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.
Obama just put another nail in the coffin of his reelection bid and has guaranteed the demise of the or at least a huge slap down /scale back of the hated economy killers at the EPA.
Gail Combs says:
March 28, 2012 at 9:37 am
My favorite (from the geologists) is “Earth First! We’ll mine the other planets later.”
Jim G says: @ur momisugly March 28, 2012 at 10:24 am
“Gail Combs says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:01 am
That is why I am an independent and not a Demi-RAT or Re-BOOB-lican. ”
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Jim G says: @ur momisugly March 28, 2012 at 10:24 am
This will ultimately be self correcting as it will destroy our economy and people will start freezing in the dark, starting with California. However, there could be much pain before it corrects. A second political party, now there’s a great idea. It will assure the re-election of the leftists by splitting the vote of those who do any thinking.
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I am well aware of that. However as an independent I am very careful to look at each candidate, especially on the more local level.
Unfortunately this is a very, very dangerous time for a third party to emerge because of a possible three way split of the vote. That is what happened in the presidential election of 1912. You had Incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt running against each other which handed the Presidency to Wilson. The fourth in the melee was Eugene V. Debs, nominee of the Socialist Party of America.
So as usual we are left picking the lesser of two evils.
Ron Paul could be very dangerous in this election if he runs third party because he has picked up a bigger following since 2008 and his followers are very loyal. Therefore this survey is very worrisome
@TDBraun
Obama doesn’t seek to “unplug half the grid” but just to set standards for new coal-electric plants which effectively discourage new ones. Not quite the same thing.
+++++++++
The issue is that the coal fired power plants are nearing the end of their life. Many are operating on a 10 year extension and will have to close soon. The banning of new ones means many lost coal mining jobs, to which some say good riddance – that is how some people (who are not coal miners) are. The coal won’t go away, but in the meantime gas companies can charge 5 times as much. It’s the American way.
The victory is for those who bought gas producing regions and paid PR agencies to promote CAGW. The losers will be the same losers who were the useful idiots that promoted the scam. As the whole thing was about money in the first place, making money off the difference between CO2 from gas and coal per MJ, the whole raison d’etre can fade away, supported and believed only by little remnant corners of the populace that meets to fantasize that we are so powerful we can fine tune the entire planetary atmosphere at will – we are suffering but we are so clever.
Once the rubes that blindly supported the CAGW wake up to the fact they have been helping the ENRON’s of the world rip them off, it will be far too late.
The idea that Obama can be hoodwinked or bought off by the gas or green vote and that a Bush or a Cheney cannot is laughable. Whoever is sits in that Office, Americans always have the best laws and the best government money can buy. Your money. From your wallet.
Jim G says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:24 am
“Gail Combs says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:01 am
polistra says:
March 28, 2012 at 6:31 am
The notion that a solution to our dire dilemma lies in electing different politicians relies on the implicit fallacy that people who acquire their positions of power through winning elections still constitute our actual government. We are long past the point where that notion passed into a comforting delusion. In reality our actual government is now composed of teeming hordes of petty, and not so petty, bureaucrats at every level of our governance from the smallest village council to the massive federal regulators like the EPA. Although they all supposedly serve at the will of our elected officials the reality remains that, once created, the possibility that any of these fiefdoms will ever be killed is about the same as possibility that Freddie Krueger ever will be. Actually Freddie is more vulnerable, because when his movies stopped making money his grip on existence was severely reduced. Even if we could replace every elected official in the country, at every level from the smallest locality up through the President, with hardcore Libertarians, the moment they attempted to disempower our bureaucratic overlords they would face a popular revolt. We all love to mouth platitudes about our freedom and liberty and most of us do really want that, at least for ourselves. But for a substantial majority whenever one of our neighbors decides to do something that we find objectionable we are all too eager to marshal the forces of bureaucracy to bludgeon him into compliance with our will. It has long since been demonstrated that government regulations, which are always advanced as providing protections for the general public, actually serve to protect incumbents. Either politicians seeking to preserve their office, corporations seeking to preserve their market share and prices, property owners seeking to preserve the value of their holdings and exclude unsavory newcomers, enviro wackos and warministas seeking to inflict their misanthropic vision of utopia on all who are not them.
