In my opinion, this is lunacy – Obama’s thinking is completely off the rails now. He cites a new energy plan in August, then cripples it from the start with this sort of thinking. – Anthony
From Bloomberg News: Obama to Declare Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Pollutant
Obama to Declare Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Pollutant (Update1)
By Jim Efstathiou Jr. Last Updated: October 16, 2008 09:50 EDT
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) — Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Democratic senator from Illinois will tell the Environmental Protection Agency that it may use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers, his energy adviser, Jason Grumet, said in an interview. President George W. Bush declined to curb CO2 emissions under the law even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the government may do so.
If elected, Obama would be the first president to group emissions blamed for global warming into a category of pollutants that includes lead and carbon monoxide. Obama’s rival in the presidential race, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, has not said how he would treat CO2 under the act.
Obama “would initiate those rulemakings,” Grumet said in an Oct. 6 interview in Boston. “He’s not going to insert political judgments to interrupt the recommendations of the scientific efforts.”
Placing heat-trapping pollutants in the same category as ozone may lead to caps on power-plant emissions and force utilities to use the most expensive systems to curb pollution. The move may halt construction plans on as many as half of the 130 proposed new U.S. coal plants.
The president may take action on new rules immediately upon taking office, said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club. Environment groups including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council will issue a regulatory agenda for the next president that calls for limits on CO2 from industry.
`Hit Ground Running’
“This is what they should do to hit the ground running,” Bookbinder said in an Oct. 10 telephone interview.
Separately, Congress is debating legislation to create an emissions market to address global warming, a solution endorsed by both candidates and utilities such as American Electric Power Co., the biggest U.S. producer of electricity from coal. Congress failed to pass a global-warming bill in June and how long it may take lawmakers to agree on a plan isn’t known.
“We need federal legislation to deal with greenhouse-gas emissions,” said Vicki Arroyo, general counsel for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia. “In the meantime, there is this vacuum. People are eager to get started on this.”
An Obama victory would help clear the deadlock in talks on an international agreement to slow global warming, Rajendra Pachauri, head of a United Nation panel of climate-change scientists, said today in Berlin. Negotiators from almost 200 countries will meet in December in Poznan, Poland, to discuss ways to limit CO2.
`Back in the Game’
“The U.S. has to move quickly domestically so we can get back in the game internationally,” Grumet said. “We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus. So he’ll move quickly.”
Burning coal to generate electricity produces more than a third of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and half the U.S. power supply, according to the Energy Department. Every hour, fossil-fuel combustion generates 3.5 million tons of emissions worldwide, helping create a warming effect that “already threatens our climate,” the Paris-based International Energy Agency said.
The EPA under Bush fought the notion that the Clean Air Act applies to CO2 all the way to the Supreme Court. The law has been used successfully to regulate six pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and ozone. Regulation under the act “could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority,” EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in July. The law “is the wrong tool for the job.”
Proponents of regulation are hoping for better results under a new president. Obama adviser Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said if Congress hasn’t acted in 18 months, about the time it would take to draft rules, the president should.
EPA Authority
“The EPA is obligated to move forward in the absence of Congressional action,” Grumet said. “If there’s no action by Congress in those 18 months, I think any responsible president would want to have the regulatory approach.”
States where coal-fired plants may be affected include Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Montana, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia and Florida.
The alternative, a national cap-and-trade program created by Congress, offers industry more options, said Bruce Braine, a vice president at Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric. The world’s largest cap-and-trade plan for greenhouse gases opened in Europe in 2005.
Under a cap-and-trade program, polluters may keep less- efficient plants running if they offset those emissions with investments in projects that lower pollution, such as wind-energy turbines or systems that destroy methane gas from landfills.
McCain `Not a Fan’
“Those options may still allow me to build new efficient power plants that might not meet a higher standard,” Braine said in an Oct. 9 interview. “That might be a more cost-effective way to approach it.”
McCain hasn’t said how he would approach CO2 regulation under the Clean Air Act. McCain adviser and former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey said Oct. 6 that new rules may conflict with Congressional efforts. Policy adviser Rebecca Jensen Tallent said in August that McCain prefers a bill debated by Congress rather than regulations “established through one agency where one secretary is getting to make a lot of decisions.”
“He is not as big of a fan of standards-based approaches,” Arroyo said. “The Supreme Court thinks it’s clear that there is greenhouse-gas authority under the Clean Air Act. To take that off the table probably wouldn’t be very wise.”
More Efficient Technologies
How new regulations would affect the proposed U.S. coal plants depends on how they are written, said Bill Fang, climate issue director for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based lobbying group for utilities. About half of the proposed plants plan to use technologies that are 20 percent more efficient than conventional coal burners.
