Guest post by Alec Rawls
The upcoming rule:
… will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.
Can this stand, after Obama’s big energy-policy tour last week included not a single mention CO2, greenhouse gases, climate or global warming?
EPA’s endangerment ruling on CO2 is being challenged in the courts right now. In particular, the world’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy Company, is challenging the ruling specifically on the grounds that EPA improperly relied on the IPCC’s bogus claims that CO2 is causing dangerous global warming. Obama’s retreat from any mention of CO2 or climate, never mind global warming, would seem to be an official admission that Peabody is right and the IPCC is wrong. How can global warming be important enough to warrant shutting down coal, by far the largest source of electricity in the country, if it is not important enough for the president to even mention during his big energy-policy extravaganza?
Obama did mention “clean energy” several times in his Nevada speech, but there is nothing unclean about CO2, certainly not that can hold up in court. CO2 is the beginning of the food chain, the essential nutrient from which all life on earth is constructed. Animals get their carbon building blocks from plants which get it from atmospheric or oceanic CO2 through photosynthesis, and current levels of CO2—about 0.039 percent of the atmosphere—are alarmingly close to the minimum required to sustain life.
From Lawrence Livermore Labs CO2 “fact sheet“:
Carbon dioxide is necessary to sustain life in concentrations of about 0.04 percent of the earth’s atmosphere …
The biosphere craves more of this healthful gas, not less.
The ONLY concern about CO2 is the idea that its greenhouse warming effect might be dangerous, and no such concern is being voiced by Obama. Apparently it is off the table, which ought to clear off all of his green energy plans as well, because their expressed rationale was the greenhouse threat from CO2. That is especially true with the EPA’s endangerment finding for CO2, which explicitly relies on the IPCC reports.
Oral arguments in the consolidated Peabody case took place at the end of February, but if the entire basis for the endangerment finding is no longer operative, the court ought to admit a motion to include that information. It will be a travesty if Obama is allowed to unplug ultimately half the grid on a rationale that he himself now considers too toxic to mention.
Lets hope the USA follows in the steps of queensland and turfs out anybody involved with AGW
They’d better watch themselves – if the upcoming rule “…will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt…”, then they’re slowly building a case that only a nuclear plant will meet their requirement.
Technology is equal to scrubbing waste co2 from coal power-generation and capturing it in closed-loop pyrolysis. An unintended consequence of this rule may be to force this particular type of cogeneration on the industry.
They’d better watch out – they’re painting themselves into a corner.
If the new rule “…will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt…”, then they’re leaving little choice other than nuclear.
If less CO2 is their ultimate goal, how much CO2 does a nuclear plant emit per megawatt?
This is the ultimate victory of the initative started by ENRON, they of the crooked E. The finance of the green sector PR machine by Big Gas is what this was all about: demonize coal and then offer Natural Gas as the ‘low carbon’ alternative. ENRON was trying to monopolize the natural gas sources available at the time when they went down.
As all monopoly capitalists know, a cartel is as good as a monopoly. This is their moment of victory.
As long as the arguments are not on pure legal grounds alone. The last case they had hinged on whether the EPA had the powers to declare CO2 a pollutant. The SCOTUS cannot rule on scientific matters.
It would be better to use the evidence within Donna LaFramboise “The Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert”. Her book demolishes all claims that the IPCC has any scientific standing. More importantly, it is full of references to original documentation. Even getting that book into a case with the SCOTUS as public evidence would be extremely influential.
If I were the next president, Lisa Jackson would be on the payroll about 30 more milliseconds.
President Zero, June 2011:
“You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”:
Hey we just had a ‘Horizon’ program on the BBC about ‘Climate Weirding’ Lots of dodgy statistics but no science and NO I repeat …NO mention of CO2.
It’s too quiet…I don’t like it…what are they up to…
On the bright side tho’ the good old biased bbc happened to mention of the ‘wireless’ this morning that last year was one of the worst years for natural disasters…. Seemed to get their ‘science’ from Lloyds of London the insurance people. No bias there then.
henrythethird says: @ur momisugly March 28, 2012 at 4:45 am
They’d better watch themselves –….. then they’re slowly building a case that only a nuclear plant will meet their requirement.
____________________________________________
They are counting on the NIMBYs to kill that option.
There is a well funded Astro-turf group around who pays local people to demonstrate at nuclear power plant sites. In 1984 (snicker) I ran across a lot of their ads in the Boston Globe when I was job hunting. They were paying twice what burger flipping was and a bit more than a lab tech would earn. ($10/hr min. wage was $3.35)
However Thorium seems to be gaining some approval from the Greens.
Thorium: Nuclear Energy’s Clean Little Secret | Change.org News
Remember this man’s promise? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4
Anybody but Obama.
While Obama distances himself from this, that does not mean he doesn’t believe it. I believe it likely he will say, “The EPA has ruled. I really can’t do anything about that. The scientists know better than I.”
“Necessarily skyrocket” and “Bankrupt”
Two weeks before the next election, turn off all coal-fired power stations and give the American public a good hard look at their long bleak future.
A Democrat was quoted as saying the ruling will not affect coal generation because no new coal generating stations are currently planned. He waffled a bit when he was cautioned that existing coal generation facilities will need to negotiate with the government (possibly to stay open by sequestering CO2).
I just don’t get the American political system. The EPA labels CO2 (and indirectly fossil fuels) as a pollutant while the President fast-tracks the Keystone pipeline (to raw crude into the US for refining).
