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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PeteS: “Your politicians seem as stupid as are ours in the UK. As you might know Gordon Brown has created a new department for Energy and Climate Change, and has given the job to a so called bright young man named Ed Miliband. His brother, also very underwhelming, is our Foreign Secretary.”
Underwhelming is certainly the right word. I note that the latest cunning plan by the UK government to solve growing unemployment, the energy gap and the “climate crisis” all in one bold move is to 1) train the unemployed people to install loft insulation. 2) And, er, that’s just about it.
Yes, we face a similar problem to the one you face in the US. Who on earth is there to vote for, out of this bunch, when they’re all as dismal as one another? To quote the Ghostbusters theme song: Who ya gonna call? Is there no-one?
It is truly amazing that carbon dioxide will be classified as a pollutant when it is not even mentioned or monitored as part of any air quality index across the world because it is not a pollutant .This is another diversion tactic to avoid dealing with real pollutants like ground level ozone , sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide , carbon monoxide, particulate matter, dioxins ,furons and lead. When did we last hear any AGW supporting scientist or government official mention reduction targets for these pollutants which prematurely kill people today and not a 100 year from now. Canadian Medical Association estimated that in 2008, 21,000 Canadians will die from heart and lung disease brought on by breathing polluted air . Multiply this by 10 and you have a comparable figure for the US.This what we should be reducing. Mother nature will take care of the carbon dioxide if we do our share in reducing the real pollutants.
A far deadlier pollutant is ACORN sullying the integrity of the political process, and Obama is thick with them.
====================================
It is past the time for everyone to re-read 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World.
Obama, that serial lying, amoral, Marxist-Leninist, will take us to the new Communist Utopia. He will do so without a bloody revolution. His enablers, true believers, useful idiots, and power seeking thugs, have their Messiah.
It is not too late. He still has to win the election.
Pamela,
You used the phrase “Obama has re-considered his position” which is exactly the problem. Obama is a young, clever, inexperienced man who changes his positions constantly on many different topics and has no track record of real-world accomplishment – other than helping ACORN register voters and not understanding what his pastor of 20 years hates America.
No one (including himself) has any idea what his position will be next year, because he is not yet an adult.
We can also rehab plants not being used. The Satsop nuke facility in Western Washington has been idle for I don’t know how long.
Timprosser,
The only way you’re going to “deal with” overpopulation is to mandate birth control. Whom do you propose gets the axe first? Talk about riots…
Jeff,
Try suggesting birth control in the Muslim world, and see what kind of response you get.
“Pamela Gray (19:53:30) :
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.”
Actually I think he has repackaged his opposition. He opposes Yucca Mountain as a disposal site. He also has said local communities should have ‘veto’ authority over waste site decisions. Without coming to grips with disposal, there is NO going forward.
“timprosser (21:50:54) :
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.
REPLY: Tim, a little advice. If you want people to take you seriously, try not insulting the same people in the first sentence. – Anthony”
Anthony, people here might think you work for FOX News corporation………….ooooops 😉
REPLY: And people here might also think you work for/belong to Sierra Club. – Anthony
Not read all the comments, but it’s obvious that with carbon trading politicians have finally resolved a time-honoured conundrum: how to tax the very air we breath
I have been a lawyer for thirty years and first of all, I will say that my profession absolutely sucks when it comes to science. My father was a PhD in biochemistry and my brother is a PhD in biophysics and a lot of the scientific method has been ingrained in me, even though I also suck at science. But I don’t suck nearly as much as most of the members of my profession. And let’s be frank, many if not most of our politicians have legal backgrounds. The rest seem to be as clueless as lawyers when it comes to science.
Unfortunately we do what scientists tell us we should do and most of the time we are absolutely clueless as to whether or not we are being fed scientific BS.
It is a sad state of affairs that so much of our education today is void of scientific study. Today’s students get through college with the most rudimentary knowledge of math and science, and these are our college students.
So we have to depend upon the integrity of our scientists to give us the straight scoop.
But so many scientists have dropped the ball and in the process, lost our trust.
I am a personal injury lawyer and have used scientific experts for thirty years. Call me a cynic, but my impression of what passes for science in court is a joke.
I keep this ditty in mind about expert testimony:
I’ll get my whore, you get yours
And we’ll see which a jury abhors.