“Several states have denied the applicability of the Clean Air Act to coal permits,” Fang said in an Oct. 10 interview.
In June, a court in Georgia stopped construction of the 1,200- megawatt Longleaf power plant, a $2 billion project, because developer Dynegy Inc. failed to consider cleaner technology.
An appeals board within the EPA is considering a challenge from the Sierra Club to Deseret Power Electric Cooperative‘s air permit for its 110-megawatt Bonanza coal plant in Utah on grounds that it failed to require controls on CO2. One megawatt is enough to power about 800 typical U.S. homes.
“Industry has woken up to the fact that a new progressive administration could move quickly to make the United States a leader rather than a laggard,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the group’s national coal campaign.
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Pamela: First, McCain predicates his measures on not hurting the economy. Which sort of defangs them. Which is a Good Thing. Second, Obama is not in favor of nukes (etc.). He says he favors “clean coal” but what good is that with a CO2 tax?
Pamela, Sen. Obama is very approachable and very flexible. He will find common ground with you and tell you anything necessary to get your vote. If that is what it takes for you to vote for someone, then you’ve found your man.
Of course he will change his positions–to suit the circumstance. As soon as circumstances change, after a few seconds or so, he will change his positions again. He is adept at changing his positions, at least publicly.
To know what he will do as opposed to what he will say, one needs to intelligently analyse his past actions. That would require work, though, so you may wish to let someone else do that, say, after the election?
Pamela, If I may call you that,
Lovely place Pendelton – the wheatfields, the valley, the roundup, and the Pendelton grade (takes a bit of skill to go down it with a trailer). Knew you had wonderful sweaters, didn’t know about the punkins…
I don’t think it matters – on issues of AGW the Washington (east coast) crowd is solidly in the clutches of the rabid environmentalists. Maybe so much marble has rotted the brains there – they need to sniff the wheat and evergreens. (No I’m not being cute here!)
We shall see. I fought for your right to vote as you wish. I don’t have to agree with you, but thank you for putting some thought into that process.
Mike
To expand on the partial answer to the source of new CO2 given above, let me add the following:
1. Truly new CO2 comes from volcanoes. There is no Carbon-12 in this gas since Carbon-12 is generated by bombardment of the atmosphere by cosmic rays.
2. When the climate warms as it has been doing since the 1700s, the oceans warm and CO2 is gradually taken out of solution and added to the atmosphere. This is not new CO2, but is probably much of what we see in the rise shown in the Mauna Loa measurements. There may be some carbon-12 in this gas since it once was part of the atmosphere, but it may have decayed significantly depending on the duration of the solution in the oceans.
3. When fossil fuels are burned, carbon is released as CO2 in the process. Fossil fuels include natural gas, petroleum, oil shale, oil sands and coal. In general there is no C-12 in CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels. It has been out of contact with the atmosphere for long enough for all the C-12 to decay.
All the remaining CO2 in the atmosphere, soil, vegetation, and in the seas continuously cycles in the normal carbon cycle. This is not a static process, but is dynamic and chaotic and so far has not been modeled adequately.
Actually, Obama has re-considered his position on nuclear energy and believes we should go forward with new plants, along with other ways of reducing our reliance on oil. I don’t see much space between McCain’s list of energy sources we should be pursuing, and Obama’s. Where did you read that Obama is against nuclear energy? I used to be, especially after Chernoble (sp?). I have since changed my mind, partly because our armed forces are doing pretty well accident wise with nuke powered ships and subs. Maybe we should hire the people who made the ships and subs to build the next nuclear plants on land. They have a damned good track record. So if you want to make me (and by extention, Obama) wear flip flops, several people who post here will have to wear the same item for changing from an AGW believer to a more open-minded thinker.
[…] UN insane. If we lose the EU and the UN, humanity is lost! We must save the bureaucrats!” Obama to Declare Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Pollutant “In my opinion, this is lunacy – Obama’s thinking is completely off the rails now. He […]
I said Carbon 12, I meant C-14. Sorry. Getting older by the day.
REPLY: You should carbon date yourself. 😉
I think that carbon-14 is the result of cosmic ray bombardment and is what is used to carbon date fossils and the like. Plants take up any carbon it can get but it prefers certain isotopes over others. When cosmic rays are down (during maximum cycles), carbon-14 goes down. When minimum allows cosmic rays to get to our atmosphere, carbon-14 goes up. Carbon-14 dating has its limits because it eventually decays to the point it can no longer be detected using the current measuring devices we have, thus can no longer be used to date very old rocks and whatnot.
As I have always said. It’s about the money, not the science.
Now we know how Obama will pay for all the new and improved government programs.
Obama definition of rich. Anybody who has a job.