There are countless examples of governmental entities which have long since outlived their usefulness, if they ever had any to begin with, which almost everyone agrees could be productively eliminated but which, when an actual attempt is made to do that, have an interested constituency of beneficiaries sufficient to generate enough hue and cry to derail any such effort. The reality of life is that the population of those who really desire to live a life of freedom and liberty while also being willing to embrace the personal responsibility for the consequences that liberty generates has always been a distinct minority. In their amazing wisdom Our Founders recognized this fact and constructed a form of government whose seemingly arcane checks and balances our present “Constitutional scholar” President sees as “negative rights” and fatal flaws.
In reality the core notion and absolute genius of the Constitution they created was not to guarantee individual rights, which they assumed as a given, but to place the strongest limits possible on governmental tyranny, which had eventually destroyed every attempt at democratic governance before them and has since. Unfortunately, as the just concluded arguments before the Supreme Court concerning the egregious Obamacare have thoroughly demonstrated, not even the most conservative members of that court are willing to contemplate attempting to resurrect that notion.
We are well into the third generation whose entire formative years were spent in the public indoctrination system whose main goal is raising revolutionary consciousness in its inmates and where creating the capacity for critical thought is actually anathema. In this environment the prospects of creating a real Constitutional Reformation are very slim but. like those 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, it is a fight we must make or face the eternal condemnation of that future posterity where Liberty again rises to challenge the “consensus” of oligarchy.
A sort of a big “Carrington event” but this time “anthropogenic”!
_Jim says:
March 28, 2012 at 12:32 pm
“Can you specifically post or cite the exact language which began all this, language that states that the US is to be emasculated? Or cite that language which states global governance is the desired end goal? (Bear in mind mankind’s history; our trek ‘out of the muck’ that brings us to ‘modern times’ today.)”
The Brundtland report. 1987.
http://www.earthsummit2012.org/historical-documents/the-brundtland-report-our-common-future
—
Rockefeller
wikipedia:
“and second by David Rockefeller in a statement to the United Nations Business Council in September 1994, […]
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories#New_World_Order
Notice that while it is listed under conspiracy theories, the quote is real.
—
WBGU Schellnhuber PIK Transformation, 2011 (Scientific advisory panel of German Fed government)
http://www.wbgu.de/fileadmin/templates/dateien/veroeffentlichungen/hauptgutachten/jg2011/wbgu_jg2011_kurz_en.pdf
Dave Wendt says:
“March 28, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Jim G says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:24 am
“Gail Combs says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:01 am
polistra says:
March 28, 2012 at 6:31 am”
Dave Wendt,
So……what is your solution?
Gary Swift:
Your post at March 28, 2012 at 9:41 am is an excellent summary of the issues.
I intended to write a similar summary but I could not improve on yours. I commend everybody to read it.
Richard
Gail Combs says:
March 28, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Gail Combs,
If it gets bad enough, and I believe it is close now, people will, hopefully, throw the bums out but the third party route would pevent that due to all of the folks on the public dole consistently voting for free s##t for themselves at the expense of those who work and produce something. Much more of this and we will be locked into a situation in which the majority are beholden to the government and then it’s game over without a revolution of one type or another. And you never know the form that might take, look at the old USSR and their transformation from communism to mafia run “free enterprise” with the same players who were the commisars. No real violence occured but there was a revolution of sorts. All we need to do is go broke…wait, we are broke.
Would it be possible for all the coalfired power stations supplying Washington DC to shut down, to show their good will? It could be a good show when the government lost most of its elctricity and heating. It could be an a-ha experience.
Unfortunately i think that some Homeland-security would be mowing, but they could just as well move because of the EPA ruling.
“There are countless examples of governmental entities which have long since outlived their usefulness, if they ever had any to begin with, which almost everyone agrees could be productively eliminated but which, when an actual attempt is made to do that, have an interested constituency of beneficiaries sufficient to generate enough hue and cry to derail any such effort. ”
That’s just the noise. It’s the money to politicians as “contributions” from the beneficiaries that keep the useless going. If one party calls for cuts, then gets elected, they just take money from the contractors involved in the area of the proposed cuts, and nothing gets done. Democrats just smile and shrug their shoulders, Republicans will blame “unions” or poor people. It’s funnier on the Republican side, to watch their duped minions see their hopes of austerity vanish every election. But then, they believe in magical tax cuts for the rich too, so really, they deserve their treatment.
