Guest post By Alan Caruba
The Environmental Protection Agency is using its power to advance the objective of the environmental movement to deny Americans access to the energy that sustains the nation’s economy and is using the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, global warming—now called “climate change”—to achieve that goal.
“This standard isn’t the once-and-for-all solution to our environmental challenge,” said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, “but it is an important commonsense step toward tackling the ongoing and very real threat of climate change and protecting the future for generations to come. It will enhance the lives of our children and our children’s children.”
This is a boldfaced lie. Its newest rule is based on the debasement of science that is characterized and embodied in the global warming hoax. It will deprive America of the energy it requires to function.
Since the 1980s the Greens have been telling everyone that carbon dioxide was causing global warming—now called climate change—and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced. The ball was put in motion with the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocols when many nations agreed to this absurd idea and carried forward by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ever since.
The Environmental Protection Agency was created to clean the nation’s air and water where it was deemed that a hazard existed. Like most noble ideas and most Congressional mandates, the initial language was vague enough to be interpreted to mean anything those in charge wanted it to mean. Add in the global warming hoax and you have the means to destroy the nation.
Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.
This is evil writ large.
Shutting down utilities that use coal, an energy source the U.S. has in such abundance that it could provide electricity for the next hundreds of years, and ensuring that no new ones are built fits in perfectly with all the Green pipedreams about “renewable” energy. Solar and wind presently provide about two percent of the nation’s electricity and, without government subsidies and mandates requiring their use, they would not exist at all.
How stupid is it to not build more nuclear power plants when this form of power doesn’t emit anything but energy?
How stupid is it not to use coal when the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal?
How stupid is it to begin to find reasons to regulate and thwart fracking, the technology to access trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that has been in use for decades?
How stupid is it to cover miles of land, far from any urban center, with hundreds of solar panels or huge, ugly wind turbines that kill thousands of birds every year?
The sun does not shine all the time, nor does the wind blow all the time. In the event of overcast skies or a day without wind, traditional plants—those using coal, gas, nuclear or generating hydroelectric power—have to be maintained as a backup. Take away the coal-fired plants and there were be huge gap in the national grid.
Darkness will descend and Americans will begin to live with blackouts and brownouts that will undermine every aspect of our lives. It’s bad enough when a town or even a city briefly loses power because of a storm, but imagine that occurring on a regular basis because there just aren’t enough utilities generating power!
What kind of people stand by idly while its own government conspires to take away the primary source of energy that everything else depends upon? The answer? You. The answer is the many elected politicians that have done little to rein in a rogue government agency intent on undermining the nation by denying it the ability to generate power with the least expensive source of electricity, coal.
The EPA, an unelected bureaucracy, has just ensured that all Americans, industries, small businesses, and individuals will begin pay far more for electrical power.
Richard J. Trzupek, the author of “Regulators Run Wild” and an environment policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, said of the new rule, “With around 50,000 megawatts of coal-fired power set to be forcibly retired in the next few years—thanks to the draconian policies of Obama’s EPA—this rule ensures that no new modern, efficient coal fired power plants will be built to fill the gap.”
In a triumph of crony capitalism, Trzupek notes that “The big winner will be Obama’s good friend, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt. Since solar and wind cannot fill a 50,000 megawatt baseload gap, the only way to ensure continued reliability of the grid is to build a lot of natural gas-fired plants quickly. And who is the biggest supplier of natural gas-fired combustion engines? GE of course.”
If you think that environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, among many others, are seeking to “protect” the Earth, you are seriously mistaken. They have been among the leading opponents of coal and they have had allies in Congress such as the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, (D-NV) who has said “Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick.”
NO! Coal provides the engine of our nation’s electrical power and oil provides the energy that fuels our transportation and is the basis for countless products that enhance and improve our lives every day.
We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan.
Ian of Fremantle says:
March 28, 2012 at 9:46 pm
Well, they’re right. But where they’re wrong, of course, is that a changing climate is always with us–and the degree to which mankind causes that change is so small as to be unmeasureable. Leave it to the watermelons to steal mother nature, invent a crisis and milk it for all it’s worth.
Enough CRAP!
Carbon Dioxide(CO2) makes up less than 4/100’s of 1% of the earth’s atmosphere and has increased less than 1/100 of 1% in the last century. How can so many so-called experts with so many letters behind their names be so ignorant to say that CO2 is the cause of global warming. There is no global warming, there’s only global warming and cooling cycles. It’s the SUN stupids!
