I was recently forwarded this email from Al Gore’s WE Repower America website. They have a call to action based on their belief that a majority of Americans support carbon “cap and trade”, even though recent Gallup polls suggest Americans are otherwise preoccupied with things like their own economic survival.
WE suggests writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper to counter what they say: “misleading statements were repeated on TV and in newspapers across the country.”
Gosh.
Read the letter below.
I agree, WUWT readers should make their opinions known (pro and con as we have both here) about carbon cap and trade. I suggest using the handy dandy link from the WE email above (or here) to let your local newspaper editors know just what you think about it.
The letter link has a handy dandy 3 step wizard where you can use forms to write a letter to your local newspaper, complete with an automated sender to the letters to the editor section of every newspaper in the USA. They’ve kindly included shrink wrapped talking points ready to cut and paste so you don’t have to think for yourself. All you have to remember is your ZIP code.
Bear in mind, short letters of 150 words or less usually get preference, although some newspapers will allow up to 250 words. Also, letters “usually” must be your original work, as newspaper editors have a way to detect email campaigns where common phrases are repeated. And, I suggest that you don’t post your letters here in comments, this should remain your individual communication, should you choose to participate.
Thank goodness we live in a Democracy where free speech is allowed. Exercise it today. We can do it!
I began writing anti-AGW letters to the local paper in Dec., ’07, and had perhaps a half dozen appear last year. Up to now, I had only written one so far this year, but this “WE” thing, and the handy online tool they very kindly provide did spark my letter-writing again, this time to a whole bunch of newspapers.
Thank you, “Repower America”!
And, thanks Anthony.
Their little ruse is going to backfire beautifully.
The cool and scary thing about modern technology is how easily a tool used by one group of advocates can be co-opted by the opposition. Here the cap-and-trade profiteers go to the effort of creating a mechanism to promote their scheme and with absolutely minimal effort those who would be ripped off pick it up and use it against them. Usually it’s the bad guys who employ the tools of progress as weapons against it. Nice to see the shoe on the other foot for a change.
“Carbon-Kevin (Rudd) and Penny Wong get a heads up from the geological profession”
LK
What do you mean, “Who the hell’s Kevin Rudd?”
He’s our Australian prime minister
(Sorry, we thought he was a giant on the global stage..)
Confronting the media with anti cap&Trade view more important than ever:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/epa-co2-regulation-back-to-courts.html
and http://planetark.org/wen/52434
Cap&Trade could seriously damage Obama approval rating according to this posting:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/lines-will-soon-cross-if-he-keeps.html
EPA to regulate CO2 emissions via the “Clean Water Act”.
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/epa-to-regulate-co2-via-clean-water-act.html
Hey Ron (de Haan), not so fast!
I live in France and contribute comments from time to time to WUWT.
OK, they never get published, so what, there must be a line around the block, of commentors striving for airing their darlings in (or is it “on”?) WUWT.
Mine are usually boring anyway, and probably just plain wrong, so not to publish is probably a right decision.
Didn’t Kipling try 40 times before he was accepted for publication?
Anyway Ron, it would seem from your moniker that you are a Dutchman, one of the 13035 in your list. It is well known that you “Pays Bassians” speak better English than us Englishmen, so to be sure your stuff will be more deserving that mine.
About French contributions. On the whole they are a likeable lot, well educated, knowlegable and with a strong interest in the environment. However there is the well-known thing they suffer from, a seemingly inborn disinclination to speak English unless they have to do so.
So they’ll just have to remain under represented in the WUWT community, except, perhaps, for me, and I am that wondrous thing, an Englishman.
Cap & Trade? Cap and tax ripoff is what is intended, without doubt.
As to the “concept” of “clean” energy, sounds great . . . until the cost is considered. A better name for it all would be “die of hypothermia in the dark”.
My email…
Cap and trade is a bad idea at any time but in these difficult economic times we do not need a complicated policy that increases energy costs to already strained working families. It’s ideology over reality. We just saw how overly complex financial policies and instruments can be scammed and the devastating results of their ‘unexpected’ implosion. People claiming that cap and trade is simple and transparent are disengenuous at best. Just how transparent has been the dispersal of those huge stimulus payments despite prior assurances?
Anthony, what a great idea!
http://algorelied.com/?p=1242
You have to give Gore’s PR organization some credit> They put forth a scheme that will (1) provide personal IDs and information for incorporation into a data base of proponents of AGW; and (2) influence newspapers to believe that the public supports AGW. Rather than give ” WE” my personal data, I sent the following e-mail to the Seattle Times and Seattle Post Intelligencer (now Internet only).
“An organization fronted and/or funded by Al Gore, “We Repower America” (http://reposeramerica.org) has launched a letter writing campaign to newspapers throughout the nation. Please consider the following comments about the subject and the “We” organization.
1. It is physically and financially impossible to switch from fossil fuels for energy production and transportation in 10 years. Clean energy replacements and fuel manufacturing facilities cannot be designed, sited and permitted, much less manufactured and installed in 10 years. To contend that it can be done is delusional.