This election will really about which party will be more audacious in their spending, all the while pretending they are not spendthrifts. Republicans are so used to lying about that, they have no problem. But the Dems…I predict moral panic after moral panic will flash through the media as they ever more have to think about how their party is just a corportist shell. Like this thing going on in Florida at this time. It is a classic liberal moral panic, with the white outhern racist bugaboo at its center.
“If this nation’s coal plants are to be gradually phased out, it needs to be done in a carefully planned, organized way and on a schedule that allows the utilities the time (and money) they need to replace them with natural gas and/or nuclear plants. ”
It’s not about strategy. And by the way, you risk being called a “socialist” by the nutso crowd if you suggest America should have such a policy that interferes with “capitalism.” The policy is to increase demand for natural gas now to increase natural gas prices now to increase profits now. Obama is totally in the natural gas-nuclear camp. (Remember BP and Exelon?) Banning coal means more money for them from our pockets. The best way to do it is to use the CO2 ruse because that will completely kill any thoughtful criticism on their parts–they fear ostracization by questioning beliefs. That’s why “climate deniers” works so well. The big boys use that not to convince “deniers,” but to keep their own flock in fear.
commieBob (March 28, 2012 at 7:35 am) said “Obama is a politician. A large portion of his base still believes in global warming and he doesn’t dare to alienate them. He needs the votes”
The other posters have it right, Obama is beholden to anti-coal and other economic special interests, not voters. Secondly he is generally anti-business could care less that small businesses like Joe the plumber or your local pizza parlor will be the most hurt with a substantive carbon tax, and the portion of his base that believes in global warming engages that same type of thinking (or nonthinking). But 97% of those voters would dump him in a heartbeat if they thought he would implement a real carbon tax that affects them (e.g. one that results in $10 gas, $1000 heating bills). They would ask to “carbon tax” the rich instead. (the 3% that agree with $10 gas are mostly students or other idealists who ride bicycles and have someone else paying their heating bill). Of course he would oblige with the class warfare crowd and we would end up with no net carbon cuts but would trash the economy anyway.
To Reinforce Gails point about immigration.
Unregulated immigration will destroy the demos, ie the national identity. Once that is gone, what is to prevent a Global government? After all, there will be no nations!
DaveE,
Jim says:
March 28, 2012 at 12:32 pm
…Can you specifically post or cite the exact language which began all this, language that states that the US is to be emasculated?…
Problem => Reaction => Solution
So it is deeds not words Jim, First you have to create the “Problem.” You can start with the ratification of the World Trade Organization that put the US trade balance in the red. Graph The World Trade Organization has also exported millions of US jobs. There was a 2005 WTO that stated that as a part of their fact sheet. The same President and Congress also passed five banking laws that set-up the USA for the foreclosure implosion.
After the Great Depression, several laws were put in place to prevent another depression. The 1933 and 1934 Security and Exchange laws, the McFadden Act of 1927, the Glass-Steagall Act and Bank Holding Company Act of 1956.
ClintonAdmin laws that repealed the above: Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999
In addition there were more pro-banking laws put in place by Clinton.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991: This allows big banks to gobble up smaller banks more easily.
Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 and RTC Completion Act – Housing and business loans to minorities.
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 – left CDSs unregulated and set up AIG bailout and Foreclosuregate by letting banks “Bundle” mortgages and sell them as AAA rated securities and then insure them.
The other prong of the attack is aimed at Energy which is the life blood of industry. We see that attack happening now.
So that is the set up of the “Problem”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If the EPA manages to strangle coal and natural gas plants by regulating CO2 and Chu and Obama manage to hike fuel prices through the roof then we are going to see a really big REACTION set in in a few years time. The doubling of our money supply is going to add hyperinflation to the mix. I am already seeing it with the price of hay climbing from $2 a bale to $7 – $10 and a 50# bag of feed going from $3 to $12.
>>>>>>>>>>>
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE is the SOLUTION
No national politician worth his salt is going to admit he is busy working toward a world government and against the best interest of his nation. Therefore “Global Governance” must be implemented slowly. From what I can see most of it is already set up.