The earth’s atmosphere near the surface is composed primarily of Nitrogen and Oxygen. Together, the two comprise about 99% of the gas in the atmosphere. Here’s a listing of the key components of the lower atmosphere…
Nitrogen – 78.084%
Oxygen – 20.95%
Argon – 0.934%
Carbon Dioxide – 0.036%
Neon – 0.0018%
Helium – 0.0005%
Methane – 0.00017%
Hydrogen – 0.00005%
Nitrous Oxide – 0.00003%
Ozone – 0.000004%
GE, Australia’s friend, only has our best interest at heart /sarc
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/ge-applauds-labors-gutsy-carbon-tax/story-e6frg9df-1226309687139
(in part)
THE Australian government had been “gutsy” to follow through on its pledge to introduce a carbon tax, according to the world’s top industrial conglomerate.
GE vice-chairman John Rice said the $23-a-tonne tax applying from July 1 would prompt the company to allocate more resources to carbon-reducing technologies.
Mr Rice said GE, which made the nuclear power plant reactors at Fukushima and was heavily involved in renewable energy, had long believed in a trading mechanism to reduce carbon emissions and encourage the development of new technologies.
Cold and no access to cheap energy equals rapid population reduction.
Goodbye grandchildren.
This comment is addressed to the anonymous troll who repeatedly posts in this thread under the alias “caruba-lies”.
Your posts are irrelevant knit-picking and personal insults which add nothing to Caruba’s article and/or discussion of it.
[snip . . . the moderators will moderate . . kbmod]
Richard
@Caruba-lies (March 28, 2012 at 9:44 pm)
Why should I pay any attention to a panel led by Pachauri? He has no scientific credentials — he is a railroad engineer with an axe to grind.
And btw, the CC stands for Crooks & Criminals
@Alan Caruba:
I couldn’t agree more. Keep spreading the word. We will prevail!
Bernd Felsche – The Seven Rules of Bureacracy – this is brilliant as it 100% accurately describes today’s climate science’ industry. For those who did not see it, here it is, the mantras of the CAGW cult’s leadership.
Rules of Bureaucracy
Rule #1: Maintain the problem at all costs! The problem is the basis of power, perks, privileges, and security.
Rule #2: Use crisis and perceived crisis to increase your power and control.
Rule 2a. Force 11th-hour decisions, threaten the loss of options and opportunities, and limit the opposition’s opportunity to review and critique.
Rule #3: If there are not enough crises, manufacture them, even from nature, where none exist.
Rule #4: Control the flow and release of information while feigning openness.
Rule 4a: Deny, delay, obfuscate, spin, and lie.
Rule #5: Maximize public-relations exposure by creating a cover story that appeals to the universal need to help people.
Rule #6: Create vested support groups by distributing concentrated benefits and/or entitlements to these special interests, while distributing the costs broadly to one’s political opponents.
Rule #7: Demonize the truth tellers who have the temerity to say, “The emperor has no clothes.”
Rule 7a: Accuse the truth teller of one’s own defects, deficiencies, crimes, and misdemeanors.
Ummm:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/fourth-largest-gun-maker-us-out-guns
“In a somewhat sad and shocking slap of reality to the face of our ‘recovery’ and ‘freedom-based-debt-holdings’, today’s press-release-of-the-day (since we still haven’t heard from BATS) goes to Sturm, Ruger (the 4th largest gun-maker in the US) who after receiving orders for over one million units in Q1 has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.”
=============
It must suck, being the 4th largest gun-maker, and having missed the biggest gun sales market ever ?, due to lack of workers.
Talk about an upside-down economy.
The EPA is not stupid. The POTUS is not stupid. They are intelligent people at the top of their field.
I noticed long ago that when intelligent people were advocating seemingly stupid positions they were just running some hidden agenda. As long as we keep assuming that the EPA is stupid we will never disclose and discredit their actual agenda.
“Since the 1980s the Greens have been telling everyone that carbon dioxide was causing global warming—now called climate change—and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced”
As others have pointed out, this kind of exaggeration doesn’t help, and is ammunition to the warming side that sceptics are reactionaries.
Bob says:
March 28, 2012 at 11:30 pm
The only hope you lot in the US had was Ron Paul. I’m really surprised no one mentions him (here or in the media). It’s like a ‘conspiracy’… I’d love to know what his views on BS AGW are. I know he hates Big Government, war mongering, 9/11 and all the other crap Obomber, SanGritRom (are they actually different people?) and every other ‘contender’ is trying to sell.
+1 Bob, I was thinking the same thing. Dr. Paul wants to end the EPA and turn the responsibility back over to the states. Too bad the media and republicans distorted his foreign policy views or he may well be in the running. The positive thing is that Dr. Paul is having an influence on the republicans. Hopefully they will take back the senate and presidency this year and then have the spine to do something.
God help us. “The One” has chosen to use the Global Warming lie to advance his Socialist Agenda. Please pray for America!
