Leo vs. science: vanishing evidence for climate change
By Tom Harris and Bob Carter
Leo vs. science: vanishing evidence for climate change
Was it "Titanic" that made him an expert? Leonardo DiCaprio speaks at the State Department's "Our Ocean" conference earlier this year.
Photo: Startraksphoto.com
In the runup to the Sept. 23 UN Climate Summit in New York, Leonardo DiCaprio is releasing a series of films about the “climate crisis.”
The first is “Carbon,” which tells us the world is threatened by a “carbon monster.” Coal, oil, natural gas and other carbon-based forms of energy are causing dangerous climate change and must be turned off as soon as possible, DiCaprio says.
But he has identified the wrong monster. It is the climate scare itself that is the real threat to civilization.
DiCaprio is an actor, not a scientist; it’s no real surprise that his film is sensationalistic and error-riddled. Other climate-change fantasists, who do have a scientific background, have far less excuse.
Science is never settled, but the current state of “climate change” science is quite clear: There is essentially zero evidence that carbon dioxide from human activities is causing catastrophic climate change.
Yes, the “executive summary” of reports from the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change continues to sound the alarm — but the summary is written by the politicians. The scientific bulk of the report, while still tinged with improper advocacy, has all but thrown in the towel.
And the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change lists thousands of scientific papers that either debunk or cast serious doubt on the supposed “consensus” model.
Oregon-based physicist Gordon Fulks sums it up well: “CO2 is said to be responsible for global warming that is not occurring, for accelerated sea-level rise that is not occurring, for net glacial and sea ice melt that is not occurring . . . and for increasing extreme weather that is not occurring.”
Consider:
According to NASA satellites and all ground-based temperature measurements, global warming ceased in the late 1990s. This when CO2 levels have risen almost 10 percent since 1997. The post-1997 CO2 emissions represent an astonishing 30 percent of all human-related emissions since the Industrial Revolution began. That we’ve seen no warming contradicts all CO2-based climate models upon which global-warming concerns are founded.
Rates of sea-level rise remain small and are even slowing, over recent decades averaging about 1 millimeter per year as measured by tide gauges and 2 to 3 mm/year as inferred from “adjusted” satellite data. Again, this is far less than what the alarmists suggested.
Satellites also show that a greater area of Antarctic sea ice exists now than any time since space-based measurements began in 1979. In other words, the ice caps aren’t melting.
A 2012 IPCC report concluded that there has been no significant increase in either the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events in the modern era. The NIPCC 2013 report concluded the same. Yes, Hurricane Sandy was devastating — but it’s not part of any new trend.
The climate scare, Fulks sighs, has “become a sort of societal pathogen that virulently spreads misinformation in tiny packages like a virus.” He’s right — and DiCaprio’s film is just another vector for spreading the virus.
The costs of feeding the climate-change “monster” are staggering. According to the Congressional Research Service, from 2001 to 2014 the US government spent $131 billion on projects meant to combat human-caused climate change, plus $176 billion for breaks for anti-CO2 energy initiatives.
Federal anti-climate-change spending is now running at $11 billion a year, plus tax breaks of $20 billion a year. That adds up to more than double the $14.4 billion worth of wheat produced in the United States in 2013.
Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, calculates that the European Union’s goal of a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, currently the most severe target in the world, will cost almost $100 billion a year by 2020, or more than $7 trillion over the course of this century.
Lomborg, a supporter of the UN’s climate science, notes that this would buy imperceptible improvement: “After spending all that money, we would not even be able to tell the difference.”
Al Gore was right in one respect: Climate change is a moral issue — but that’s because there is nothing quite so immoral as well-fed, well-housed Westerners assuaging their consciences by wasting huge amounts of money on futile anti-global-warming policies, using money that could instead go to improve living standards in developing countries.
That is where the moral outrage should lie. Perhaps DiCaprio would like to make a film about it?
Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition. Bob Carter is former professor and head of the School of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia.
http://nypost.com/2014/09/14/leo-v-science-vanishing-evidence-for-climate-change/
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Showing posts with label cap and trade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cap and trade. Show all posts
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Monday, July 22, 2013
Obama’s DOJ Demagogues the Zimmerman Case
Obama’s DOJ Demagogues the Zimmerman Case
by John Hinderaker in Crime, Liberals, Obama administration
Today Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the annual NAACP convention in Orlando. He took the opportunity to demagogue the Trayvon Martin case, using it as a pretext to assure the NAACP, an organization that has sunk into irrelevance, at best, that it is still vitally important. He also went out of his way to attack “stand your ground” self-defense laws.
Anyone who knows anything about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is aware that Florida’s “stand your ground” law played no part in it. That aspect of Florida’s self-defense law was not invoked or relied upon by the defense, and it obviously did not apply to the facts of the case. (More here, if this is new to you.) Zimmerman’s actions were proper, and were vindicated by the jury, under centuries-old standards of self-defense.
The fact that Holder attacked “stand your ground” laws today has been widely reported. What has not been so widely noted is that he implicitly acknowledged that the issue had nothing to do with the Zimmerman case:
Holder also took the opportunity to demagogue guns:
Holder’s demagoguery has extended, most shamefully, to setting up a DOJ “tip line” to solicit information purporting to show that George Zimmerman is a racist:
UPDATE: George Zimmerman’s brother Robert calls on Eric Holder to “stop the witch hunt.”. Don’t hold your breath, as long as Barack Obama thinks the witch hunt can pay political dividends.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/obamas-doj-demagogues-the-zimmerman-case.php
Today Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the annual NAACP convention in Orlando. He took the opportunity to demagogue the Trayvon Martin case, using it as a pretext to assure the NAACP, an organization that has sunk into irrelevance, at best, that it is still vitally important. He also went out of his way to attack “stand your ground” self-defense laws.
Anyone who knows anything about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is aware that Florida’s “stand your ground” law played no part in it. That aspect of Florida’s self-defense law was not invoked or relied upon by the defense, and it obviously did not apply to the facts of the case. (More here, if this is new to you.) Zimmerman’s actions were proper, and were vindicated by the jury, under centuries-old standards of self-defense.
The fact that Holder attacked “stand your ground” laws today has been widely reported. What has not been so widely noted is that he implicitly acknowledged that the issue had nothing to do with the Zimmerman case:
Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation’s attention, it’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods. (sustained applause) These laws try to fix something that was never broken. There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if – and the “if” is important – no safe retreat is available.So Holder purported to divorce his swipe at “stand your ground” from the Zimmerman case. Of course, his audience didn’t hear it that way.
But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely. By allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety. The list of resulting tragedies is long and – unfortunately – has victimized too many who are innocent. It is our collective obligation – we must stand our ground – (applause) to ensure that our laws reduce violence, and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent.
Holder also took the opportunity to demagogue guns:
It’s time to strengthen our collective resolve to combat gun violence….But the jury found that Zimmerman acted in self-defense. If he hadn’t used his gun, Trayvon Martin may very well have beaten him to death, as Zimmerman said Martin threatened to do. As we pointed out here, self-defense is not “gun violence.”
Holder’s demagoguery has extended, most shamefully, to setting up a DOJ “tip line” to solicit information purporting to show that George Zimmerman is a racist:
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday afternoon appealed to civil rights groups and community leaders, nationally and in Sanford, for help investigating whether a federal criminal case might be brought against George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, one advocate said. …Perez, as we have noted many times, is a disgrace who never should have been confirmed to that post.
“They were calling on us to actively refer anyone who had any information,” that might build a case against Zimmerman for either a civil rights violation or a hate crime, Arnwine said. “They said they would very aggressively investigate this case.”
Arnwine said the call was convened at about 3:30 p.m. by Tom Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice….
That email address, which is now in operation, is Sanford.florida@usdoj.gov. …As we have written repeatedly over the years, Barack Obama has introduced the concept of gangster government to the United States. But this is beyond the pale: the Obama administration has publicly solicited slander, directed against a private citizen who has already been acquitted of the only misdeed of which he has been accused. The Obama administration, it seems to me, has crossed the Rubicon. Its gangsterism should be condemned by all people of good faith, regardless of their political persuasion.
During the call, DOJ officials announced they had set up a way for people to send email tips that could help aid in their investigation. The email address will be operational later this week.
UPDATE: George Zimmerman’s brother Robert calls on Eric Holder to “stop the witch hunt.”. Don’t hold your breath, as long as Barack Obama thinks the witch hunt can pay political dividends.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/obamas-doj-demagogues-the-zimmerman-case.php
Labels:
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Sunday, July 7, 2013
Global Warming in a Few Slides
Global Warming in a Few Slides
by John Hinderaker in Climate
Dr. John Christy participated in a conference on global warming last month, and presented some power points that make several points with respect to the ongoing climate debate. All of these observations will be familiar to Power Line readers, but Dr. Christy’s visuals are effective. You can view the power point slides here, and the accompanying text here. The following are some of Christy’s slides.