From my point of view if the laws within a nation are imposed from outside and the wishes of the national population is ignored you have a de facto world government. This is what happened with NAIS/Food Safety, a fight I followed for several years. There is no question that the Food Safety Modernization Act came from influence outside the USA. See: http://www.nicfa.us/ and http://arkansasanimalproducers.8k.com/whats_new_12.html
A second indication of a de facto world government is a world currency and right on cue we have: Pascal Lamy: Need Truly Global Monetary System
The Director General is Pascal Lamy. He has this to say about Global Governance.
More from Lamy on the WTO.org website:
I can not find a primary source but some on the internet are claiming 80% of the UK laws are EU laws that are “rubber-stamped” we see that in the USA also with the push to “Harmonize” our laws..
Financial Post: Time to Harmonize Trading Regulations US ambassador says
This is old (2008?) and the newer link is not as clear in its language
And then we leave the WTO and come to the United Nations and find the same thing.
http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Governance.pdf
Hugh Pepper says:
March 28, 2012 at 6:45 am
“…the IPCC is not some fly-by-night group. Its reports are the summaries of thousands of peer reviewed studies from all over the world, ”
=================================================
On the core issues there are only very few studies: 1 or 2 on the calculation of the “global warming” and 0 PHYSICAL studies, that prove CO2 being capable to cause the alleged warming (the well known fact, that CO2 can absorb and re-emit some IR radiation does not prove its capability to cause significant warming). The calculation of the “global warming” made by Hansen and Lebedeff back in 1987 has no basis in science, I strongly recommend to read it: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf .
At the same time, there is no mention in the IPCC reports about the experiment by professor R.W.Wood from 1909, that debunked the hypothesis about warming “greenhouse gasses”: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html.
Today, gas hit a 10 year low.
The gas producers and traders are desperate for demand to crerate a market to drive up gas prices.
Against this commercial background, it is easy to see that there is intense lobbying against coal not only from the green movement.
Jim G says:
March 28, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Dave Wendt says:
“March 28, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Dave Wendt,
So……what is your solution?
There is no “solution”. What is required is that those that truly value Liberty and personal responsibility be willing to match the dedication and tenacity of purpose of those that seek to dominate the lives of the rest of us have demonstrated throughout history, and to do so not just in this moment but in perpetuity. Unfortunately the value and benefit of Liberty and Freedom are assumed to be so obvious that no one having experienced them would ever willingly surrender them and that, no matter how many small wounds the tyrant class succeeded in inflicting on Lady Liberty, they could never really deal her the death blow. Recent history, and indeed all the rest of human history as well, has demonstrated the colossal folly of that assumption.
Am I confident that this battle is winnable in the present moment? Not so much. But if we continue to lay down and surrender it is eminently losable. In the end there is only one real choice, either dedicate ourselves to fight tooth and nail to avoid our seemingly destined fate or just accept that we have once again arrived at the terminal point on “The Road to Serfdom.”
Jim G says:
March 28, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Dave Wendt says:
“March 28, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Jim G says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:24 am
“Gail Combs says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:01 am
polistra says:
March 28, 2012 at 6:31 am”
Dave Wendt,
So……what is your solution?
=====================================
Rather than starting a new political party (which usually only helps one side, not the system), we need to address how we vote. Instead of one vote, we should consider going to an instant runoff election method (IRE). In IRE, you rank ALL candidates in your order of preference. The results are run repeated (dropping the lowest ranked candidate every run) until you have a winner. This would have the effect of eliminating the “splitting the vote” problem and would naturally force candidates to address all issues competently (in an attempt to court voters not in your base to rank you second or third) and, consequently, ends the hammering away at just one issue during the election.
Just google – gag…., err, ixquick instant runoff elections, there is plenty of info on it…
hmmm, so I am mortis88 now instead of DSW? Really not fond of WordPress,…
FactChecker says:
March 28, 2012 at 10:09 am
There are already 19GW of planned plant shutdowns going into effect in 2015.
According to the most recent NREL report
http://www.netl.doe.gov/coal/refshelf/ncp.pdf
The average age of the plants is 54 years old. 84% have no SO2 controls.
Follow the Money
March 28, 2012 at 2:17 pm
###
Looks like you done drunk the cool-aid.
If the Republicans can regain control of the Senate, while keeping control of the House in the upcoming election, we will be slowly bled to death, rather than quickly.
just think what everybody will be thinking and saying in 100 years from now about the biggest fraud in our lifetime ,