US politicians are stupid enough to allow the EPA put the US into bankruptcy to satisfy their own personal egos.
It is important to note what was on the front page of yesterdays Wall Street Journal. There’s Obama talking to Russian President Medvedev telling him, “This is my last election, and after my election I have more flexibility”. This archangel already thinks he’s won it. Let’s prove him wrong in November. And the news media likes dramatic AGW headlines: how’s this for a dramatic headline, ‘Obama to shut down almost half of all U.S. electrical generating capacity.’ That’ll get some pre-election attention. Put him on the spot. And then in parentheses add that he’s doing it while the economy’s still in the doldrums.
Based on the asinine idea that the amount of CO2 that humans produce is going to end the planet.
cherry-picked some of the reality, but do read for the Omega-3 fatty acids and spirulina segments:
27 March: Bloomberg: China Beats U.S. With Power From Coal Processing Trapping Carbon
China passed the U.S. as the top carbon polluter in 2007; it now emits more than the U.S. and India combined, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Yet with 1.3 billion people, power-hungry industries and scant oil or natural gas, it has no immediate alternatives to coal for fueling its economy. China gets 70 percent of its energy from coal, three times the U.S. figure. It even converts coal into diesel fuel and ammonia that’s used for making fertilizer.
After consuming as much coal as did the rest of the planet combined in 2010, China still can’t muster enough electricity to avoid blackouts or accelerate the rise of its western provinces out of poverty, says Zhao Gang, director of a research institute at Beijing’s Ministry of Science and Technology…
China can’t quit coal…
Scientists say China must act now. The world has just two or three decades to avoid irreversible climate change, says Kelly Sims Gallagher, an energy professor at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and author of two books on pollution…
David Fridley, at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says it may already be too late to avert higher temperatures, rising seas and melting glaciers. He says China’s emissions won’t stop increasing until its population peaks at 1.45 billion in 2030 — that’s 15 years after he predicts immutable global warming.
“If global emissions don’t start declining after 2015, all we can do is adapt to a world that will be highly disrupted,” he says…
Environmentalists say efforts to improve coal power are shortsighted because they divert attention and money from renewable energy.
“Electricity from coal plants that are designed to avoid filthy and uncontrolled pollution is two to three times more expensive than alternatives like wind and solar,” says Bruce Nilles, deputy conservation director of environmental advocacy group Sierra Club. “Coal is the biggest part of our carbon problem, and we’re fighting to keep it underground.” …
Companies may adopt carbon trapping because governments are likely to limit CO2 through taxes or emission caps, according to the 2011 annual energy outlook published by Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the world’s largest energy company by market value. By 2040, carbon costs may reach $80 a ton in the U.S. and $30 a ton in China, the report says…
John Lippert and Chua Baizhen, with assistance from Richard Weiss in Frankfurt, William Mellor in Sydney and Mark Drajem in Washington. Editors: Gail Roche, Jonathan Neumann
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: John Lippert in Chicago/Chua Baizhen in Beijing
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-27/china-beats-u-s-with-power-from-coal-processing-trapping-carbon.html
How about building the plants in Mexico and importing the electricty and exporting the jobs?
New ad on WUWT from Nature Conservancy about calculating your “carbon footprint”.
I don’t care what mine is because it is completely meaningless !!
But I did click the ad for some ad revenue for the web host !!
O/T But the BBC’s Horizon had a propaganda piece on Global Weirding last night. Katharine Hayhoe was at it again, but her claims before have never stood up under scrutiny.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/katharine-hayhoes-global-weirding/#more-1030
This should read …per megawatt-hour…
This mistake belongs to the Washington Post.
Mr. Green and his minions Jackson and Chu want to skyrocket energy prices. There is no science to this agenda only the green cause. It is not about big Oil, only about big government in charge of every aspect of our lives here in the U.S. The trace gas CO2 is the lever.
When we can no longer generate enough electrical power to supply our homes and jobs, please let’s remember to first cut the electricity to all of the government CAGW “research” facilities like NOAA, NASA-GISS and NCAR…
Where are our trolls? Oh yeah – they’re off consuming fossil fuels while advocating policies that will destroy our economy…
I do not know whether the right test is ‘whether CO2 emissions are causing dangerous global warming as the IPCC contend to be the case’ but if that is the test, it is not easy to envisage that a court of law applying the usual civil standard of the burden of proof would uphold such an allegation as being correct.
It would be interesting to see that allegation challenged in a court of law where the claim is held to account by rigorous cross examination and the consideration of wider expert evidence. .
Further, and materially, it is difficult to see how one can allege that burning coal is leading to global warming let alone dangerous global warming in the light of the Chinese experience. Is it not part of the warmist’s case regarding the stall of temperaturess these past 10 to 15 years that these have stalled because of aerosol emiisions from Chinese coal powered stations? Peabody should use that claim.
It would be interesting to put that evidence before the Court since based on that evidence. is it not clear that there will be no dangerous global warming provided that coal fired generating stations are build to the same emission standards as those deployed in China. If the USA stations are built to the same emission standards as the Chinese stations then US coal powered stations will be doing exactly what the Chinese coal powered stations are doing and through their aerosol emissions they will keep temperatures stalled and hence will not cause gloabl warming let alone dangerous global warming.
I think that with a well constructed argument, Peabody will have a strong case for coal. They can even use the warmists’ claims against the warmists, and against the present ruling by the EPA!