Tornadoes are not becoming more frequent. On the contrary:


Snow cover in the northern hemisphere, where the most plausible claims of warming have been made, is not diminishing:

In the U.S., the climate is getting neither wetter nor dryer:

High temperature records are not being set with unusual frequency:

The climate models that are the only basis for warming alarmism are refuted by observation, and therefore are simply wrong:

And, finally, even if the U.S. were to adopt unrealistically harsh measures to restrict carbon output by impoverishing Americans, the effect on the Earth’s climate–assuming the models are right–would be close to zero:

Global warming alarmism is, in my opinion, the worst scientific fraud in world history.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/global-warming-in-a-few-slides.php
Dr. John Christy participated in a conference on global warming last month, and presented some power points that make several points with respect to the ongoing climate debate. All of these observations will be familiar to Power Line readers, but Dr. Christy’s visuals are effective. You can view the power point slides here, and the accompanying text here. The following are some of Christy’s slides.
Tornadoes are not becoming more frequent. On the contrary:
Snow cover in the northern hemisphere, where the most plausible claims of warming have been made, is not diminishing:
In the U.S., the climate is getting neither wetter nor dryer:
High temperature records are not being set with unusual frequency:
The climate models that are the only basis for warming alarmism are refuted by observation, and therefore are simply wrong:
And, finally, even if the U.S. were to adopt unrealistically harsh measures to restrict carbon output by impoverishing Americans, the effect on the Earth’s climate–assuming the models are right–would be close to zero:
Global warming alarmism is, in my opinion, the worst scientific fraud in world history.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/global-warming-in-a-few-slides.php
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Green Weenie of the Week: Jerry Brown
Green Weenie of the Week: Jerry Brown
by Steven Hayward in California, Green Weenie Award
Now I know what you’re thinking: doesn’t California Governor Jerry Brown deserve a coveted Power Line Green Weenie lifetime achievement award for some of the things he did 35 years ago, when he was governor first time around? Goes without saying. It was back during Brown’s “Moonbeam” years that California embarked on its dirigisme energy policy, with some of the first major subsidies for wind and solar power that gave the nation its first major wind farms at Tehachapi and Altamont Passes, both of which produce about the same amount of electricity as a coal fired power plant, but take up 100 times the land area, not to mention more steel, etc.
Right now Brown is a champion of California’s recent mandate for the state to generate one-third its electricity from renewable sources by the year 2020. California has been nudging the energy market since back in the 1970s, and, like the Soviet economy in the mid-20th century, these efforts have been judged to be a great success. Starting under Brown in the mid-1970s, California embraced a “negawatt” strategy of encouraging energy conservation (typically called “demand-side management,” or DSM) rather than siting new power sources, emphasizing more efficient appliance and building standards along with renewable energy from wind and solar power. (Oh yeah: those rolling blackouts back around 2000? Those were Enron’s fault. Rinse and repeat.)
On the surface the result looks impressive on the surface: since 1970, while national per capital electricity consumption has risen by about one-third, per capita electricity consumption in California has remained flat. Today the average Californian uses 40 percent less electricity than the national average. Thus, even though California’s household electricity rates are about one third higher than the national average (15 cents per Kwh in California versus 10 cents for the nation, according to recent Energy Information Administration figures), California consumers don’t have to spend appreciably more than citizens of other states. No harm, no foul.
Problem is, there’s a whole stack of studies from researchers at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and elsewhere that conclude California’s energy profile has much more to do with its milder climate and its shrinking industrial base than deliberate policy. Just about every energy intensive industry, such as aerospace, that once called California home has left. The economists who’ve looked at the matter closely found that only about 20 percent of the difference in California’s energy use can be attributed to policy. One study out of Berkeley actually found that the various energy efficiency mandates probably increase energy consumption in new construction—a phenomenon well known in the energy efficiency trade as the “rebound effect.”
All of this is preface for Jerry Brown’s latest act of prestidigitation involving California’s attempt to solve global warming in one state: California’s cap and trade policy. California adopted its own cap and trade policy a few years ago, with the revenues supposedly dedicated to green energy and other environmental projects. Guess what mom? Jerry Brown decided to raid the first $500 million in permit auction fees to help pay for welfare benefits in the state’s general fund. The Wall Street Journal is all over this story today, with a warning for the nation as a whole:

UPDATE: Actually, if we just tweak his existing portrait just a little, we’re more than halfway to Munch-land (either that or we’ve made him a space alien):

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/green-weenie-of-the-week-jerry-brown-2.php
Right now Brown is a champion of California’s recent mandate for the state to generate one-third its electricity from renewable sources by the year 2020. California has been nudging the energy market since back in the 1970s, and, like the Soviet economy in the mid-20th century, these efforts have been judged to be a great success. Starting under Brown in the mid-1970s, California embraced a “negawatt” strategy of encouraging energy conservation (typically called “demand-side management,” or DSM) rather than siting new power sources, emphasizing more efficient appliance and building standards along with renewable energy from wind and solar power. (Oh yeah: those rolling blackouts back around 2000? Those were Enron’s fault. Rinse and repeat.)
Problem is, there’s a whole stack of studies from researchers at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and elsewhere that conclude California’s energy profile has much more to do with its milder climate and its shrinking industrial base than deliberate policy. Just about every energy intensive industry, such as aerospace, that once called California home has left. The economists who’ve looked at the matter closely found that only about 20 percent of the difference in California’s energy use can be attributed to policy. One study out of Berkeley actually found that the various energy efficiency mandates probably increase energy consumption in new construction—a phenomenon well known in the energy efficiency trade as the “rebound effect.”
All of this is preface for Jerry Brown’s latest act of prestidigitation involving California’s attempt to solve global warming in one state: California’s cap and trade policy. California adopted its own cap and trade policy a few years ago, with the revenues supposedly dedicated to green energy and other environmental projects. Guess what mom? Jerry Brown decided to raid the first $500 million in permit auction fees to help pay for welfare benefits in the state’s general fund. The Wall Street Journal is all over this story today, with a warning for the nation as a whole:
California expects to generate $500 million this year from auctioning off permits to emit carbon, and between $2 billion and $14 billion annually by 2015. This rich new vein of revenues was supposed to flow to green programs (e.g., solar subsidies), but Governor Jerry Brown cut a deal with Democrats in the legislature to seize this year’s proceeds to finance more generous welfare and Medicaid benefits. Environmentalists are suddenly stunned to discover that they’re not exempt from Sacramento’s generally accepted accounting principle of raiding internal accounts to backfill the budget. . .By the way, while we’re on the subject of Jerry Brown, note above his official portrait, which appears on the third floor of the state capitol in Sacramento. I’ve often wondered how long it might take someone to notice if you stuck a piece of chewing gum on it. In any case, Brown’s office won’t yet say whether he’ll have a second official portrait done for his non-consecutive governorship, but if he does, I suggest one modeled after this, which seems more appropriate for California’s long suffering citizens.
California Democrats are proving that the real point of cap and trade is to give politicians another revenue stream for income redistribution while dodging accountability for raising taxes. That’s worth keeping in mind when liberals resurrect the scheme for the entire U.S.
UPDATE: Actually, if we just tweak his existing portrait just a little, we’re more than halfway to Munch-land (either that or we’ve made him a space alien):
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/green-weenie-of-the-week-jerry-brown-2.php
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Global Warming: Was It Just A Beautiful Dream After All?
Global Warming: Was It Just A Beautiful Dream After All?
Like most of you, I yearn for shorter winters, more shirt-sleeve weather, less lashing from frigid winds. As a confirmed New Yorker, I’m not willing to do what millions have done: move to the sunbelt. I want warmer weather here in the Big City.
But I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming. I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather. It’s enough to make one doubt the “settled science” of the government-funded doom-sayers.
Remember 1979? That was the year of “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, of “The Dukes of Hazard” on TV, and of “ Kramer vs. Kramer” on the silver screen. It was the year the Shah was forced out of Iran. It was before the web, before the personal computer, before the cell phone, before voicemail and answering machines. But not before the global warming campaign.
In January of 1979, a New York Times article was headlined: “Experts Tell How Antarctic Ice Could Cause Widespread Floods.” The abstract in the Times archives says: “If the West Antarctic ice sheet slips into the sea, as some glaciologists believe is possible, boats could be launched from the bottom steps of the Capitol in Washington and a third of Florida would be under water, a climate specialist said today.”
By 1981 (think “Chariots of Fire“), the drum beat had taken effect. Quoting from the American Institute of Physics website: “A 1981 survey found that more than a third of American adults claimed they had heard or read about the greenhouse effect.”
So where’s the warming? Where are the gondolas pulling up to the Capitol? Where are the encroaching seas in Florida? Or anywhere? Where is the climate change which, for 33 years, has been just around the corner?
A generation and a half into climate change, née global warming, you can’t point to a single place on earth where the weather is noticeably different from what it was in 1979. Or 1879, for that matter. I don’t know what subliminal changes would be detected by precise instruments, but in terms of the human experience of climate, Boston is still Boston, Cairo is still Cairo, and Sydney is still Sydney.
After all this time, when the continuation of industrial civilization itself is on the table, shouldn’t there be some palpable, observable effect of the disaster that we are supposed to sacrifice our futures in order to avoid? Shouldn’t the doom-sayers be saying “We told you so!” backed up by a torrent of youtube videos of submerged locales and media stories reminding us about how it used to snow in Massachusetts?
