From Yahoo News
h/t to Adolfo Giurfa
EPA for the first time looks to mandate reporting of the gases linked to global warming
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government wants to require companies for the first time to disclose how much greenhouse gases they’re releasing.
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing mandatory reporting of the gases blamed for global warming at approximately 13,000 facilities nationwide.
The facilities include refineries, automobile manufacturers, power plants, coal mines and large manure ponds at farms.
Together, the facilities account for about 85-90 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The EPA requires no reporting of greenhouse gases. The information will be needed if it decides to control greenhouse gases or if Congress passes a law limiting the pollution.
Companies would have to file their first reports in 2011.
Should the the EPA ever demand my report, I think I’ll follow Jim Hansen’s lead and do a little “civil disobedience”. Assuming the trend holds, I’d likely send back something like this:
(when you figure it out)
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How will the cattle owners calculate their cattle’s farting volume? Will they measure its exhaust temperature?
The totalitarian world state is slowly happening and the satellite that crashed was likely a tool to discriminate CO2 emitters.
In Canada, municipalities are infiltrated with green activists who serve on bureaucrats’ committees then who do not get elected on green lists but who are getting elected on known political politicians’ list. It is clearly a subversive way to reach a local decision level and pervert yet another level of government.
How do emitters determine the amount of their CO2 emissions? How much does it cost to do so? How extensive will the reporting requirements be? Will they include office buildings, shopping malls, server farms, etc?
13,000 in a class action law suit against the EPA, with all their wonderful
blood sucking lawyers. Subpoena Gore and Hansen and put them under
oath. You think Gore sweats now!……Now that would be some good TV!
April,
Good point… that 80-90% number set my BS meter off as well. I thought it was SUVs that caused 80-90% of the emissions.
G
Paddy, and others wondering how the reporting will be done:
Below is a link to the California equivalent for AB 32. Small emitters are not required to report as rigorously as large emitters.
CO2 itself is not measured, but is calculated by some formulas based on the type of fuel burned, and the quantities. On-line continuous measuring systems are provided for.
http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/reporting/ghg-rep/ghg-rep.htm
Industry Insider (11:50:35) :
The minimum threshold for reporting in the proposed rule is 25,000 metric tons of GHGs, and there are something like 42 industrial source categories for which reporting is required, so individuals will not have to report how much CO2 the exhale.
Considering that each person exhales about 0.5 metric tons of CO2 a year any large company with more than 50.000 employees is caught. The army comes to mind. Large Universities? Mc Donalds?
Aron (10:27:30) : “Once they have that in place they’ll turn towards personal carbon trading. ”
Aron, I’ve given this some thought. It goes something like this:
Each time a human being exhales they “emit” from their lungs gases that contain about 4000 ppm of carbon. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s over 10X the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In short, with each exhalation human beings create 10X the carbon they inhale. Therefore, humans are definitely “polluters” — not as bad perhaps as a coal-powered power plants, but polluters nonetheless, and they should be subject to EPA regulation.
I read somewhere that over the course of a year a human being exhales about 0.5 tons of carbon. With an average life expectancy in the US approaching 80 years that means that over their lifetime every human being now in existance (plus the new ones that may be “produced” in the future) will generate about 40 tons of carbon.
So, now that we understand the “science”, what’s the plan? In the year that the cap and trade scheme kicks off everyone then alive will have to buy carbon credits for themselves and their offspring. The number of credits required will be based on your sex, age and life expectancy. (Sounds complicated, I know, but we can create a new bureaucracy to figure all this out). For a typical middle class American household of two adults and 2.1 children that would work out to somewhere in the vicinity of 100 tons of carbon credits depending on the ages of family members. Using the EC carbon market as a guide that could amount to more than $3500 (in more normal economic times — it would be substantially less today).
Ok, that takes care of those alive when the plan starts, but how do we handle the need for additional carbon credits for newly produced human pollution units (aka children)? Perhaps, we should require prospective parents to buy a life-time supply of 40 tons of carbon credits for each child they produce? Sounds fair, but what about those who choose not to produce a CO2 emitter. Maybe the Obama plan will grant a 40 ton credit to each woman who “chooses” not to produce a “polluter” — it could be the Planned Parenthood’s version of a “Save the Planet” program — have an abortion and get 40 carbon credits free, which of course can then be sold to a prospective parent at the then prevailing market rate.
Oh, yes, I forgot — fertility varies by ethnic group so allowances will have to be make — think of it as “affirmative action for climate control”. And, if the price of carbon get’s too high, we know some people won’t be able to afford credits (sort of like health insurance today), so we could make the entire system “progressive” like the tax system — the top 5% of the income bracket will end up buying 70-80% of the carbon credits.
OK, now that covers the people. Now, what about the family’s pets? Dogs are bigger than cats, so they produce more carbon…………………………
Here it comes…and here we go! Enjoy the ride, folks!
Sylvia (11:46:03) :
Where actual data are not available (which is most cases) it will be done via the use of published emission factors, i.e., multiply tons of fuel used by an “emission factor” of y tons CO2/ton fuel. So you have to keep records of all fuels burned/used (which everyone does, anyway). In the case of methane and other GHGs, you then multiply also by a CO2-equivalence factor that adjusts everything to a CO2 basis. It WILL actually create some jobs; consultants are drooling over this (although it’s so simple that they will not be needed in most cases, unless third-party verification is required; and EPA is not proposing 3rd-party verification (which surprises me, given the need to create jobs)).
