Cap and Trade on Airlines -- The President Does Not Support -- And a Bit of Trivia At the End -- Absolutely Nothing To Do With The Bakken

I saw the headline last night but did not read the story. Link here.

The US House of Representatives on a voice vote rejected the EU decision to place cap and trade controls on European airlines. But that was not the best part.

Don noted a bit of trivia with regard to the story that warmed the cockles of my heart and thus thought it deserved posting.

With the legislation, which passed by voice vote, lawmakers joined the airline industry and the Obama administration in opposing the EU Emissions Trading Scheme scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1. The bill now goes to the Senate, where there is currently no companion legislation.

The measure directs the transportation secretary to prohibit U.S. carriers from participating in the program if it is unilaterally imposed. It also tells other federal agencies to take steps necessary to ensure that U.S. carriers are not penalized by the emissions control scheme.

It's hard for me to believe that the president did not support the EU initiative. According to Al Gore, the greatest threat to humankind is global warming, and airlines are some of the biggest offenders of emitting greenhouse gases.

Of course, everything in that last sentence is bogus but that's another story.

By the way, I'm reading a great book: The Great Sea, David Abulafia, c. 2011. From page 6:

Change, when it occurred, took place very slowly, ... around 8000 BC there was a very gradual warming [similar to what might be going on now], and this resulted in changes in flora and fauna [plants and animals] that sometimes set these small groups of people on the move in search of their traditional prey, and sometimes encouraged a search for alternative types of food, especially that provided by the sea. The sea gradually rose, by as must as 120 meters, as the ice caps melted. The contours of the modern Mediterranean become more recognizable as isthmuses turned into islands and sea coast retreated to roughly their current position; but all these was too slow a process to be readily visible..

I can only assume this global warming in 8000 BC was due to all the coal-powered utility plants in wide use in Europe at the time.

The Vikings would come later, and with their coal-powered ships transiting the Atlantic Ocean would cause the global warming that allowed colonizing Iceland, Greenland, and Nova Scotia.