Climate panic, after all, is fear of dramatic, life-altering climate changes, not about tenths of a degree. We are told that we must “take action right now before it’s Too Late!” That doesn’t mean: before it’s too late to avoid a Spring that comes a week earlier or summer heat records of 103 degrees instead of 102. It was to fend off utter disaster that we needed the Kyoto Treaty, carbon taxes, and Priuses.
With nothing panic-worthy–nothing even noticeable–ensuing after 33 years, one has to wonder whether external reality even matters amid the frenzy. (It’s recently been admitted that there has been no global warming for the last 16 years.) For the climate researchers, what matters may be gaining fame and government grants, but what about the climate-anxious trend-followers in the wider public? What explains their indifference to decade after decade of failed predictions? Beyond sheer conformity, dare I suggest a psychological cause: a sense of personal anxiety projected outward? “The planet is endangered by carbon emissions” is far more palatable than “My life is endangered by my personal evasions.” Something is indeed careening out of control, but it isn’t the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, those of us who long for warmer weather will have to give up the dream–or move south.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/04/03/global-warming-was-it-just-a-beautiful-dream-after-all/
But I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming. I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather. It’s enough to make one doubt the “settled science” of the government-funded doom-sayers.
Remember 1979? That was the year of “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, of “The Dukes of Hazard” on TV, and of “ Kramer vs. Kramer” on the silver screen. It was the year the Shah was forced out of Iran. It was before the web, before the personal computer, before the cell phone, before voicemail and answering machines. But not before the global warming campaign.
In January of 1979, a New York Times article was headlined: “Experts Tell How Antarctic Ice Could Cause Widespread Floods.” The abstract in the Times archives says: “If the West Antarctic ice sheet slips into the sea, as some glaciologists believe is possible, boats could be launched from the bottom steps of the Capitol in Washington and a third of Florida would be under water, a climate specialist said today.”
By 1981 (think “Chariots of Fire“), the drum beat had taken effect. Quoting from the American Institute of Physics website: “A 1981 survey found that more than a third of American adults claimed they had heard or read about the greenhouse effect.”
So where’s the warming? Where are the gondolas pulling up to the Capitol? Where are the encroaching seas in Florida? Or anywhere? Where is the climate change which, for 33 years, has been just around the corner?
A generation and a half into climate change, née global warming, you can’t point to a single place on earth where the weather is noticeably different from what it was in 1979. Or 1879, for that matter. I don’t know what subliminal changes would be detected by precise instruments, but in terms of the human experience of climate, Boston is still Boston, Cairo is still Cairo, and Sydney is still Sydney.
After all this time, when the continuation of industrial civilization itself is on the table, shouldn’t there be some palpable, observable effect of the disaster that we are supposed to sacrifice our futures in order to avoid? Shouldn’t the doom-sayers be saying “We told you so!” backed up by a torrent of youtube videos of submerged locales and media stories reminding us about how it used to snow in Massachusetts?
Climate panic, after all, is fear of dramatic, life-altering climate changes, not about tenths of a degree. We are told that we must “take action right now before it’s Too Late!” That doesn’t mean: before it’s too late to avoid a Spring that comes a week earlier or summer heat records of 103 degrees instead of 102. It was to fend off utter disaster that we needed the Kyoto Treaty, carbon taxes, and Priuses.
With nothing panic-worthy–nothing even noticeable–ensuing after 33 years, one has to wonder whether external reality even matters amid the frenzy. (It’s recently been admitted that there has been no global warming for the last 16 years.) For the climate researchers, what matters may be gaining fame and government grants, but what about the climate-anxious trend-followers in the wider public? What explains their indifference to decade after decade of failed predictions? Beyond sheer conformity, dare I suggest a psychological cause: a sense of personal anxiety projected outward? “The planet is endangered by carbon emissions” is far more palatable than “My life is endangered by my personal evasions.” Something is indeed careening out of control, but it isn’t the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, those of us who long for warmer weather will have to give up the dream–or move south.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/04/03/global-warming-was-it-just-a-beautiful-dream-after-all/
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Climate Alarmism: The Beginning of the End?
Climate Alarmism: The Beginning of the End?
by Steven Hayward in Climate
John reported here the other day about the leaked portion of the forthcoming report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which admits the possible role of cosmic radiation in cloud formation. This may be the first time the IPCC has acknowledged this as a possible factor, even though the hypothesis has been around for more than 20 years. But the big ball game all along in climate science has been whether estimates of climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas levels would change in future IPCC reports. Here’s what I wrote about the matter in the Weekly Standard in 2010:
Eventually the climate modeling community is going to have to reconsider the central question: Have the models the IPCC uses for its predictions of catastrophic warming overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases? . . . The next wave of climate revisionism is likely to reopen most of the central questions of “settled science” in the IPCC’s Working Group I.Today Matt Ridley has a must-read article in the Wall Street Journal on this issue. He thinks the turning point has arrived. He’s been speaking with an inside reviewer, Nic Lewis, who, though prohibited from quoting from drafts-in-progress, says some of the draft material “is dynamite.” If you’re without a Journal subscription, here’s some of the key bits:
In short: We can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide. We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models. Comparing the trend in global temperature over the past 100-150 years with the change in “radiative forcing” (heating or cooling power) from carbon dioxide, aerosols and other sources, minus ocean heat uptake, can now give a good estimate of climate sensitivity.Of course, Ridley warns that this may not be the lead story in the news media when the full IPCC report is issued next year:
The conclusion—taking the best observational estimates of the change in decadal-average global temperature between 1871-80 and 2002-11, and of the corresponding changes in forcing and ocean heat uptake—is this: A doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of 1.6°-1.7°C (2.9°-3.1°F).
This is much lower than the IPCC’s current best estimate, 3°C (5.4°F).
The big question is this: Will the lead authors of the relevant chapter of the forthcoming IPCC scientific report acknowledge that the best observational evidence no longer supports the IPCC’s existing 2°-4.5°C “likely” range for climate sensitivity? Unfortunately, this seems unlikely—given the organization’s record of replacing evidence-based policy-making with policy-based evidence-making, as well as the reluctance of academic scientists to accept that what they have been maintaining for many years is wrong. . .
The scientists at the IPCC next year have to choose whether they will admit—contrary to what complex, unverifiable computer models indicate—that the observational evidence now points toward lukewarm temperature change with no net harm. On behalf of all those poor people whose lives are being ruined by high food and energy prices caused by the diversion of corn to biofuel and the subsidizing of renewable energy driven by carboncrats and their crony-capitalist friends, one can only hope the scientists will do so.
But even if the politicized scientists carry the day with the next IPCC, it will be with an air of increasing desperation and will likely receive lukewarm (pun intended) media coverage. The whole scheme is slowly unraveling. Read Ridley’s whole article if you can.
UPDATE: Nic Lewis himself has posted a detailed supplement to the Ridley article on WattsUpWithThat, complete with technical Appendices. Pour an extra large cup of coffee.
Labels:
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environmental wackos,
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Friday, December 14, 2012
Not Enough Buns for All the Green Weenies in Doha
Not Enough Buns for All the Green Weenies in Doha
by Steven Hayward in Climate, United Nations
The latest UN climate change meeting has followed the predictable script laid out here a week ago: the meeting had to go into overtime to “save” the talks from collapse. I especially like reading the weenie-friendly UK Guardian‘s coverage of these meetings, because their attempt at earnest coverage ironically underscores what a complete farce the whole thing is. From the latest dispatch:
Meanwhile, climate change scourge Lord Monckton crashed the party, and, posing as a delegate from Myanmar, thoroughly bollixed the proceedings with some politically incorrect remarks before they cut off his mic. From the looks of the Qatari chair of the meeting, you’d think a woman had tried to vote or something:
(use link to see video)
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/12/not-enough-buns-for-all-the-green-weenies-in-doha.php
Poor countries have won historic recognition of the plight they face from the ravages of climate change, wringing a pledge from rich nations that they will receive funds to repair the “loss and damage” incurred.Let us pause here to take note that getting money from rich nations has been the object of the climate racket from the beginning, as it has been with every UN racket going back to the 1960s and 1970s. In the last few year the UN kleptocrats have become more open about their objective. Cue the tape, and recall the comment I’ve reported here before from German economist Ottmar Edenhoffer:
This is the first time developing countries have received such assurances, and the first time the phrase “loss and damage from climate change” has been enshrined in an international legal document.
“But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”Anyway, to continue with the fun parts of the Guardian dispatch, concerning the all-important details:
The US had strongly opposed the initial “loss and damage” proposals, which would have set up a new international institution to collect and disperse funds to vulnerable countries. US negotiators also made certain that neither the word “compensation”, nor any other term connoting legal liability, was used, to avoid opening the floodgates to litigation – instead, the money will be judged as aid.I propose we pay climate aid with Argentinian and Greek bonds.
Key questions remain unanswered, including whether funds devoted to “loss and damage” will come from existing humanitarian aid and disaster relief budgets. The US is one of the world’s biggest donor of humanitarian aid and disaster relief, from both public and private sources. It will be difficult to disentangle damage inflicted by climate change from other natural disasters.
