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.
tango says:
At March 29, 2012 at 2:44 am you say;
“just think what everybody will be thinking and saying in 100 years from now about the biggest fraud in our lifetime ,”
Nobody will be thinking or saying much about it.
Nobody says or thinks much about the similar eugenics scare which was supported by all the ‘great and good’ around the world 100 years ago: indeed, most people think the eugenics scare was constrained to Germany in the 1930s.
So, history suggests people 100 years in the future will be concerned with their own false scare.
Richard
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…”
A better solution would be for each citizen to get as many votes as dollars of taxes they have paid since the last election. This would be self regulating as people voted to pass taxes along to those not paying as much thereby giving them more votes and so on…… Add term limits to this and it’s fixed.
mortis88,
Sorry, my last comment was really intended for you.
Jim G
Jim G says:
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.
Why would it be self correcting? More likely, if the economy is destroyed, it will stay destroyed.
I recommend that power companies obtain voting lists and compare them to their customer lists. Democrats, presumeably voting backers of these the eco-fruitcakes, should be informed that “conservation is as good as new generation” so any changes or requests for new service connections will not be accepted any longe for them. Cancelation of service requests will of course be accepted.
The power companies should also inform their regustered Democrat customers that they need to ptractice load shedding and conservation by conducting periodic area blackouts. Power outages for some areas will be blacked out 768/1000 of a week,, to meet EPA CO2 mandates.
These load shedding excercizes should only be planned or exercised in historic Democrat voting Precincts exclusively. As these are the probable source of the problem.
Lets see how long till the Obamacites crazies cave in, and are fired.
Harrywr2,
These antiquated coal plants still existing are the result of Lefist anti-Nuke demagogues as most of these plants were meant to be retired when the numerous nuclear plants came online, they were protesting were never finished and cancelled. So they had to continue to run as there was no other choice.
Then the Carterite idots proposed tough new pollution regulations requiring any sustantial change to a plant required the very best in pollution controls being added, costing millions of dollars. Once again these ignoramuses just insured that these dirty coal plalnts would not be updated at all; and just were forced to run without any pollution controls, at all.
Proving that if you want to frind a really great Polluter, find a Greenie, the Greenpeacers, or Sierra Clubbers and blame them. They are the very worst practicing polluters, with the practical consequences of their brainless ideas.
Beale says:
March 30, 2012 at 9:56 am
Jim G says:
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.
Why would it be self correcting? More likely, if the economy is destroyed, it will stay destroyed.”
People usually do not make drastic changes until they are hungry, freezing, etc. Economic disaster has historically lead to major political change, which we need. In a less major way Carter’s disaster lead to Reagan and economic prosperity, even if much of it occured on Clinton’s watch..
John@EF says:
March 28, 2012 at 8:43 am
Using what?
And after that demand is added to the NG supply, how cheap will it be?