Energy should be the number one political issue this year. And every year until reality is addressed. Energy is the fuel that drives nations prosperity engine. It must be reliable, cheap and reliable and cheap and reliable and cheap…Germany is in the process of watching their industrial base decay due to their hallucinating about CO2. Companies are electing to simply not build or expand there because of their very shaky energy poliices. Energy is life. Cheap energy is properity.
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
In agreement with just about all this post. In essence it sums up the situation very well.
Regarding solar and wind power deficiencies – Part time energy is not necessarily enough reason to rubbish them. Any energy from true renewable sources is worthwhile, providing the embedded energy in manufacture is outweighed by the energy output. Whatever energy is produced reduces the amount produced by “fossil” fuels. Thre is nothing wrong about that.
Alan calls wind power structures ugly. I disagree, I see them as magnificent. They are certainly far, far more asthetic than the high voltage power distribution towers and all the poles associated with distribution.
Regarding nuclear, again I am not in agreement. Given the possibility that coal and gas supplies are perhaps not in such short supply as claimed and perhaps not as environmentally damaging as claimed, nuclear would be better left alone until we develop safer systems. (IMHO)
Heavens! There IS a hockey stick graph!
But…..it is the value of Sturm, Ruger & Co stock!
(See “u.k.(us) says: March 29, 2012 at 1:40 am” above)
Dang, I missed out on another one. Maybe the MegaMillions on Friday.
“HE whose MIDDLE NAME cannot be spoken” has been very good for the gun manufacturers.
http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/athens.htm
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
@ur momisugly Bernd Felsche – “The Seven Rules of Bureaucracy” is just the abbreviated version of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”…
Gee — who’d have suspected that “progressives” would have so much in common with the entrenched, nay-saying, stasis-loving, obfuscatory class?
Ken McMurtrie:
I gasped in astonishment at the gall you display in your post at March 29, 2012 at 3:50 am. In case there are any readers who may have been misled by it, I provide this rebuttal.
You assert:
“Regarding solar and wind power deficiencies – Part time energy is not necessarily enough reason to rubbish them. Any energy from true renewable sources is worthwhile, providing the embedded energy in manufacture is outweighed by the energy output. Whatever energy is produced reduces the amount produced by “fossil” fuels. There is nothing wrong about that.”
NO! There is a lot “wrong with that”!
Higher energy cost reduces the affluence of all and, therefore, it increases the poverty of the poor. It kills people who cannot afford sufficient energy to meet their needs.
So, no, merely providing more energy than is consumed does not make any source “worthwhile”. Adding so-called ‘renewables’ to a grid supply increases the cost of power supplied by the grid BECAUSE the power they supply is intermittent.
The use of fossil fuels has done more to benefit human kind than anything else since the invention of agriculture. There needs to be a good reason to adopt something which is intended to “reduce the use of fossil fuels. And there is no reason – none, zilch, nada – to adopt “solar and wind power” as a method to reduce the use of fossil fuels: in fact there are many good reasons not to adopt them (most notably their high cost because of their intermittency).
And you say;
“Given the possibility that coal and gas supplies are perhaps not in such short supply as claimed and perhaps not as environmentally damaging as claimed, nuclear would be better left alone until we develop safer systems. (IMHO)”
Say what!
Recently Japan experienced a major earthquake followed by a tsunami which killed more than twenty thousand people. The earthquake and tsunami also struck an old nuclear power station with lesser safety margins than modern nuclear plant. The power station suffered severe damage but this killed nobody.
How much safer do you want nuclear power stations to be, and why?
The market will decide the best balance between power supply technologies for most efficient and economic power supplies from an electricity grid. But ‘greens’ do not want efficient and economic power so they attempt to disrupt it by enforced adoption of expensive wind and solar while legislating to inhibit use of cheap coal-fired power.
Richard
Alan says
and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced.
———
Guess what Alan, I reckon this is a boldfaced lie.
It’s funny, when Alan said “boldfaced lie” I was certain that I was going to find Alan making up a boldfaced lie somewhere in the next few sentences. People are so predictable.
systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.
————
If Alan can’t point to an Obama quote which actually says this I am calling lie again.
Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business
———-
And being replaced by gas powered power stations because gas is cheap.
RockyRoad says:
March 28, 2012 at 11:38 pm
What I can’t figure out is why these people want to live in a country they’re about to destroy…It simply boggles the mind; it simply makes no sense.
These are the same people who moved to rural areas to escape the trash heap their policies made of their original neighborhoods. Then, when they discover that their new neighborhoods don’t offer the same social entitlement programs (i.e., wealth redistribution) that their former ones did, they immediately begin campaigning to introduce those entitlement programs in the name of Progress. They eventually succeed, and, after wondering what happened to change the marvelous neighborhood they’d moved to into a pesthole like their old one, they shake their heads in wonderment and move on — to eventually settle in and destroy yet another neighborhood.