Another question is how the funds will be disbursed. Developing countries wanted a new institution, like a bank, but the US is set against that, preferring to use existing international institutions. These issues will have to be sorted out at next year’s climate conference, in Warsaw, where they will be bitterly contested.
Meanwhile, climate change scourge Lord Monckton crashed the party, and, posing as a delegate from Myanmar, thoroughly bollixed the proceedings with some politically incorrect remarks before they cut off his mic. From the looks of the Qatari chair of the meeting, you’d think a woman had tried to vote or something:
(use link to see video)
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/12/not-enough-buns-for-all-the-green-weenies-in-doha.php
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Team Obama's secret emails
Editorial: Team Obama's secret emails
More from Editorials
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The public's business should be conducted in public. When it can't be viewed as it occurs, such as the countless day-to-day dealings of the vast federal administrative bureaucracy, at least records of what transpired should be made available to the public.
President Barack Obama nobly promised that his would be an unprecedentedly transparent presidency. But from the shrouded Fast and Furious debacle to the administration's apparent reluctance to be candid from Day 1 about the deadly events in Benghazi, Libya, the president has failed to live up to his promise of transparency.
The unavoidable question is, "Why the hesitancy to disclose, promptly and fully?"
Now the Obama administration is suspected of withholding thousands of emails from public scrutiny, including many allegedly sent through private, rather than government, accounts, expressly to keep them secret.
POLITICAL CARTOONS
Santa, et al, a little too eager.
A House committee investigation recently opened concerning whether EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used an email alias to hide correspondence from open-government requests and from her agency's own internal watchdog, something Republicans say may run afoul of the law, reported the Washington Times.
The EPA emails also are sought by the conservative think tank, Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has sued to force the release of the communications made in the "secondary," private accounts "set up so they can conduct discussions" beyond the reach of FOIA disclosures.
And on Wednesday Sen. David Vitter, R-La., sent a letter to Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner demanding the administration release 7,300 emails from a "new quasiagency" that appears to have been established in anticipation of regulating carbon dioxide either through a new carbon cap-and-trade program or a new carbon tax, both highly controversial proposals the administration has yet to officially advance publicly.
An analysis by Bloomberg News in September found 19 of 20 Cabinet-level agencies failed to follow requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, disobeying the law's mandate to disclose public information. The analysis of government requests filed by Bloomberg News discovered an alarming number of transparency violations, particularly when it came to taxpayer-funded costs of travel by top officials.
"My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government," the president has said, correctly noting that accountability and public trust are dependent on government being transparent. He has an opportunity to live up to those lofty words. Or Mr. Obama can continue to stonewall and obfuscate, as have so many before him. The president should choose to disclose.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/public-378476-administration-government.html
President Barack Obama nobly promised that his would be an unprecedentedly transparent presidency. But from the shrouded Fast and Furious debacle to the administration's apparent reluctance to be candid from Day 1 about the deadly events in Benghazi, Libya, the president has failed to live up to his promise of transparency.
President Barack Obama leaves the White House in Washington, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, for a trip to Southeast Asia, his first trip abroad since the election campaign.
Associated Press Photo
Now the Obama administration is suspected of withholding thousands of emails from public scrutiny, including many allegedly sent through private, rather than government, accounts, expressly to keep them secret.
POLITICAL CARTOONS
Santa, et al, a little too eager.
A House committee investigation recently opened concerning whether EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used an email alias to hide correspondence from open-government requests and from her agency's own internal watchdog, something Republicans say may run afoul of the law, reported the Washington Times.
The EPA emails also are sought by the conservative think tank, Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has sued to force the release of the communications made in the "secondary," private accounts "set up so they can conduct discussions" beyond the reach of FOIA disclosures.
And on Wednesday Sen. David Vitter, R-La., sent a letter to Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner demanding the administration release 7,300 emails from a "new quasiagency" that appears to have been established in anticipation of regulating carbon dioxide either through a new carbon cap-and-trade program or a new carbon tax, both highly controversial proposals the administration has yet to officially advance publicly.
An analysis by Bloomberg News in September found 19 of 20 Cabinet-level agencies failed to follow requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, disobeying the law's mandate to disclose public information. The analysis of government requests filed by Bloomberg News discovered an alarming number of transparency violations, particularly when it came to taxpayer-funded costs of travel by top officials.
"My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government," the president has said, correctly noting that accountability and public trust are dependent on government being transparent. He has an opportunity to live up to those lofty words. Or Mr. Obama can continue to stonewall and obfuscate, as have so many before him. The president should choose to disclose.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/public-378476-administration-government.html
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Where CO2 Comes From
Where CO2 Comes From
by John Hinderaker in Climate
Whether or not you think that human-generated carbon dioxide has any significant effect on the Earth’s climate–I don’t–the data on where CO2 comes from are interesting. This chart, based on data maintained by BP, was generated by Ed Hoskins and reported by Anthony Watts on Watts Up With That:

A few observations: 1) CO2 emissions are mainly a measure of economic growth. 2) U.S. emissions are lower today than they were 15 years ago. The current decline is due to natural gas. 3) The Kyoto Protocol, which liberals both here and in Europe have berated the U.S. for not signing for the last 15 years, excluded China and India, along with other developing countries. Can we now all agree that the Senate was correct when it voted 95-0 in favor of a resolution rejecting Kyoto?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/where-co2-comes-from.php
Whether or not you think that human-generated carbon dioxide has any significant effect on the Earth’s climate–I don’t–the data on where CO2 comes from are interesting. This chart, based on data maintained by BP, was generated by Ed Hoskins and reported by Anthony Watts on Watts Up With That:
A few observations: 1) CO2 emissions are mainly a measure of economic growth. 2) U.S. emissions are lower today than they were 15 years ago. The current decline is due to natural gas. 3) The Kyoto Protocol, which liberals both here and in Europe have berated the U.S. for not signing for the last 15 years, excluded China and India, along with other developing countries. Can we now all agree that the Senate was correct when it voted 95-0 in favor of a resolution rejecting Kyoto?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/where-co2-comes-from.php
Friday, October 26, 2012
Obama Washington Wink-Winking like crazy at EPA
Obama Washington Wink-Winking like crazy at EPA
President Obama is among the slickest practitioners ever of the Washington Wink-Wink -- what professional politicians in both parties do when they say one thing while planning to do something else entirely.
There was, for example, Obama's 2008 campaign promise to "cut the federal deficit in half." And that "net federal spending cut" he would achieve by the end of his first term? Anybody think he didn't know then that his first term would explode the deficit and spending to historic highs?
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sees more of the same from Obama on the Environmental Protection Agency front, which the Oklahoma Republican described in a detailed report he issued yesterday.
Here's the first wink: "Obama has spent the past year punting on a slew of job-killing EPA regulations that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more," Inhofe said. "From greenhouse gas regulations to water guidance to the tightening of the ozone standard, the Obama-EPA has delayed the implementation of rule after rule because they don't want all those pink slips and price spikes to hit until after the election."
For the second wink, Inhofe quotes Obama's former White House environmental czar Carol Browner, who recently reassured impatient environmentalists with these words: "I can tell you, having spent two years in the White House with the president, that this is not a fad. The president believes deeply in these issues ... there is no doubt in my mind this will be a big part of his to-do list and he will remain committed in the next four years."
In other words, Browner was saying, just wait, because Obama fears he might not get re-elected if he went ahead with his EPA plans before the election.
Here are just a few of many examples cited by Inhofe of costly new Obama-inspired regulations that EPA will impose on the economy after Nov. 6:
• Greenhouse gas regulations, including the infamous "cow tax." The EPA will finalize proposed regulations that will virtually eliminate coal use in electricity generation, thus driving consumer electric bills sky-high. This cluster of new regulations will also impose an annual fee on farmers for every ton of greenhouse gases emitted by their animals. The EPA estimates that 37,000 farms and ranches will have to pay on average a $23,000 annual "cow tax."
• New regulations will so severely reduce permissible ozone emissions that the EPA estimates the cost to the economy will be $90 billion per year. Other studies put the cost as high as $1 trillion. Split the difference between the estimates, and the result still means the loss of millions of jobs.
• New Tier III regulations will cut permissible sulfur emissions by two-thirds. That will add as much as 9 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas, according to Inhofe.
• The EPA's new coal ash regulation will cost as much as $110 billion over two decades and destroy more than 300,000 jobs, mostly in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri.
This week, the Columbia Journalism Review and Pro Publica released a report stating that Obama has proved more secretive in some respects than his immediate predecessor in the Oval Office, George W. Bush. One of those quoted by CJR/PP is Society of Environmental Journalists President Ken Ward Jr., a staff reporter for the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, who tweeted this yesterday: "The Obama EPA is the most difficult to get information and answers out of that I've covered in 20 years."
That's the kind of transparency we get from politicians who do the Washington Wink-Wink.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-washington-wink-winking-like-crazy-at-epa/article/2511132#.UIFbzxikA-M
There was, for example, Obama's 2008 campaign promise to "cut the federal deficit in half." And that "net federal spending cut" he would achieve by the end of his first term? Anybody think he didn't know then that his first term would explode the deficit and spending to historic highs?
