polls. The problem? Millions of dollars on ads by crony capitalists faithfully executing the five year plan for Green Jobs of Tomorrow. The oh-so PC positioning is "dirty" energy versus "clean" energy. Our statist investors are on the clean side.
But those cleantech investments only pay off if the government orders you to buy the company's products--or accomplishes the same thing by making the products you and the other citizens of planet Earth use each day too darned expensive to afford any more.
Assuming our state survives all of this, I'm just speculating on the next "anti-pollution" measure needed to save our planet--and our local CALPERS-dependent investor class.
Jun '10
Re: The Ghost of Greenhouse Future
I feel for you, George. It reminds me of what George Will once called entrepreneurial lawyering. If a problem doesn't exist, make something up and sell the solution. I guess that's easier to do in the Land of the Lotus Eaters than elsewhere in the country. The mind boggles.