Now old construction worker, you know that is just your spin. From what source do you get this information? Is it credible? Does it make sense against the tax proposals Obama is putting out there? If we are to have any kind of effective discussion that has any hope of making people think, spin will not do. It could very well be that I am wrong about Obama. But statements like you made do nothing to convince me about Obama. It may lead me to wonder about you. I am very skeptical when it comes to spin. Just as I am skeptical when someone says CO2 causes kidney stones. We all know that to be spin. Saying that Obama believes that rich means you have a job falls into the same category.
I don’t like two of his proposals: to go ahead with carbon credits/taxes related to CO2 emission, and the $250,000 cut off for businesses. But I think common ground can be found here. More tax deductions for new equipment purchases for businesses would fix part of the problem. Waiting out this cold spell so that we don’t jump on the bandwagon and regret it later is another compromise that is worth pursuing.
@Pamela Gray (20:07:22) :
We can date old rocks, there is more than C14 dating.
Sad really – the USA following Europe into the new third world of impoverished once great industrial nations.
Empty streets lined with decaying houses as a result of the sub-prime fiasco – next even more silent factories surrounded by darkened city streets as the Carbon Police whisper past in their carbon pollution free Al Goremobiles.
At least the Canadians will have lights, perhaps you can flee the Carbon Prohibition across your northern border and drink deeply from their powered society.
Who will be the Al Capone of the 21st century, selling illicit electricity and gasoline from guarded warehouses, whilst paying hush money to the faceless Carbon Cops – oh wait, I forgot, he’s already in business selling ‘carbon credits’ to himself…
Pamela Gray (19:53:30) :
” Maybe we should hire the people who made the ships and subs to build the next nuclear plants on land. They have a damned good track record. ”
The operational track record is very good for our nuclear power plants and the people who build the nuclear subs wouldn’t know where to start when building a large nuclear power station as I was involved in the construction of a nuclear power plant that has operated successfully for over 20 years.
Robert, I know that. But I was referring to carbon 14 dating and I believe I was clear on that. One of the most interesting ways to date rocks is to see what else is in it. If its up on top of a mountain peak and there are sea shell fossils in it, you can methodically go back in time when that piece of dirt was low enough to be under water. Another way is to match rock on the edge of one continent with rock on the edge of another. There are several places on our continents that show at one time they were touching each other. Again, using rather straight forward methods, you can calculate how old those edges are based on continental drift.
But I am going to assume that you know that, just like you would assume I do.
Don’t new regulations require some standard of proof, or at least a cost-benefit analysis?
Absolutely not. That’s why you have the cost of a new over the road truck going up 8k to 10K per tier to pay for emmission regs, not to mention the increase in maintenance and decrease in fuel economy. We’re way past diminshed returns on EPA vehicle emmissions reg’s.
Dear edcon, maybe if you all sat down and compared notes, the folks who manage to put a nuclear engine in a sub could inform the next design of a plant on land. I know that land based nuclear plants have done well, but they are exceptionally ugly and look downright scary in a common person’s eyes. Why build the biggest thing you can think of? Build more of them but make them smaller. So that would mean talking with folks who have done exactly that. Just thinkin out loud here.
Frightening to see so many knee jerk conservatives here, but glad to see a few people with constructive and informed observations – they restore my hope.
CO2 is perhaps useful as a surrogate for energy use, but the more time we waste arguing about CO2 and ignoring the really big problems of overpopulation and gluttonous energy consumption, the worse off we will be.
Please open your eyes, those of you so concerned about the politics of CO2, and see the population/energy-use elephant in the room. Then get it out of here and get the shovels. We have much more pressing problems than CO2, and they don’t include any political candidates.
http://www.timprosserfuturing.wordpress.com
REPLY: Tim, a little advice. If you want people to take you seriously, try not insulting the same people in the first sentence. – Anthony
Why people vote the way they do.
Opportunity for McCain: I bet the voters of all those states with coal and energy industries will not like this. I doubt he will take it, but who knows.
The photograph at the head of this article reveals the face of a stone cold killer, who, if elected will kill millions of people both in the USA and by association and influence, millions more around the world. It will be a 100 times worse decision than the ban on DDT that has killed 50 million people from malaria. That ban has now been lifted because it was wrong.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215084,00.html
If that person is elected, America will collapse faster than Russia’s shrinking population. He is the very worst thing that could happen to the USA. Never mind that McCain is an old fighter pilot and Palin may have used her authority for personal reasons (and who hasn’t?), there you have in full view before you, a totalitarian candidate who has avowed to destroy your economy and you are pussyfooting around the issue.