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sees more of the same from Obama on the Environmental Protection Agency front, which the Oklahoma Republican described in a detailed report he issued yesterday.
Here's the first wink: "Obama has spent the past year punting on a slew of job-killing EPA regulations that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more," Inhofe said. "From greenhouse gas regulations to water guidance to the tightening of the ozone standard, the Obama-EPA has delayed the implementation of rule after rule because they don't want all those pink slips and price spikes to hit until after the election."
For the second wink, Inhofe quotes Obama's former White House environmental czar Carol Browner, who recently reassured impatient environmentalists with these words: "I can tell you, having spent two years in the White House with the president, that this is not a fad. The president believes deeply in these issues ... there is no doubt in my mind this will be a big part of his to-do list and he will remain committed in the next four years."
In other words, Browner was saying, just wait, because Obama fears he might not get re-elected if he went ahead with his EPA plans before the election.
Here are just a few of many examples cited by Inhofe of costly new Obama-inspired regulations that EPA will impose on the economy after Nov. 6:
• Greenhouse gas regulations, including the infamous "cow tax." The EPA will finalize proposed regulations that will virtually eliminate coal use in electricity generation, thus driving consumer electric bills sky-high. This cluster of new regulations will also impose an annual fee on farmers for every ton of greenhouse gases emitted by their animals. The EPA estimates that 37,000 farms and ranches will have to pay on average a $23,000 annual "cow tax."
• New regulations will so severely reduce permissible ozone emissions that the EPA estimates the cost to the economy will be $90 billion per year. Other studies put the cost as high as $1 trillion. Split the difference between the estimates, and the result still means the loss of millions of jobs.
• New Tier III regulations will cut permissible sulfur emissions by two-thirds. That will add as much as 9 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas, according to Inhofe.
• The EPA's new coal ash regulation will cost as much as $110 billion over two decades and destroy more than 300,000 jobs, mostly in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri.
This week, the Columbia Journalism Review and Pro Publica released a report stating that Obama has proved more secretive in some respects than his immediate predecessor in the Oval Office, George W. Bush. One of those quoted by CJR/PP is Society of Environmental Journalists President Ken Ward Jr., a staff reporter for the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, who tweeted this yesterday: "The Obama EPA is the most difficult to get information and answers out of that I've covered in 20 years."
That's the kind of transparency we get from politicians who do the Washington Wink-Wink.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-washington-wink-winking-like-crazy-at-epa/article/2511132#.UIFbzxikA-M
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Climate Losers Getting Desperate
Climate Losers Getting Desperate
by Steven Hayward in Climate
Did you know that climate change kills! At least that’s the claim out in a new study yesterday, as reported in The Daily Beast, which, last I checked, relies heavily upon a hydrocarbon-intensive energy system to exist. Anyway, according to the latest CO2-breathless story, climate change kills 400,000 people a year, and costs the global economy $1.2 trillion. Jeepers: Maybe the climate—or Mother Nature Herself—should come with a warning label like cigarette packs.
The report comes from something called the Climate Vulnerability Forum (with offices conveniently located in Geneva and Madrid, because you wouldn’t want to be located where any of the world’s poor actually have to live without modern energy would you?), and is hardly worth pouring through the methodology to debunk. In fact, it is not necessary to dispute the death toll estimate to grasp how colossally stupid the study is.
I’m reminded of P.J. O’Rourke’s great line about socialized medicine: if you think health care is expensive now, wait till you see what it costs when it’s free. Likewise, if you think the death toll from climate change is significant now, wait till you see what it is when you deprive the developing world of inexpensive hydrocarbon energy. After all, it was hydrocarbon energy that the currently wealthy nations of the world used to advance their lifespans, lift billions out of poverty (that’s billions with a B), etc, etc. As my occasional writing partner Ken Green puts it, homo sapiens really ought to be known as homo igniferens—human beings whose existence and progress depends on inexpensive energy.
Or you can try out this approach: automobile accidents currently kill more people than climate—an estimated 500,000 a year. The death toll is disproportionately heavy in the poorer, developing world. Ban cars! Or reduce the global speed limit to 10 mph! That would reduce the death toll by nearly the entire 500,000. Who could be against saving 500,000 lives a year? Actually, anyone with common sense would, as the death toll from the second order effects of denying the rapidity of transportation from the surface auto and truck fleet would surely be higher. It’s called a tradeoff, climateers, and you might want to learn how to do it some day. Just Imagine tradeoffs—it’s easy if you try. (Not that DDT-banning Green really care much about saving lives in the poorer developing world. But that’s a post for another day.)
This kind of study is so pathetic that it doesn’t even merit a Power Line Green Weenie Runner Up Award. Losers.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/09/climate-losers-getting-desperate.php
Did you know that climate change kills! At least that’s the claim out in a new study yesterday, as reported in The Daily Beast, which, last I checked, relies heavily upon a hydrocarbon-intensive energy system to exist. Anyway, according to the latest CO2-breathless story, climate change kills 400,000 people a year, and costs the global economy $1.2 trillion. Jeepers: Maybe the climate—or Mother Nature Herself—should come with a warning label like cigarette packs.
The report comes from something called the Climate Vulnerability Forum (with offices conveniently located in Geneva and Madrid, because you wouldn’t want to be located where any of the world’s poor actually have to live without modern energy would you?), and is hardly worth pouring through the methodology to debunk. In fact, it is not necessary to dispute the death toll estimate to grasp how colossally stupid the study is.
I’m reminded of P.J. O’Rourke’s great line about socialized medicine: if you think health care is expensive now, wait till you see what it costs when it’s free. Likewise, if you think the death toll from climate change is significant now, wait till you see what it is when you deprive the developing world of inexpensive hydrocarbon energy. After all, it was hydrocarbon energy that the currently wealthy nations of the world used to advance their lifespans, lift billions out of poverty (that’s billions with a B), etc, etc. As my occasional writing partner Ken Green puts it, homo sapiens really ought to be known as homo igniferens—human beings whose existence and progress depends on inexpensive energy.
Or you can try out this approach: automobile accidents currently kill more people than climate—an estimated 500,000 a year. The death toll is disproportionately heavy in the poorer, developing world. Ban cars! Or reduce the global speed limit to 10 mph! That would reduce the death toll by nearly the entire 500,000. Who could be against saving 500,000 lives a year? Actually, anyone with common sense would, as the death toll from the second order effects of denying the rapidity of transportation from the surface auto and truck fleet would surely be higher. It’s called a tradeoff, climateers, and you might want to learn how to do it some day. Just Imagine tradeoffs—it’s easy if you try. (Not that DDT-banning Green really care much about saving lives in the poorer developing world. But that’s a post for another day.)
This kind of study is so pathetic that it doesn’t even merit a Power Line Green Weenie Runner Up Award. Losers.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/09/climate-losers-getting-desperate.php
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Obama’s War on Coal
In July, the Murray Energy Corporation announced that it would be closing an Ohio coal mine. Fifty-six people were still working at the mine, which had employed 239 in its heyday. Some of the employees would be transferred to other positions in the company, but that meant new people wouldn’t be hired to fill those positions.