I notice two things about global warming –
1. Every consequence of global warming in bad.
2. Every solution involves raising taxes.
Our government here in ole New Zealand tried to pass a fart tax on cows a few years back (after they nationalised carbon credits from trees… resulting in forestry owners clearing the tree’s for dairy land) We didnt stand for that kinda crap! They backed down.
William R (10:50:10) :
“That graph is obviously cherry picking by starting at the 1998 peak. I don’t think our side needs to cherry pick to prove our point.”
Well if we want to be really objective we should show the graphs from the end of the last ice age to put natural variability into perspective…. somehow i cant see “youre side” doing that 😉
Who would have ever thought that mixing baking soda with vinegar would be an act of civil disobedience?
Antonio San (11:56:09)
I’ll never find the paper after 30 years. But during my thesis reseach I found a paper that enumerated the daily amount and timing of fecal release from a dairy cow. I really felt sorry for that graduate student. http://www.drovers.com/news_editorial.asp?ts=nl2&pgID=675&ed_id=5079
Here is a link that discusses methane production from cattle in a scientific manner if your interested
We need to use embryonic stem cell research to clone a cow that emits much less GHG. Now that’s change you can breath to.
Good luck to our American friends. Let us know how you get on with the possible new regs. The worse it turns out the more likely Canadia is to follow suit.
We could use some GW up here in the frozen North where record cold swept across Central Alberta last night. Edmonton blasted the old record by a whopping 13C° … at minus 42°C! Ugh!
I’ve applied for this patent. Will make millions. ☺
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/2/d/8/63987/epaemissionsmonitor-0.jpg
Ok I have it: included in the 80-90% number is suppliers of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas etc). I guess they will tax the suppliers for emitting C02 and then tax the users for emitting it as well. Very nice 🙂
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads/GeneralProvisions.pdf
G
I’m curious to see the report they expect you to complete. How are they measuring the release of CO2, or, more accurately, how are they expecting *you* to measure the release of CO2?
That is what Green jobs are for. These nosey bastards in Green shirts go around discreetly measuring CO2 emissions with some retarded device. They knock on your door from time to time to ask why your bills are high and what equipment you use. Then they ask if they can come inside to inspect your property to suggest how you can be more efficient to save Gaia.
Can’t be efficient enough? Shame, you’ll have to buy carbon credits from the guy who lives in a single room rental. He has plenty credits spare because he never drives, never turns on the lights, eats once a week, hates consumer products, contributes nothing to the economy and hasn’t got a job. So while he gives nothing back to society, he gets rich selling carbon credits to productive people who get poorer.
Then you have that failed satellite which could have tracked CO2 emissions by nation. Papua New Guinea is using fossil fuels to work their way out of poverty. Oh no no no, that cannot be allowed. They must buy carbon credits from an even lesser developed nation or even a rich one that has spare credits laying around. Result, Papua New Guinea’s growth is slowed down.
Totalitarianism and imperialism, right there.
From numberwatch:
The common factors in campaigns of zealotry are:
• Creation and maintenance of a myth
• Ignoring all evidence countering the myth
• Ad hominem attacks on opponents
• Encouraging authoritarian governments to impose taxes and reduce individual freedom
• Promotion of limits and constraints that are simply invented without reason
• Collusion by the establishment media
• Damage to science and its methods
• Elimination of things that make life bearable
• Making some people very rich while impoverishing the lives of almost everyone else.
Think AGW. Perfect fit.
Jack Green (12:38:56) :
Well the buggers should be giving the farmers carbon credits for all the wetlands they’ve drained first! 🙂 A farm in general dos’nt stink o methane, swamps do… but i have no idea what the official figures are.
Oops, wrong numberwatch page. Here’s the right one: click
“That graph is obviously cherry picking by starting at the 1998 peak. I don’t think our side needs to cherry pick to prove our point.”
Well, the AGW folks are cherry picking by starting their baseline in 1978…
John Egan (10:39:59)
That the Greenland icecap would melt at a 3 degree temperature rise was always absurd, and it certainly doesn’t take any “new study” to prove it. Why? Because temperatures in Greenland, both on top of the icecap and along the coast, was about 5 degrees warmer during the last interglacial, but in every place where the ice has been drilled to bedrock there is ice dating from that interglacial!
Going along and complying with their idiotic laws is in my view aiding and abetting tyranny.
My opinion is to conduct a passive protest.
That is no one react to their moronic intrusive requests. Do not cooperate, just continue going about your business as before. If they come after you, then don’t resist, let them carry you off like a sack of potatoes.
What are they going to do? Throw 50 million of the most productive people in the brig?
There’s a time to stand up for what is right.
Give me liberty, or give me death.
This slogan is about to make a come back – I fear.
“Think AGW. Perfect fit.”
More general, think environmental-extremism. Perfect fit.
“is proposing mandatory reporting of the gases blamed for global warming at approximately 13,000 facilities nationwide”
Believe me, they can do that, and even worse things. It has been done here in Europe. See for instance the document at the bottom (it’s in spanish, don’t care, just go to the table where the spanish government authorizes the “new entrants” for the period 2008-2012, i.e. CO2 emissions are rationed, see the name of the industry and the CO2 ration allocated for each company and for the period 2008-2012). If you exceed the emissions then you have to buy emissions rights elsewhere or paying a penalty ~ 100€/ton. Totalitarian, isn’t it?. My only hope is the US fighting this nonsense, we in Europe already lost the battle.
best
http://www.mma.es/portal/secciones/participacion_publica/cambio_climatico/pdf/infopna2008-12.pdf