Friday, July 03, 2009

Here's ANOTHER little hidden gem in 'Cap 'n Trade'

You the homeowner may likely be required to retrofit your home to fit some yet to be determined "green" standards before you sell it.

Noteworthy:
"Even though Congress says the states are responsible for carrying out the retrofits, the EPA and the Department of Energy will establish the guidelines and rules for doing so.

'The Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, shall establish goals, guidelines, practices, and standards for accomplishing the purpose stated in subsection (c) [the retrofits],' the bill says.

The program would involve a system of certified auditors, inspectors, and raters who inspect homes and businesses using devices such as infrared cameras (which measure how much heat a building is giving off) to measure their energy efficiency.

The results of these energy audits would then be used to determine what retrofits need to be performed. The audits would examine things like water usage, infrared photography, and pressurized testing to determine the efficiency of door and window seals, and indoor air quality.

Those retrofits would be performed by licensed retrofit contractors using government-approved methods and resources including roofing materials that reflect solar energy.

'[B]uilding retrofits conducted pursuant to a REEP program utilize, especially in all air-conditioned buildings, roofing materials with high solar energy reflectance,' the legislation states.

After the retrofitting is complete, the government – state, local, or federal – will come back and re-inspect the house to determine how much energy has been saved and whether the retrofit is up to federal government standards."
One of the commenters nails it:
"Let me guess, just like Obama's executive order regarding Federally funded projects, only Union contractors will be allowed to refit our homes. I think he is deliberately pushing our buttons to such a limit, that when we refuse to let Federal Inspectors into our homes to see if we have adequate insulation, and then he sends in Union Contractors who will overcharge ...obviously it would have to be prevailing rate...."
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12 comments:

  1. Another example of government making housing "more affordable".

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  2. Remember the nonsense about "this will only cost the average household less than $300 a year"?

    They're hoping you're not paying attention, in much the same way as many Obama voters weren't paying attention in the last election.

    We can't say that we haven't been warned.....

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  3. I support the regulation of carbon dioxide. Cap and Trade probably is probably not what I prefer, but it'll probably have to do.

    (pause to be ridiculed).

    However, provisions like the one detailed in this post should be thrown out. The law should deal exclusively with major business emitters. I'd imagine it could be kept to under 50 pages or so as well.

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  4. "(pause to be ridiculed)."


    You will be, if you don't provide a rationale for your support of this entirely outrageous scam that your soulmates want to inflict the American public.

    Or should I not expect you to ever provide any critical analysis on such an issue?

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  5. the rationale...carbon dioxide contributes greatly to the warming of our planet. (Or as you said on the N&R LTE Blog, 'slower cooling.') In the past when the planet was warmer, oceans were higher along with other things that wouldn't be so great for human civilization.

    I know, I know. You don't agree that global warming exists or at least that man contributes by any significant amount. I think you're ignorant of the science and you think the same of me. I won't argue it with you, unless you have some argument I haven't heard before.

    Regardless, I have yet to be convinced that CO2 should not be regulated in attempts to mitigate the effects of global warming.

    As it is, I'm not particularly fond of Cap and Trade. I think it's a roundabout way of doing things, but it's better than nothing and it's all we've got.

    Definitely though, we can agree that sideways insertions like this retrofit hullabacrap should be opposed.

    have a good day.

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  6. "the rationale...carbon dioxide contributes greatly to the warming of our planet."

    There is no empirical scientific evidence that establishes that.

    None.

    Indeed, there is plenty of empirical evidence that establishes otherwise, that CO2 has NOTHING to do with "global warming".

    There is plenty of evidence that establishes that temperature is the driving element of increased CO2, not the other way around.

    There is plenty of evidence that suggests that the atmosphere is nowhere as sensitive as the Alarmists' computer models need it to be for their outrageous projections to actually work.

    In further fact, evidence exists that the Alarmist looney tooners have gone to great extent to falsify information in several different categories in a failed attempt to prop up an entirely discredited worldview agenda item.

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  7. Conclusion:

    There is no need for regulation of CO2 for ANY reason.

    Period.

    Indeed, there is NO appreciable reduction of C)2 to be achieved by the draconian standards imposed by this bill.

    "Cap 'n Trade" is a huge scam designed to take money away from people for no valid reason, in order that certain parties can become filthy rich by taking advantage of a Big Lie sold as some important action needed for the public good.

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  8. Science is not my strong suit, but I recall that CO2 is a naturally occurring gas which is alternately produced/consumed by plants during their life cycle.
    How and why should we try to regulate something that preceded us on this earth?
    Why do all of these "global warming" issues seem to split on political party lines while the scientists still have no consensus?
    Why should Algore get rich because we're too stupid to rationally analyze facts and think for ourselves?

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  9. jaycee,

    It's that we've been releasing tons and tons of extra CO2, previously sequestered underground for millions of years.

    bubba (posted before at N&R)

    "There is plenty of evidence that establishes that temperature is the driving element of increased CO2, not the other way around."

    Forcing agent? Eh...or a cycle that continuous worsens itself. I'm sure you're referring to the fact that the historical record indicates that CO2 increases lagged behind temperature increases. I'm going to explain this in a simplified way.

    The earth's orbit around the sun changes very subtly due to various physical interactions, causing tiny shifts in how close the earth is to the sun, the angle at which the sunlight strikes the surface of the earth, etc. These are tiny shifts! These cycles are called Milankovitch cycles and can be rather accurately calculated. Scientists have shown that warm periods and ice ages correspond points in Milankovitch cycles that one might expect, making it appear that these were totally dependent on the sun. Don't be fooled. These tiny, tiny changes in angle and distance could only be expected to cause regional pockets of warming.

    This is where your "CO2 as a forcing agent" claim has merit. These localized pockets of warming cause more CO2 to be exhausted from the oceans and bogs would be more active emitting more CO2, methane, and other gases into the atmosphere causing the the temperature to rise more, causing the emission of more gases. causing the temperature to rise more, causing the emission of more....and so on and so forth. The thing is, the carbon dioxide and temperature increases linger long after the appropiate point in the Milankovitch cycle ends. It becomes a self fulfilling cycle until the earth, thousands and thousands of years later, is able to find equilibrium again.

    Frightening is that we humans are emitting more CO2 and other gases than a warming ocean and bogs could ever dream.

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  10. rahrah, can you explain the cyclical warming/cooling phases of our climate over the past thousands of years, specifically those periods before SUV's and humans?

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  11. I think you'll find some of that explanation in my last post.

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  12. "Frightening is that we humans are emitting more CO2 and other gases than a warming ocean and bogs could ever dream."


    It's only frightening for people who are easily fooled into believing that particular Alarmist Looney Toon.

    The facts rebut that little canard quite nicely.

    Excerpt:

    "The atmosphere once had at least 25 times the current CO2 content, we are living at a time when CO2 is the lowest it has been for billions of years, we continue to remove CO2 via carbonate sedimentation from the oceans and the oceans continue to be buffered by water-rock reactions (as shown by Walker et al. 1981)."

    ReplyDelete