“The many regulations that he and his radical appointees and the U.S. EPA have put on the use of coal . . . have closed 175 power plants,” Murray added. In the 2008 campaign, Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that the “notion of no coal . . . is an illusion,” but he added that he favored a cap-and-trade system. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” Obama continued. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” In 2007, Joe Biden told Grist.org, “I don’t think there’s much of a role for clean coal in energy independence” in the United States — though he added that he favored cleaning up China’s coal plants. Under the Obama administration, coal has faced a punishing regulatory environment. “I think the Obama administration should be ashamed for putting out of work these middle-class coal miners in the state of Ohio and throughout the country,” says Josh Mandel, Ohio state treasurer and Republican Senate candidate. “These coal miners and their families live in some of the poorest counties in America, and the Obama war on coal is killing jobs in parts of America that can least afford it.” The Obama administration has imposed regulations on the coal industry “that have huge economic costs, but questionable and minimal environmental benefits,” says Nicolas Loris, an energy-policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.“The administration has made the construction of new coal-powered utility plants exceedingly difficult, if not almost impossible, and it has shut down mines or made it much more difficult to keep them open.” “The Obama administration has done everything it possibly can to destroy the American coal industry,” says Mike Carey, chairman of the Ohio Coal Association and vice president of government affairs at the Murray Energy Corporation. “Under Obama’s leadership, we have gone from producing 1.2 billion tons to somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 million tons. It’s disingenuous at best for Obama to say that he supports the coal industry when we have lost one-third of our production.” Now Republicans are hoping that coal workers will look at what is happening to their industry and vote for Romney — and Mandel and other Republican Senate and House candidates — in November. When Alpha Natural Resources announced last week that it was laying off 1,200 employees, the Romney campaign swung into action. “For four years, President Obama has waged a war on coal that has devastated the middle class and American workers,” said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. “Today’s news that the president’s policies are killing another 1,200 jobs in states like Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania is just the latest evidence President Obama hasn’t delivered for middle-class families.” Meanwhile, the Romney campaign released two ads featuring Romney’s approach to coal. The Republican National Committee, too, is making the case for Romney’s coal policies. RNC press secretary Kirsten Kukowski points out that coal is a significant part of the economy “in Ohio, Pennsylvania, parts of Virginia, even parts of Colorado.” “It’s a narrow group of voters you’re looking at it,” she says. “But in those areas, it’s a big deal because it affects entire communities. It’s really their whole livelihood.” People who work in the coal industry — and their family and friends — could well become single-issue voters this year. In the Democratic primaries, there were signals that some Democrats have had enough of Obama’s coal policies. In West Virginia, where the coal industry is huge, 42 percent of Democrats chose felon Keith Judd over Obama in the primary. In many Pennsylvania counties, more than 30 percent of Democrats voted for candidates other than Obama or left the presidential line blank, according to an analysis by Politics PA. “I hear about it all the time, especially in Appalachian Ohio,” Mandel says of discontent with the administration’s coal policy. “In Ohio, coal equals jobs, and over 80 percent of our economy is powered by coal. There are direct coal jobs in eastern and southeastern Ohio, but there are also a ton of manufacturing jobs throughout the state that are made possible by affordable, reliable, dependable coal energy. The Obama war on coal is putting folks out of work.” And the voters understand that. “When we started this campaign, we were losing in southeastern and eastern Ohio — Appalachian Ohio,” Mandel says. “Now we’re winning there, and a lot of it is based on energy issues.” One of the regulations that has hurt the industry most, according to Heritage’s Loris, is the MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) Standards, which relate to mercury and other chemicals. “This one regulation, combined with the cross-state air-pollution rule, has the potential to knock out anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of the electricity generated by coal power plants,” Loris says. The cross-state air-pollution rule, he explained in a paper earlier this year, “targets pollution that crosses state boundaries, and it aims to reduce sulfur dioxide 73 percent below 2005 levels and nitrous oxide 54 percent below 2005 levels by 2014.” What is critical to note is that “these costs come with little added environmental benefit,” Loris adds. “The EPA is ignoring the remarkable achievements in reducing nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions over the past four decades. . . . The industry has reached a threshold where the additional emissions reductions are marginal and do not justify the costs.” Jason Hayes, communications director for the American Coal Council, emphasizes that point. “The industry over the past few decades has invested over $100 billion in cleaning up emissions, and it’s already been effective,” he says. “All of the important noxious pollutants have decreased markedly over the last 30 to 40 years, at the same time that we’ve been using more and more coal, and the expectation is that we’re going to continue investing.” In the next ten years, the industry anticipates spending “another $100 billion cleaning up and building newer, more efficient power plants, and we’re doing all of this on top of dealing with all the other things.” “The environmental benefits that we’re hearing about are questionable,” Hayes adds. “The job losses are real. They’re happening right now.” — Katrina Trinko is a reporter for NRO. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/328532/obama-s-war-coal-katrina-trinko |
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
The Democrats' Single Least Credible Idea: An 'All of the Above' Energy Plan
The Democrats' Single Least Credible Idea: An 'All of the Above' Energy Plan
By Jordan Weissmann
The party says it sees a future for coal in our energy future. The Obama administration's climate policies say otherwise.

Ever since his last State of the Union address, President Obama has relied on four short words to describe his administration's energy policy: "all of the above." Should we rely on fossil fuels or renewables? Yes, says the White House.
That sentiment is now enshrined in the Democratic party platform that was officially adopted in Charlotte Monday night. "We can move towards a sustainable energy-independent future if we harness all of America's great natural resources," the document states. "That means an all-of-the-above approach to developing America's many energy resources, including wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, oil, clean coal, and natural gas."
It's a nice sounding thought. But in light of the Obama administration's environmental policies, it's sort of nonsense.
The problem is coal, which would have to play at least some role in an all-of-the-above energy strategy. Traditionally, coal produces more than 40 percent our electricity, though that figure has fallen over the past year as power plants have burned higher amounts of inexpensive natural gas. Meanwhile, coal also contributes about a third of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the primary culprits behind climate change. For Republicans who aren't particularly concerned about the earth's surface temperature, this isn't much of an issue. Cheap power, they say, is cheap power. But for Democrats who profess to care about global warming, that means old-fashioned, carbon-belching coal plants won't do.
Hence the platform's nod to clean coal. Since the 2005, Congress has handed the Department of Energy $6.9 billion to help develop and promote carbon capture technology, which allows power plants to separate out CO2 from coal emissions and bury it deep underground in rock formations, where it can't escape into the atmosphere. Theoretically, this would be the best of all possible worlds: America could keep using an abundant domestic energy source without heating the planet any further. Obama's stimulus bill chipped in some $3.4 billion towards the endeavor, and the White House has said it hoped to fund between 5 and 10 commercial demonstration plants to prove the concept.
Like so many other cutting-edge green energy ideas, though, what's stopping clean coal from taking off today isn't our technology. It's economics. In a June report, the Congressional Budget Office calculated that it would cost 76 percent more to produce electricity at the first generation of clean coal plants than it would at a normal coal plant. Without significant federal funding, or regulations that put a cost on carbon, there's no reason for a commercial company to invest in the technology.
Which brings us to administration's climate policies. Early on, Obama supported a cap and trade approach to cutting carbon, which would have indeed put a price tag on emissions. In that context, clean coal made some sense, since it might potentially cost more to pay for CO2 than to install carbon capture technology. But thanks to congressional opposition, particularly from conservatives, cap and trade is long dead. Instead, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a regulation that would simply put a limit on the amount of carbon new power plants would be allowed to spew. Electric plants that burn natural gas already meet the standard. Coal generators, on the other hand, would have to cut their greenhouse emissions by 43 percent.
Some believe that would mean the end of new coal plants. Power providers have already been making the switch towards natural gas for about a decade now, based mostly on price. Regulations that would require an expensive carbon-capturing apparatus on coal, and let natural gas plants do business as usual, would be another, extremely large nail in the coffin. As the CBO put it:
It would be an overstatement to say that clean coal is entirely dead. Some believe that by selling captured carbon to the oil industry, which uses it to pump certain wells, power companies could potentially make the financial math work. But that's still highly speculative. In the meantime, if the EPA's new regulations survive in court, the economic landscape will be titled decisively favor of natural gas.
From an environmental perspective, this might not be a bad thing. There are certainly those who would like to see coal simply dwindle away over time. But it draws into question why the administration is bothering to invest billions into a technology while simultaneously doing its best to make it economically irrelevant. Because as of now, "all of the above" is really on track to mean "everything, except for coal."
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/the-democrats-single-least-credible-idea-an-all-of-the-above-energy-plan/261996/
A carbon capture unit at a West Virginia coal plant. (Reuters)
Ever since his last State of the Union address, President Obama has relied on four short words to describe his administration's energy policy: "all of the above." Should we rely on fossil fuels or renewables? Yes, says the White House.
That sentiment is now enshrined in the Democratic party platform that was officially adopted in Charlotte Monday night. "We can move towards a sustainable energy-independent future if we harness all of America's great natural resources," the document states. "That means an all-of-the-above approach to developing America's many energy resources, including wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, oil, clean coal, and natural gas."
It's a nice sounding thought. But in light of the Obama administration's environmental policies, it's sort of nonsense.
The problem is coal, which would have to play at least some role in an all-of-the-above energy strategy. Traditionally, coal produces more than 40 percent our electricity, though that figure has fallen over the past year as power plants have burned higher amounts of inexpensive natural gas. Meanwhile, coal also contributes about a third of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the primary culprits behind climate change. For Republicans who aren't particularly concerned about the earth's surface temperature, this isn't much of an issue. Cheap power, they say, is cheap power. But for Democrats who profess to care about global warming, that means old-fashioned, carbon-belching coal plants won't do.
Hence the platform's nod to clean coal. Since the 2005, Congress has handed the Department of Energy $6.9 billion to help develop and promote carbon capture technology, which allows power plants to separate out CO2 from coal emissions and bury it deep underground in rock formations, where it can't escape into the atmosphere. Theoretically, this would be the best of all possible worlds: America could keep using an abundant domestic energy source without heating the planet any further. Obama's stimulus bill chipped in some $3.4 billion towards the endeavor, and the White House has said it hoped to fund between 5 and 10 commercial demonstration plants to prove the concept.
Like so many other cutting-edge green energy ideas, though, what's stopping clean coal from taking off today isn't our technology. It's economics. In a June report, the Congressional Budget Office calculated that it would cost 76 percent more to produce electricity at the first generation of clean coal plants than it would at a normal coal plant. Without significant federal funding, or regulations that put a cost on carbon, there's no reason for a commercial company to invest in the technology.
Which brings us to administration's climate policies. Early on, Obama supported a cap and trade approach to cutting carbon, which would have indeed put a price tag on emissions. In that context, clean coal made some sense, since it might potentially cost more to pay for CO2 than to install carbon capture technology. But thanks to congressional opposition, particularly from conservatives, cap and trade is long dead. Instead, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a regulation that would simply put a limit on the amount of carbon new power plants would be allowed to spew. Electric plants that burn natural gas already meet the standard. Coal generators, on the other hand, would have to cut their greenhouse emissions by 43 percent.
