President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
July 06, 2009 01:10 AM UTC
25 Comments
Doesn’t the Representative tout alternative energy when it comes to the San Luis Valley? Maybe I am wrong on this, but perhaps we have another “both ways” politician. Oil & Gas vs. alternative (clean) energy. So we now know where his “line in the sand” is, status quo.
has always been a DINO. Why is there so much surprise about his vote?
The ability of Colorado Dems to take over the state and federal delegations starting in 2004 was because of the party’s willingness to recruit moderate to conservative candidates. The Salazar brothers are the two best examples. Call them DINOs if you want, but are we really nostalgic for the election night celebration of 2002 when the only thing the party had to cheer was the re-election of Diana DeGete and Mark Udall?
CD -3 is a complicated district and I’ll give Salazar the benefit of doubt. The measure passed the House without his support and if an inconsequential no vote gives him some credibility with his conservative base, why start the DINO name calling? Do we really need to start with the purity tests?
He’s a “moderate” in a “conservative” district.
…and AGW have completely different bodies of evidence supporting them.
It’s incredibly offensive to me when people act like you believe in a flat earth when you question the science and especially a giant tax increase as a solution to AGW.
There are climate scientists that disagree with the models being touted by pro-AGW folks.
But agree that Salazar is a very conservative Dem and this isn’t exactly a huge surprise. This is the House, after all. Salazar’s district is hardly comparable to those of Polis or DeGette. Leaders have lots more votes to work with than in the Senate. No need for a super majority. Not terribly surprising.
and nuclear physics have completely different bodies of evidence supporting them.
So what? (And what personal evidence do you have that the earth is spherical?)
That anthropogenic CO2 can and will influence climate has over 100 years of theoretical and experimental evidence supporting it.
I find it personally offensive when people make claims that suggest they know more than the overwhelming majority of all the world’s actual and practicing climate scientists.
Of course there are scientists who disagree with “the models.” (Whatever you mean by this. “The models” that I am familiar with show a range of possible outcomes. Some scientists disagree with one extreme or the other, or whether one factor or another likely plays more or less of a role, etc.) To make some general claim about scientists “disagreeing” with “the models” is to make no claim of substance about the utility or accuracy of “the models.”
Disagreement is an everyday fact of science. You can’t get three experts on the same topic to hold a conversation for longer than 5 minutes without coming up with something they disagree on. There are scientists who disagree about what are the predominant drivers and rates of evolution; scientists who disagree about how ecosystems are structured; scientists who disagree about the correct scientific names for species; et cetera & ad nauseum.
It is one thing to admit, as a non-expert, that personally one is not sure of whether or not anthropogenic CO2 leads to directional change in climate averages. I have no trouble with this level of honesty. Indeed, I respect those who make this admission.
On the other hand, to make personal claims (assuming you are a non-expert) that climate change is not supported by the science is to announce your own ignorance (as well as inflated ego).
But then, to make strident claims about the science behind climate change because you are not satisfied with the proposed policies is, well, just an admission that you are confused and can’t distinguish the real world from ideology.
Of one thing I am certain, you are smarter than this, LB. But for some reason you have blinders on when ever this topic comes up. I don’t know why, but maybe someday you will reveal this. Until this happens, I will continue to admire and respect you on many other topics. But I will continue to call you out on this one.
Is that we’ve seemed to come up with a solution that looks like it could devastate the US economy, particularly if the countries that pollute in many other ways, far worse than the US, sit back and watch us self-destruct and do nothing about their own carbon emissions.
As far as the science, I’m on the fence. But even you admit there’s conflict between some very intelligent people on Co2’s effect on climate, and the earth’s ability to overcome it naturally.
This is not directed at you personally, but nobody on a blog should get to call anyone else a mouth-breather when there are PhD’s out there that disagree with the consensus. That’s why the debate goes nowhere with people like me that are rational, and interested in learning about exactly what we are basing a gigantic new tax and arm of government on. I don’t want to be told ‘How dare you ask about the science to be delivered in an unbiased manner?!? The science is settled! Now stop asking these silly questions and go get your checkbook!’
It also doesn’t help your cause that a goof like Al Gore, who’s become incredibly rich by screeching about climate change is at the forefront of the movement, and that Nancy Pelosi is writing the legislation that will ‘save’ us.
I’m a native Coloradoan. I grew up backpacking, and hiking. I spent whole summers in the mountains and learned a lot from my stepdad who was building solar panels and talking about environmentalism long before most others were. I consider myself someone who is a conservationist. I tread lightly and become infuriated with people that make a mess in the wilderness. I’d think I’d be someone that you pro-AGW guys would want to get on your side.
Ardy, are you comfortable that the last ten years might not be hip to the climate models that are being used to justify changing the world economy like never before?
Are you satisfied that this solution will make a bit of difference in decreasing the parts-per-million Co2 content in the atmosphere?
Here’s an example of what I’m referring to:
Is that 100% accurate and ‘settled’? Who is behind that site? Is it creepy to you at all?