I am so cynical about the scientific community now it is disgusting. I am disgusted with the official scientific version of 9/11, of the anthrax investigation, of global warming, of NASA, the EPA, etc. etc. And big business scientists are no better. What the pharmaceutical scientists do and pass off as scientific research is appalling.
Same with other things such as energy.
The scientific community has just sold its soul.
And then it has the gall to point the finger at the rest of us who have been so gullible to buy what the snake oil salesmen have been selling.
I don’t know what has to happen, but first of all, the scientific community must get our trust back. They have lost my trust and the trust of millions like me.
Matt who whose comments are a few submissions previous to this is right,
CO2 is not a pollutant and I am not going to argue with his list of what is.
Many “sceptics” list or mention the very same…and they care passionately about the planet.
Global Warming has been caused by the sun…so now there are no sunspots….cooler planet….understand?
No bullshit please…..the sun rules!
As for the guy talking about reconciling climate models etc……dont waste your breath.
Well it is over 31 years since August 1977 during the Jimmie Carter Presidency (remember it was the biggest economic collapse since the great depression), and that is when the US Department of Energy was formed.
Its charter was: TO REDUCE US DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.”
But when was the last time any US program to solve a problem, actually solved that problem or any other problem. It is not in the nature of beaurocrats to solve problems; thereby putting themselves out of business.
So today, the Deartment of Energy has about 16,000 employees, as well as something like 100,000 contract employees. And mostly they do make work projects; they certainly aren’t working on reducing the US dependence on foreign oil.
And the promoters of renewable green energies; fail to understand that ALL such energy comes from the sun; and it arrives on earth at a peak rate of about 1kW per square meter, or according to NOAA at a global average of 168 W/m^2 to which maybe 30 could be added with antireflection technology.
It is impossible to cover the required amount of global surface area with any kind of structure capable of withstanding and surviving a 100 year storm; that does absolutely nothing at all but just sit there, at a cost which is necessary to make such energy sources economical. Once you require those structures to actually be able to collect solar energy by any means at a ll; even at 100% efficiency, the cost is prohibitive.
Add in the likely 15% for PhotoVoltaic, to perhaps 40% for solar thermal (steam) efficiency, and the concept is ludicrous. Any such structure is by its very nature hazard prone, and a ripe target for vandalism or terrorism; so any such plant would require total exclusion of human habitation, including visitors.
A proposal for such plants to be built in the wasteland deserts of the American Southwest (four corners and surrounds), in Jan 2008 Scientific American, calls for a 30,000 square mile PV facility, and a more modest 16,000 square mile thermal facility.
30, 000 square miles is 19.2 million acres, which just happens to be the exact size of the entirety of the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve, in Alaska; where only some 2400 acres would be needed for oil drilling, in that arctic desert wasteland.
Even worse than such plants from an energy conversion efficiency point of view, are bio-fuel plants. The conversion rate of solar energy into bio-fuels is way less than even the least efficient cheap photoVoltaic cell technologies, and as we saw earlier this year a single storm of the type that we see at least every handful of years, can send the whole bio-fuels operation down the Mississippi river into the Gulf of Mexico.
We started off with nothing but renewable green energy bio-fuels; spent virtually our whole waking day clambering around in fig trees trying to beat the smaller monkeys to the best figs. The proto-human species didn’t become successful on earth till we discovered fire, and stored chemical energy, including fossil fuels, whose carbon content has always been in the environment, even when life on earth flourished.
It’s time to quit fooling ourselves with perpetual motion machine energy sources. Renewable green energy wasn’t up to snuff, in getting the human species going, and there’s no way it can sustain our present 6 billions; let alone any future growth.
Sounds like a great way to send a country back tothe stone ages.
Of course that will never happen in the USA. Before that happens, the crap will surely hit the fan. I’m talking about a revolution here.
High time for a Boston CO2 party.
Pamela Gray.
If I am going to by a new car, before listening to the salesman’s spin, I find an owner and ask him what he thinks of his car.
Now using that logic, should I go to Africa and ask about there politicians ??????
(most of which have had western educations)
Imman, this is OT, so I’ll make this short.