Some believe that would mean the end of new coal plants. Power providers have already been making the switch towards natural gas for about a decade now, based mostly on price. Regulations that would require an expensive carbon-capturing apparatus on coal, and let natural gas plants do business as usual, would be another, extremely large nail in the coffin. As the CBO put it:
"At present...regulatory action to curb CO2 is more likely to shift electricity production from coal to natural gas (without carbon capture and storage) and other low-emission fuels, such as biomass, rather than to carbon capture and storage-capable plants."A few of the Obama administration's large demonstration projects, such as a $1.3 billion FutureGen 2.0 development in Illinois, are moving ahead. But others have been canceled as private backers have abandoned ship.
It would be an overstatement to say that clean coal is entirely dead. Some believe that by selling captured carbon to the oil industry, which uses it to pump certain wells, power companies could potentially make the financial math work. But that's still highly speculative. In the meantime, if the EPA's new regulations survive in court, the economic landscape will be titled decisively favor of natural gas.
From an environmental perspective, this might not be a bad thing. There are certainly those who would like to see coal simply dwindle away over time. But it draws into question why the administration is bothering to invest billions into a technology while simultaneously doing its best to make it economically irrelevant. Because as of now, "all of the above" is really on track to mean "everything, except for coal."
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/the-democrats-single-least-credible-idea-an-all-of-the-above-energy-plan/261996/
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Obama vs. the Constitution--a partial, but scary, list of O's shredding the Constitution
There were warning signs about President Obama’s fealty to the Constitution even before he took the oath of office.
During the general-election campaign, Obama answered an interviewer’s question about whether abortion would be a “litmus test” for his judicial appointees by saying that a person who did not believe in the right to privacy, “as well as the implications for gender equality,” would not have the right judicial philosophy. In other words, a refusal to reconsider judicial decisions that even many liberals admit are hard to square with the text, original understanding, history, or structure of the Constitution is a prerequisite for a judicial nomination from Obama. (He never said anything about empathy for unborn children, either.)
Since taking office, Obama has compiled a record consistent with these early hints. Again and again, liberal policy preferences have trumped fidelity to the Constitution.
Unilateral amnesty. The most recent example came in mid-August, when the Obama administration began implementing the DREAM Act even though Congress had never passed it. The president issued an order commanding immigration agencies not to deport some illegal immigrants who were brought to this country as children and to give them work-authorization permits.
Whether or not this policy is a good idea, it is an idea that Congress has so far declined to put in law.
It cannot be justified as a mere prioritization of scarce executive-branch resources, any more than a president could end the enforcement of provisions of the tax code he dislikes on that pretext. Obama understood the point well enough in 2011, when asked whether he could use an executive order to overcome congressional resistance. “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am obligated to enforce the law,” he responded. “There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president.” It was true when he said it. It still is.
Welfare waivers. This summer has yielded another case in which the president implemented a policy that Congress never enacted, by exploiting a supposed power that nobody had ever previously contended a president had. Ever since welfare reform was enacted in 1996, states have had to ensure that nearly half of their caseload was involved for at least 30 hours a week in work, on-the-job training, job search, or similar activities. In mid-July, the Department of Health and Human Services said that it could waive this requirement.
The welfare-reform law explicitly gave the secretary of HHS the authority to waive many sections of the law — but did not include the section of the law detailing the work requirements among those waivable. This feature of the law will come as a surprise to no one familiar with the political history that gave rise to the reform in the first place. Welfare reform was enacted by a Congress that deeply distrusted President Clinton: Its fight with him over the budget had already led to two government shutdowns, and it would go on to impeach him. Work requirements were (and are) popular. That Congress would never have given that president the authority to throw out the work requirements. Prior to July, nobody ever argued that it had.
Marriage. Obama’s public position on marriage has been notoriously mutable, but in all his moves he has never found a place of sincerity or logical consistency. As a result there is no way to explain his administration’s actions on the Defense of Marriage Act in a way that speaks well of its fidelity to the Constitution.
Initially the administration claimed it would defend the constitutionality of the law in court even as it favored its repeal. After its first legal filings in the law’s defense elicited outrage from liberal activists, however, it modified that defense by abandoning arguments that had previously succeeded in court. In 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he had concluded that the law was unconstitutional — indeed, that no reasonable defense of its constitutionality could be made — and that the administration would therefore stop defending it in court.
Even on the assumption that Holder is right and the law is unconstitutional, the administration’s position is indefensible. Holder said that the administration would continue to enforce the law outside the courts — which it ought not to do if it believes it clearly violates the Constitution. And the only rational ground for believing the law is unconstitutional is that refusing to let same-sex couples marry violates the Fourteenth Amendment: that, in other words, recognizing same-sex marriage is constitutionally mandatory. Yet neither Obama nor Holder takes that position. Obama, even now that he has announced that he favors same-sex marriage, says that states should set their own policies.
Either the Constitution allows governments operating under it to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, or it does not. If it does, then Obama is failing to defend a constitutionally legitimate law from judicial attack. If it does not, he is enforcing an unconstitutional law and telling states they may do the same. What he cannot be doing on either interpretation is protecting the Constitution or even taking it seriously.
Obamacare. President Obama fought hard for, and signed, a law that requires most Americans to buy health insurance. It was an unprecedented step. As Michael Greve writes in The Upside-Down Constitution, “the constitutional provisions that suggest a federal authority to ‘commandeer’ private parties are few, institutionally cabined, and calculated to ensure the operation of the government’s own institutions (such as the armed forces and the jury system) — not, as under [Obamacare], to protect the profitability of private corporations.”
That the Constitution authorizes the federal government to commandeer individuals in strictly limited circumstances yields the strong inference that it regards commandeering in other circumstances as improper, and thus outside its grant of power to Congress to make all laws that are “necessary and proper” to execute its constitutional duties. Nor can a command to enter into commerce be justified as a regulation of commerce, which Congress may constitutionally enact.
A majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government may not order people to buy insurance. An overlapping majority of it ruled, however, that Obamacare could be read to be encouraging, rather than requiring, the purchase of insurance, and upheld it on that basis. The administration welcomed the result, naturally, but continued to insist, with the four most liberal members of the Court, including the two Obama appointed, that this order to the citizenry is within the federal government’s constitutional powers.
Obamacare II. The Obamacare legislation allows the secretary of health and human services to determine what preventive services insurance policies must cover. In January, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that almost all employers would have to cover sterilization and contraception — with contraception defined to include such probably abortifacient drugs as “ella.”
The mandate runs afoul of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bipartisan Clinton-era law that allows the federal government to “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” only if it is “the least restrictive means” of advancing “a compelling governmental interest.” The act also stipulates that other laws should not be read to amend or supersede it unless they explicitly say so — which the Obamacare law does not.
Forcing someone to cover services to which he has a moral objection rooted in religion substantially burdens his exercise of religion. A marginal increase in access to contraception is not a compelling governmental interest. Even if it were, there are many ways to effect that marginal increase other than coercing employers.
Sebelius, testifying before the House, said that she had received no legal memo about religious-freedom issues before issuing the regulation. A federal judge has already issued an injunction staying the application of the mandate to a company that had sued against it, on the ground that the company has a good chance of winning the suit.
Obamacare III. Obamacare has a carrot and a stick to get states to establish health-insurance exchanges. If they don’t, the federal government will set up exchanges for them without their input. If they do, the federal government will make tax credits and other subsidies available for state residents who buy insurance on the state exchanges.
The effect of these provisions taken together, however, is that opponents of Obamacare can cripple it by blocking the creation of state exchanges. The federal government can then put its own exchanges in place, but it won’t be able to offer tax credits and subsidies for people who buy insurance on them. The legislation authorizes the credits and subsidies only for exchanges established by states. Since the credits also trigger heavy taxes on employers, states may have an additional reason not to create exchanges.
In May, the Obama administration’s IRS announced that it would make the credits and subsidies available to federally established exchanges. Defenders of its stance argue that Congress meant to accomplish this result, even if it did not actually write that desire into law. The IRS is thus placing new taxes on employers in states that have not set up exchanges even though no statute authorizes those taxes.
Libya. The Constitution vests Congress with the power to declare war. It does not require it to follow a particular verbal formula in doing so. The Iraq and Afghan wars followed the constitutional command even though Congress did not formally declare war, because Congress did authorize war. In Libya, however, Congress never voted for the military to do anything.
There are circumstances in which the commander-in-chief can engage the military in hostilities without congressional action. Nobody believes a vote would have to be taken for the president to organize resistance to an invasion of the United States. In this instance, however, the president involved the country in military action without any plausible claim that a vital American security interest was at stake. Congressional (and journalistic) debate on the propriety of this action mostly referred to Obama’s defiance of the War Powers Act, which he preposterously claimed to be following. That act is itself, however, of dubious constitutionality. The real issue is this: If the president may do what Obama did in Libya, the Constitution’s provision about congressional war powers is a dead letter.