I have been wanting to have the ‘battle royale’ diary on climate change, becaust there are some smart cookies here, and if I’m going to digest it and learn, it’s a good chance. But I also want some tough questions answered without condescension. I have to run with the kids right now, but I’ll start working on the diary. Cheers.
was meant in jest, as a tease to provoke discussion…
I seem to recall a little baiting on your behalf once or twice LB, so don’t take this personally, like I didn’t you then.
I believe that it is possible to ‘believe’ in evolution, doubt AGW, and be a scientist.
I do find it ironic that on a lot of message boards many of the people saying that the climate scientists (who agree with AGW) are manipulating science, or not really scientists (but are merely looking for grants), also disagree with evolution and science generally…
I have been saving some of my favorites and might post them later…
On another post…
I never called Salazar a DINO nor suggested there be a purity test. Different issues are bottom line for different people–one person’s purity test is another person’s bottom line issue.
I wasn’t suggesting that JS be primaried, unelected, or switch parties–just that I think he is wrong on this vote, I think he has tremendous support within his district for it (had he voted the right way), and I think he is safe enough politically to have made it.
I do think that we should hold politician accountable. When they make us happy we should sing their praises, and when they don’t we should let them know that as well.
but you’ve no right to demand “answers to tough questions without condescension” on one hand when you call AGW people “flat earthers” in another.
I was relating being referred to as a flat-earther, not calling anyone else that.
I don’t know how I misread that. Sorry.
but poor reason for reaching a conclusion. On any matter of significant research, there will always be people who disagree with the scientific consensus. If they are engaged in research and trying to provide objective counterexamples, that’s a good thing. If they are crackpots, then the rest of the community ignores them. Both kinds exist.
But, the anti-science tactic of the last 20 years has been to gather together names and make the claim that, on the basis of a few people who are challenging the most likely views, we ought to all hold off on taking any kind of action. Of course, there will never be absolute consensus. If there were, we wouldn’t need scientists any more! What all this really comes down to is, essentially, that if you can find a couple people with Ph.D.s out there exploring different angles, then that frees you to ignore all the evidence and believe what your ideology or religion tells you to believe. Essentially, it’s an excuse to throw away evidence and go back to politics.
So I support people with expertise trying to support unlikely or unusual theories. I don’t support people with no relevant qualifications whatsoever using the names of a few scientists to justify ignoring the heaping, giant body of evidence that there’s a problem.
I think, as a respinse to this iseological tactic, making statements like the one you quote is significatly more honest than pretending the question is still somehow “not settled”.
You just demonstrated what I’m talking about. Is Lindzen anti-science? He seems to me to be qualified to make an argument related to climate. It doesn’t prove to me that he’s correct, but he does give me pause when people tell me not to question because science is ‘settled’.
To me, that removes credibility from the AGW side when any opposition to this theory is dismissed out of hand. Of course I’m not a scientist, but I’m still capable of reason. I’m entitled to probe the rationale behind this massive anti-economic mess of a bill because it affects my taxes.
It’s seemingly a pathology – the insulting response to a relevant question particularly regarding a “solution” to AGW.
So I’m happy that Lindzen is doing his research. I think he’s qualified to do it. To the extent that Lindzen is doing science — i.e., raising questions about the accuracy of specific models of climate — he’s doing great work. I also think the best judge of his work is the remainder of the scientific community in his field, which has in general found it not supported by enough evidence right now to constitute a serious high-level reason to doubt that human activity is a major cause of global warming.
There’s a difference between that, though, and the policy debate. Policy is made based on the best information available at the time; and the VAST majority of scientists working on climate change don’t agree that human activity hasn’t contributed to climate change. There’s no reason to take Lindzen’s view as equal to that of the hundreds of scientists, very many of equally good qualifications, that say he’s wrong. If in fact he’s right, he may eventually convince other qualified scientists that they are incorrrect. He’ll do it by presenting objective evidence and backing it up with experimental results.
Is the cause of climate change up in the air? Of course! There are hundreds (thousands?) of people devoting their lives to researching it right this moment. We have a general picture of what it looks like the answer will be, but there are still lots of people (most of whom believe that humans cause global warming) asking questions, poking at inconsistencies, and trying to get the picture clear about what exactly is happening. Maybe in a hundred years, the question will be settled… but I doubt it. Nevertheless, the preponderance of evidence is that we can’t wait a hundred years for the final answer to come in, at least if we want to avoid mass starvation, illness, and death.
So there we have it: Lindzen is, of course, not anti-science, at least insofar as he does it for a living. But the ideological groups that take one scientist’s word over the big picture that comes from the research of hundreds of scientists all over the world, simply because it supports their ideological views… well, I think anti-science is an accurate way to describe that position.
Thank you. My point is that if what you said is true, how could we possibly have come up with a solution that’s so poisonous to our economy, and is it wise to do it knowing China and India will laugh their asses off while our economy collapses and Co2 continues to rise?
and disregarding where CD went with it, and using it to bolster your economics point, which relates to the policy matter and not the climate change matter.
A proximate cause of climate change is CO2.
CO2 is “up in the air.”
Thus, the cause of climate change is up in the air.
Hee hee.