Most of the important Christian prophecies were built right on top of Jewish ones and those were all written long after the ‘times’ they referred to, such as Isaiah. Prophecy, is not magic, it’s the retrojection of history backwards in time to create a new reality. End times stories as in Revelations, were overwrites of Dead Sea Scroll materials, originally anti Roman, pro Israel. Once the Christians got through with them, the were anti Israel. Such is the nature of religion.
“REPLY: And people here might also think you work for/belong to Sierra Club. – Anthony”
Touché!
Question: What makes CO2 a “dangerous pollutant”?
What basis was used to determine this? Someone’s fear? CO2 is necessary for most plant life on this planet. Plant more trees if you’re worried about the impact of CO2. What’s next? Will water vapor be next to be classified a “dangerous pollutant”?
Congrats, greenies – you’re making life even more expensive for the average American, at a time when we can ill afford it.
I think cap and trade in the US is inevitable because:
1) Decades of deficits and slowing economy means the government needs money.
2) American political culture makes raising taxes extremely difficult.
3) Cap and trade will give the government a new revenue source.
4) Democrats will have no opposition in Washington for the next 4 years.
This also means that cap and trade will be impossible to get rid of even if we enter a new ice age.
In the Sixties the Greens got going. In the Seventies and Eighties the industries and businesses hit back by developing a massive industry out of what Sharon Beder called “Global Spin”. But they hit too hard and they used spin to convince people that Global Warming was unreal, irrelevant, tiny, etc. because it hurt business. The Greens suffered under this… and as happens under suffering, they grew their own abilities to hit back and create their own spin…
Now, surely, with good PR, Industry could have an election winner for McCain, by coming clean about… The Real Truth about the Climate… Why are they not doing this?
It was so with the Wall Street debacle, and it will be again with the AGW debacle. Government collusion with biased scientific research will once again lead us down the wrong path and give us results that are entirely undesirable and damaging from an economic standpoint. If CO2 is declared a pollutant, it is not merely an unprecedented expansion of the EPA that will occur, but – as this issue touches all other issues – an unprecedented expansion of government itself. I wonder how many times we will have to go through this.
When government thought it could solve the economy, we got the New Deal, an expansion of government. When government thought it should address poverty, we got the Great Society, an expansion of government. When government thought it should improve housing for the poor, we got Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – now with a 700 billion dollar price tag, a two-for-one expansion of government. When government thought it should improve education we got No Child Left Behind, another expasion of government. All these were called emergencies or crises that legitimized government involvement, all of which have resulted in increased expenditures on increasing government programs. But these were merely single issue crises. Now we have a global crisis, in which CO2 emissions and regulation can be brought to affect every sector of the economy right down to the cost of electricity for regular “Joe the Plumber” type people. Make no mistake about it, an Obama presidency will be the worst thing that has ever happened to America since the Great Depression.
Pelosi’s “flagship issue” going into the next congress is still (as it was last congress) global warming and energy independence. See Charlie Rose interview yesterday.
“RePO (Reid-Pelosi-Obama)”
LOL…
Actually, not quite laughing…
Actually, hurling…
REAL air pollution problems – lead, chromium, arsenic, particulates, etc – should pose more than enough public health concern for the U.S. government, if it wants to get involved. The first EPA-sponsored lead emissions reduction legislation in more than 30 years was passed yesterday.
Why don’t they stick to what really ails us and just try to do that well?
Pamela Gray,
RE: “The sky will not fall on your head if Obama becomes the president.”
I think we might be having a different discussion here if Obama (or McCain) gave even a token nod to scientific scepticism. Instead, it seems they both want to lead the bandwagon of anthropogenic global warming.
I’m especially disappointed that someone as smart as Obama can’t get the science right. I haven’t read Dreams… or Audacity… but I’m curious to know if his early schooling (2 years in a Muslim school, 2 years in a Catholic school) in Indonesia had anything to do with this “true believer” mentality. I’ve just listened to Pelosi reference her obligations to her religious convictions that she should pass the Earth to the next generation in better condition.
If that means an Earth grown flatulent with sequestered CO2, I suppose I’d just have to disagree.
Chaz (11:54:26) :
“Congrats, greenies – you’re making life even more expensive for the average American, at a time when we can ill afford it.”
Think you missed the point Chaz. The idea is not to make life more expensive, it’s to make modern life IMPOSSIBLE!
Dave.