2. All clean energy sources, including hydro, nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind and bio-fuels cannot replace electricity generated and transportation fueled by fossil fuels, including coal, oil and natural gas. Nearly all hydro site have been exploited. Nuclear power has too much opposition to overcome to be considered feasible now. NYMBY opposition, including mainstream and fringe environmental organizations, are actively blocking development of solar and wind projects now in California, Nevada, Texas and Massachusetts. Geothermal sites are limited and development is problematic. Technology is inadequate for other plausible alternatives does not exist.
3. Clean energy is promoted as a solution for a non-existent problem, global warming caused by anthropogenic sources (AGW) of CO2 and other trace greenhouse gases. CO2 and other greenhouse gases are not pollutants. They are natural and essential components of our atmosphere. Life on earth cannot exist without atmospheric CO2. Any climate warming that occurs is due to natural variability and should be welcomed. The current cooling poses a potential, known danger to life on Earth if it continues and worsens, many scientists believe is happening.
4. THERE IS NO EXPERIMENTAL SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INCORPORATING EMPIRICAL CLIMATE AND WEATHER DATA THAT PROVES THE MAN CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING HYPOTHESIS. Mathematical models are not proof or even factual. Computer models, the sole basis of AGW, yield hypothetical scenarios based upon hypothetical assumptions of the modelers about climate that are not understood.
5. Clean energy does have its place. Strategically, we are dependent upon and transferring our wealth to foreign crude oil producers. Development of clean energy sources can provide partial relief from foreign oil imports. But, other than nuclear power, clean energy sources need to become cost effective without massive subsidies to be useful. 2d generation bio-fuel technology is yet to be commercially feasible. In the interim, coal, oil and nuclear power provide the only means to become independent from foreign oil imports.
6. Al Gore represents a cabal of individuals, entities, governments and NGOs including the UN, and his own personal interests. Their objective is to propagandize the public to accept AGW as scientific and valid. The solution they promote is a system that controls and taxes energy production and consumption, carbon emission cap and trade and/or direct taxes on carbon emissions. They stand to profit enormously from investments and direct interests in the global trade of carbon credits and offsets that make up carbon cap and trading. This cabal is predatory and determined to destroy capitalism and replace it with trans-national socialist governance that they control.
Conclusion: In terms used by the common man, repowering America with 100% clean electricity in 10 years is total unmitigated BS.
Paddy Lenihan, Kirkland, WA USA”
Thank you Anthony for this exercise in participatory civics. I wrote to my favorite southern Cali papers and did not fail to mention Al’s investment company. Who would believe a pitch for world industry to pay a clique of bandits for an atmospheric trace gas? It is literally grabbing money from thin air. Only, the money belongs in someone else’s pockets.
Nice tool WE got.
Split Atoms not wood or Birds…
I’m on here’s mine
SubjectCarbon Taxes
MessageThese are both wrong and immoral.
They threaten to tax innocent people to enforce a solution to what is an overblown “problem” that has no reason to be fixed as it is a non existent issue. We must oppose these taxes.
I’m intrigued by the notion of a “Carbon” tax. Think of how many, many things contain carbon! The revenue generating potential is almost limitless. 😉
Got here a little late, but want to say there is so much disinformation written above. As Ronald Reagan said, “It’s not that our friends don’t know anything, it’s that so much of what they know just isn’t so.”
Regarding wind in the U.S., there is more than enough to power the place.
http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap2/2-01m.html
for a map of wind speeds and locations in the continental U.S. from DOE.
http://www.mms.gov/5-year/PDFs/2010-2015/DPP%20FINAL%20(HQPrint%20with%20landscape%20maps,%20map%2010).pdf
and page 13 for discussion of offshore availability of renewable power, including wind, wave, and ocean current.
The energy storage issues for excess generation from renewables are being solved, with my leading candidate being splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis, compressing the hydrogen and storing it for later use as fuel in a gas turbine power plant. The electrolysis and hydrogen compression would be performed with electricity from renewable energy.
There is no need ever again to build or run a nasty nuke, with all its toxic waste and outrageous power price due to high construction costs.
There is no need to import foreign oil, but we can retain our money in this country. We can use domestic oil for petrochemical feed, lubricating oils, asphalts, and jet fuel. The price of crude oil will decrease to around $10 to $15 per barrel, due to lack of demand. Natural gas price will also drop to around $2 per Million Btu, due to lack of demand. Home heating via natural gas or electricity will be very affordable, as will air conditioning.
Other countries can adapt this strategy as it suits them and their resources.
This is controversial, and sure to draw fire from WUWT readers, but I write this not out of any desire to cap CO2. Creating hydrogen from renewable energy is purely an economic and toxic waste avoidance issue. Hydrogen as fuel also eliminates air pollutants from coal-burning, including mercury, sulfur, and fine soot particles.
evanmjones (20:12:59) :
“{This country has well over 100 years of coal left”
And in 100 years, we’ll probably have 500 years of coal left. Assuming we’re still using the stuff. That’s how it works. (That’s how the Club of Rome screwed it up so badly.)
At present usage rates, prices, and estimated reserves, we have between 250 and 400 years of known coal. There will still be coal in the ground when that is used up…
There is no energy shortage and there never will be, there is only a shortage of willingness and imagination to use what we have:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
[REPLY – Agreed. That’s how it works for all so-called “finite” resources. ~ Evan]
Well my local newspaper has totally been had. Today an LTE has appeared in it that is identical to the talking points of this campaign.
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=287884&src=
Isn’t that Plagiarism?