The fact that there is disagreement over exactly how global warming is caused does NOT change the fact that an overwhelming mass of evidence points to human causation. The insistence on 100% certainty in this case is completely ludicrous; in practically all other policy decisions, the facts are far less clear, far more up for debate, far less one-sided, and yet we don’t allow them to paralyze us into inaction. We certainly killed a million people in Iraq over something that at best looks like a coin toss of evidence (at worst like intentional deception) compared to the weight of decades of evidence on global warming.
The fact is that the science supporting human causes of global warming is some of the firmest factual basis available for any policy decision the U.S. will make in a decade. So perhaps you’ll understand when it looks disingenuous when you pull out the uncertainty card on this issue, of all of them you could have chosen.
LB, sorry that I can’t be more timely in my responses to you. I am just slammed for the next few days.
As I’ve mentioned before, it is pointless to get into a discussion about the utility/benefits of policy options if we don’t even agree with what represents the science behind the description of the problem.
You need to be more careful in separating your dislike of particular policies from the careful assessment of the science.
So, my short answer is ‘Yes.’ The science is as settled as any scientific question can be. Humans are producing CO2. This human produced CO2 is resulting in dramatic, perhaps even unprecedented, increases in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Atmospheric CO2 has a direct and predictable effect on the atmosphere’s ability to reflect and absorb longwave radiation. This change in the atmosphere will result in increases in temperature. Dramatic, fast increases. Simple physics.
That’s settled. Here are where scientific “disagreements” come in … what are the roles of physical, chemical & biological feedbacks? How many are negative vs. positive feedback mechanisms? Which will predominate? How do they interact? Are there any “tipping points?” Are there points where human technology advances can influence the feedbacks in positive ways? Etc.
Then, after the science is out of the way, we still must assess the ability for our politic-socio-economic systems to respond and interact.
Colorado Pols, for all its virtues, is surely the wrong place for this:
Really, who cares what a bunch of non-experts think about a scientific question? Whatever we think or write has absolutely no impact on whether or not the science is accurate. I’ll participate as I can, but I have reservations that anything will be solved at the end.
This might be the right place for a discussion of the potential implications of this or that policy. But, this would be merely an academic exercise if we have fundamental disagreements on scientists’ abilities to describe the problem.
If you are serious about wanting to be better able to evaluate the science, go participate in the discussions at RealClimate and engage with some active climate scientists.
We should indeed question votes we disagree with, and that doesn’t mean we are calling for the heads of those whose votes we question. Well done.
Here are a few reasons why I believe climate change is a result of man-made pollution.
* There are scores if not hundreds of peer-reviewed studies supporting this hypothesis and zero (that I know of) refuting it.
* Peer review is science’s fail safe when there are disagreements. Learned scientists are as prone to personal prejudices as anyone else, so the rigorous methodology of science and peer review go a long way making sure that one’s fallible opinion doesn’t become accepted fact.
* When you bring up skeptics, first make sure that they’re actual climate scientists, then keep in mind the Einstein-Bohr debates; if Einstein could be wrong about quantum physics (as peer review and the scientific method bore out), then a respected climate scientist can be wrong if he doesn’t have peer review on his or her side.
* Finally, knowing how much humans worldwide consume in fossil fuels every day, coupled with the rate that forests are disappearing, ought to be enough to at least accept the likelihood that human activity is impacting global climate.
There are many fine points to work out regarding what can or should be done about this. But in light of all this, I personally need more compelling counter-evidence that human-affected climate change is NOT taking place right now.
I’m in his district.
Personally, I’ll forgive him if he makes sure that we get health care reform with a public option this year. Otherwise, this will go into the list of attempts by Salazar to fence-sit.
The bottom line in this district is that Salazar doesn’t have to vote to please environmentalists or greens. We aren’t the ones giving him money. I don’t know who is.
He has done a good job on Grand Mesa and some other issues, so he can be an ally at times. I agree that any support he is getting is from people who would never vote for him.
The other part of the equation he faces is that large parts of his district receive a lot of money in property taxes from the gas companies. I had a very depressing conversation with a friend this weekend. The gist was that, even though an enviro, this friend felt the state has gone to far in regulating drilling. The obvious arguments about the price is lower, not higher, and it doesn’t make sense to drill right now went right past. Hearing from clients in the oil & gas services business that they are being screwed is the only thing heard. And failing to acknowledge that these companies love to play the victim is par for the course, too. Also. The gas companies have done a good job of getting the misinformation out there and will continue to do so. This gives Salazar a weak spot on the energy issue. So, I’ll give him a (grudging) pass on this vote.
Hi,
I’m researching how corporate independent expenditure influence state elections. You mentioned that in Garfield county an illegal corporate expenditure may have thrown the election. Does anyone have more details – news, statistics, anything – that might back this up and explain more? Additional examples where corporate independent expenditures changed the election in any state would be great too!
I know that Colorado bans corporate independent expenditures. Was this ban in response to a particular scandal? When did it originate? Any official sources I could use would be of much help.
Thanks for the help!
Colorado Independent:
“Fear of Rio Blanco-style energy impact fees colored Garfield County election”
“Anatomy of a ‘stolen election’: Ex-Garfield County judge still seething”