This is not the time to have gentil, civilised, chatterati type gossip about what colour the bicycle shed should be, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality What you are facing is an “in your face” direct, knife in hand, challenge and without out exception, it should be met in this manner, face to face. http://www.krav-maga-uk.com/index.php?pid=4
If you do not see this threat for what it is, a “hidden in plain view” blatant threat to destroy the USA from within, you, all of you Yanks, who have been our friends and allies over so many years, you do not deserve to be saved. Crass stupidity is not rewarded with second chances. Vote in this Democrat and you will be so shafted, that toilets will be redundant. This would not be lunacy, Anthony, it would be national suicide and there is no other nation which could prevent it happening.
Remember, it was almost the fate of Japan in WW2, its leaders wanting to fight for a lost cause, until the last man woman and child. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, terrible as they were and continue to be so regarded, those attacks demonstrated the utter folly and futility of continuing to resist and look how Japan recovered.
That blessing will not be conferred on the USA if they rush headlong to embrace the CO2 Pollutant Scare. The Japanese war leaders held up a false picture of Japan being desecrated by American GIs, in order to keep the population fighting, but it was not true was it? So it is with the CO2 terror threat. A lie so frightening that it is paralysing the brains of ordinary Americans so much, that they cannot think straight. In which case they will die of ignorance. Who in their right minds would have thought it. The premier, scientifically based economy, that has been the powerhouse of the world’ economy for over 100 years and it falls for the lie that CO2 is a pollutant? That is utter, ***king, rabid, insanity and there is only one cure for Hydrophobia.
Do not let this thing happen. I have never felt so passionate about a single issue and I have to speak out. Wouldn’t each of you try to prevent a family member or a friend from harming themselves. Well, so it is with this situation. You have only to keep this particular democrat from office to achieve survival. Fail and I, for one, will be sad to watch the wholly preventable death of an old, dear friend, who did not listen to sound sensible advice, but who chose to listen to the seductive, siren call of the snakeoil salesman. That is all I have to say on the matter. It’s your choice, America.
The “factsheet” on energy on the Obama website, has, buried down in there,
“it is unlikely that we can meet out aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear as an option”.
It seems to me that nuclear is the word nobody wants to use, but that’s the way we are headed when it comes to energy independence. I imagine that the powers that be, when they sit down and look at hard reality, see that the historical avoidance of nuclear has been a huge mistake. But these politicians also want to keep their jobs, and there is a fair amount of public perception that nuclear is, frankly, “evil”. I would imagine that they figure that yes, new technologies will come along, and we have to encourage them, but nobody can predict the next breakthrough, the future is uncertain. So the energy policy goes something like this: “No more dirty oil! Alternatives! Wind! Solar! Biofuels! *cough*nuclear*cough* Biomass!”
They have coated the nuclear pill with environmentally tasty soya aloe vera superfoods. Exploited the environmental movement’s self contradictions.
I imagine this is the case as “nuclear” is conspicuously absent from speeches, but it’s always in the fine print. Politicians don’t need a PhD to know that when you plug something in, there has to be something on the other end feeding the power.
@Pamela Gray (21:29:21) :
I was more thinking in the line of uranium-lead, Potassium-argon radiometric dating. That tends to give better results in estimating the age of rocks rather than just looking where it was found.
How long before the Mexicans start retreating back to Mexico?
How long before Canada has too worry about migration from the USA overwhelming it’s own resources?
I’ve made the above statements half in jest… however I am deeply concerned. The EPA has real power.
Tim, the idea that man is locked into a consumptive lifestyle, a cog in the machine of an endless cycle of production and consumption, whilst we negate our true humanity and the environment, has been around as a philosophical and moral outlook since the 60 and earlier. I have here my little copy of Eric Fromm’s “To Have or To Be”, written at a time when therapists were drawing from the philosophies of Buddhism and Humanism, and before Earth Day got started. This stuff is now part of our culture and as new generations grow up, they come to similar “discoveries”. So if you want to open your eyes, it is interesting to go deeper into what it is all about. Going further back we get into the Existential stuff, and basic question about why are we here, what should we be doing, what really matters, anyway? I mention this stuff because the first link I found on the website you quote goes to a paper by a prominent psychologist, supposing there is a psychological mechanism that stops us from “opening our eyes” to our actions. And reading between the lines it is the same sort of stuff. You don’t have to be an environmentalist to wonder about what it is that is really important in life. You might come at it from new age/spiritual/Buddhist/compassion circles and go read the famous Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose”.
I am in no way dismissing this stuff, it is valuable for many people, and start by recognizing the cultural currents that permeate your own thinking, and take into account that they are one of many “rivers” through life, and many people are not “blind”, they are just paddling down a different route.
@Timprosser.
If Malthus was right – why are so many developed countries got organic population growth rates below replacement levels and only sustain their populations by net immigration?
I thought Malthus made sense when I was 18 – I grew out of it. What happened to you. It’s a negative, self destructive belief – let it go, and move on.