Recess appointments. On January 4, President Obama made three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and one to the Consumer Financial Protection Board. These were “recess appointments,” made under the president’s power to fill jobs when the Senate is not in session to provide its advice about and consent to his nominations. In this case, however, the Senate was in session. Under the Constitution neither chamber of Congress can adjourn for long without the consent of the other, and the Republican-controlled House forced the Senate to hold pro forma sessions to stop Obama from being able to make appointments without getting Senate approval.
The administration’s legal position is that the president can determine that the Senate is out of session even when it says it is in session. It says that the Senate is not “capable” of exercising its constitutional functions during these pro forma sessions. Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah), a former Supreme Court clerk who has been Obama’s toughest critic on the issue, points out that this argument is clearly incorrect: The Senate can pass bills and confirm nominees if it so chooses, even if it does not intend to conduct major business.
In the court of public opinion, the administration’s defenders press a different argument: The Republicans had subverted norms of good government by using the filibuster to block appointees, and in the case of the CFPB they had done so to force changes to the statute — an unprecedented tactic. But norms can’t trump constitutional rules, and in any case the CFPB itself breaks precedents. It is an independent agency, free of accountability to the executive or legislative branches of government, on steroids: Its director doesn’t answer to the president or a board, and its funding does not come from Congress. Appointing someone to run the CFPB when the Senate has refused to confirm him compounds the problem.
Some themes emerge from this list. In most of these cases, President Obama has bypassed Congress, rewriting laws or appointing nominees without its consent. (Even at the height of liberal power in the capital, in 2009–10, Congress was not going to enact a law making Notre Dame cover abortion drugs.) In most of these cases, too, his actions have been unprecedented. Not only has nobody taken them before, nobody has even suggested they would be legitimate before. No other president has made recess appointments during a pro forma session of the Senate, for example.
Obama’s predecessor had his constitutional lapses, too, as when he signed, and instructed his administration to defend in court, a set of campaign-finance regulations that he had previously recognized as unconstitutional. The Constitution has been imperfectly honored through most of our history, and there is no foolproof mechanism imaginable for enforcing it.
This president is testing the limits of our system. Note that our list of unconstitutional novelties includes five administration actions from the first eight months of 2012 alone. The public can put an end to this aggression in November. If Obama is reelected, especially with an uncooperative Congress, we can expect more of it.
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/314760
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Federal regs force coal plant closures now, higher rates later, critics warn
Federal regs force coal plant closures now, higher rates later, critics warn
- FirstEnergy Corp., headquartered in Ohio, closed power plants on Saturday in Albright, Rivesville, and Willow Island, W.Va., along with four others in Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania as the company phases out aging facilities that cannot comply with new environmental regulations. (AP)
The closure of seven coal-fired electric plants in four states could be a sign of things to come as tough new emissions standards threaten to relegate America’s top energy source to the back burner.
FirstEnergy Corp., headquartered in Ohio, closed power plants on Saturday in Albright, Rivesville, and Willow Island, W.Va., along with four others in Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania as the company phases out aging facilities that cannot comply with new environmental regulations. Three others in Ohio also will be closed in 2015, company officials told FoxNews.com.
“We estimate that it will cost approximately $975 million to make our remaining seven coal-fired power plants compliant with the new [Mercury and Air Toxics Standards] rules,” FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin told FoxNews.com. “Another challenge that the entire industry is facing is a very aggressive three-year timeframe to get the work done. It’s also important to note that numerous other [Environmental Protection Agency] regulations, including those for coal ash, water intake and particulates, are on the horizon.”
Some 650 jobs were originally expected to be affected by the closures, but fewer than 50 employees will be fired since many workers have taken other positions within the company or retired, Durbin said.
The Obama administration has invested billions promoting cleaner coal technology through “carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS),” a process that focuses on trapping emissions from coal-fired power plants to either reusing or storing it so it will not enter the atmosphere. The commercial success of CCUS depends on developing more affordable technologies since the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from power plants is currently too high for wide-scale implementation.
Critics of the new federal regulations say they amount to a war on coal, which the U.S. Energy Information Administration says accounts for 42 percent of all electricity generated in the United States. And not only is coal the main weapon in the nation’s energy arsenal, the U.S. holds the world's largest estimated recoverable reserves of the fossil fuel, according to the federal government. They also note that coal-fired plants employ an estimated 60,000 Americans.
“Electric rates will be going up and up as a result of these standards,” Andrew Morriss, a University of Alabama law professor and co-author of “The False Promise of Green Energy,” wrote FoxNews.com in an email. “Utilities will have to either close or spend money upgrading plants, and those are costs state regulators are bound by law to allow them to pass on to electric consumers. Since electricity is embedded in everything from pharmaceuticals to clothing, the prices of goods made in America will also be going up.”
In West Virginia, coal is the state’s primary industry, providing 63,000 jobs and generating $26 billion in total economic impact annually, according to the West Virginia Coal Association.
And according to companies like FirstEnergy, environmental protection efforts are better than ever. Since the Clean Air Act became law in 1970, FirstEnergy and its predecessors have invested more than $10 billion in those cleanup efforts.
“Our efforts are working,” Durbin continued. “Since 1990, FirstEnergy has reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides by more than 76 percent, sulfur dioxide by more than 86 percent, and mercury by about 56 percent.”
But the Union of Concerned Scientists claims the nation’s approximately 600 coal-fired plants — which produce nearly half of all electricity in the U.S. — cause acid rain, global warming and release toxic chemicals including mercury into the air.
“Coal is a dirty energy source,” the group’s website reads. “It pollutes our environment with toxins, produces a quarter of U.S. global warming emissions, and accounts for a whopping 80 percent of all carbon emissions produced by power generation nationwide. When we burn coal for electricity, we place our health, our environment, and our planet at risk. It’s time to reduce our dependence on this polluting energy source.”
FirstEnergy Corp., headquartered in Ohio, closed power plants on Saturday in Albright, Rivesville, and Willow Island, W.Va., along with four others in Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania as the company phases out aging facilities that cannot comply with new environmental regulations. Three others in Ohio also will be closed in 2015, company officials told FoxNews.com.
“We estimate that it will cost approximately $975 million to make our remaining seven coal-fired power plants compliant with the new [Mercury and Air Toxics Standards] rules,” FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin told FoxNews.com. “Another challenge that the entire industry is facing is a very aggressive three-year timeframe to get the work done. It’s also important to note that numerous other [Environmental Protection Agency] regulations, including those for coal ash, water intake and particulates, are on the horizon.”
“Since electricity is embedded in everything from pharmaceuticals to clothing, the prices of goods made in America will also be going up.”- Andrew Morriss, co-author of “The False Promise of Green Energy."
Some 650 jobs were originally expected to be affected by the closures, but fewer than 50 employees will be fired since many workers have taken other positions within the company or retired, Durbin said.
The Obama administration has invested billions promoting cleaner coal technology through “carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS),” a process that focuses on trapping emissions from coal-fired power plants to either reusing or storing it so it will not enter the atmosphere. The commercial success of CCUS depends on developing more affordable technologies since the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from power plants is currently too high for wide-scale implementation.
Critics of the new federal regulations say they amount to a war on coal, which the U.S. Energy Information Administration says accounts for 42 percent of all electricity generated in the United States. And not only is coal the main weapon in the nation’s energy arsenal, the U.S. holds the world's largest estimated recoverable reserves of the fossil fuel, according to the federal government. They also note that coal-fired plants employ an estimated 60,000 Americans.
“Electric rates will be going up and up as a result of these standards,” Andrew Morriss, a University of Alabama law professor and co-author of “The False Promise of Green Energy,” wrote FoxNews.com in an email. “Utilities will have to either close or spend money upgrading plants, and those are costs state regulators are bound by law to allow them to pass on to electric consumers. Since electricity is embedded in everything from pharmaceuticals to clothing, the prices of goods made in America will also be going up.”
In West Virginia, coal is the state’s primary industry, providing 63,000 jobs and generating $26 billion in total economic impact annually, according to the West Virginia Coal Association.
And according to companies like FirstEnergy, environmental protection efforts are better than ever. Since the Clean Air Act became law in 1970, FirstEnergy and its predecessors have invested more than $10 billion in those cleanup efforts.
“Our efforts are working,” Durbin continued. “Since 1990, FirstEnergy has reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides by more than 76 percent, sulfur dioxide by more than 86 percent, and mercury by about 56 percent.”
But the Union of Concerned Scientists claims the nation’s approximately 600 coal-fired plants — which produce nearly half of all electricity in the U.S. — cause acid rain, global warming and release toxic chemicals including mercury into the air.
“Coal is a dirty energy source,” the group’s website reads. “It pollutes our environment with toxins, produces a quarter of U.S. global warming emissions, and accounts for a whopping 80 percent of all carbon emissions produced by power generation nationwide. When we burn coal for electricity, we place our health, our environment, and our planet at risk. It’s time to reduce our dependence on this polluting energy source.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/05/coal-plant-closures-will-lead-to-increased-energy-rates-critics-say/#ixzz25dam8qEk
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The science never has been strong enough to motivate scrapping civilization. The way business and government should be run can’t be deduced from temperatur [...]