These people are so absolutely clueless about the world around them and how it all works there are no words to describe it.
There *are* words to describe them, but I’d get snipped if I used them here…
carbon-based life form says:
March 28, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Rise up! The Democrats are poisoned with the nanny-state mentality and the Republicans are slaves to the social conservatives. Is there another way?
Are the EPA’s powers actually constitutional, or variations on that theme?
In Britain ‘they’ have created a fictional ‘person’ for every real human man and woman, and it is only by agreement (which in itself is fraudulent because they don’t tell you what this is), that one becomes ‘subject to’ their legal system and consequently, the legislation passed to which these fictional persons unknowingly agreed to be subject to. Legislation has no real legal standing in Common Law, I might not be explaining this too well..
Anyway, here’s an example of the fight back from legislation: http://www.lawfulrebellion.org/2011/03/08/roger-hayes-rise-like-lions-council-tax-lawful-rebellion-judge-arrested/
“Context>>
Roger Hayes of The British Constitution Group has long questioned the legitimacy of the council tax. Specifically, he asks how can one be made to perform – as in become legally obliged, to perform certain actions (payment) without a form of contract taking place?
Duly understood, a contract must have a signature of the parties’ agreement. This has been Roger’s key to unlocking the fraud from the get-go. There is no signature on any contract, therefore no agreement, therefore no debt and no jurisdiction without c-o-n-s-e-n-t. Period. The end. Winning. Duh.
The court cannot proceed as there is no debt, no case and no jurisdiction to hold Roger accountable under. The trick as we know involves steamrollering or getting Roger to consent to answering to ‘State your name’ – therefore agreeing to represent the corporate fiction on which the Judge operates. The trustee to the trust. The strawman. The birth certificate. The corporate you. Et-freaking-cetera. MR ROGER HAYES – a legal appelation or entity which can be held under Admiralty jurisiction and CONtract law, ancient mystery religion sacrifical voodoo law. Complicated shit which enslaves us through our ingnorance to the deception. Not any more.
History >>
Roger Hayes, nailing a previous hearing, forced the judge to demand the prosecution prepare their case adequately. He did so by repeadetly insisting on the fraudulent nature of the proceedings based upon invalid summonses. He insisted on remaining outside the Jurisdiction of the court and did so. ”
http://www.ukcolumn.org/article/consent-most-important-word-english-language
http://www.ukcolumn.org/article/legal-fiction-how-they-control-us
Judges know how the ‘legal fiction’ applies to each of us, but barristers, solicitors, Magistrates and politicians mostly do not – it is a closely guarded secret. Our courts impose their will on us using the ‘legal fiction’ and it is through this imposition that governments are able to control every facet of our lives. Without the ‘legal fiction’ governments and an array of authorities have no power over us whatsoever and with this in mind it is perfectly clear that understanding the ‘legal fiction’ is a prerequisite to understanding how the world around us really works as distinct from how we think it does. Knowledge and understanding of the legal fiction is the first step on the road of freedom.”
I would say that this is not about stupidity; this is brilliant if your goal is to destroy the constitutional US capitalistic system, that has kept us the leader of the free world, and create chaos with the opportunity to step in through new “world view” regulations to transfer this once prosperous country into a UN socialistic puppet.
Two words.
Vote Republican.
LazyTeenager says:
March 29, 2012 at 4:31 am
You may have a point there, Lazy. But Obama the candidate and Obama the president are diametrically opposed. For example his candidate-opposition to the Individual Mandate then his president-support for the Individual Mandate is documented here (click on the video):
http://www.therightsphere.com/2012/03/president-obama-and-the-individual-mandate-he-was-against-it-before-he-was-for-it-video/
But Obama’s assaults on the American people (except those feeding at the government trough) are numerous. Admittedly Obama wasn’t a big proponent of the Constitution as a candidate, but he’s gone out of his way to destroy it as president–whether it be individual freedoms, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, you name it:
http://www.punditandpundette.com/2012/02/calling-obama-on-his-assault-on.html
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/14/morning-bell-obamas-continuing-assault-on-the-constitution/
http://theteapartynetwork.org/2012/02/obama-continues-assault-on-constitution-heritage-foundation/
There’s always the serious contention that Obama isn’t and has never been a big fan of the Constitution, even though he’s supposedly a Constitutional Professor —he’s much like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who doesn’t think much of the US Constitution (click on video):
http://ggthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/02/ginsberg-dislikes-our-constitution.html
http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/justice-ginsburg-and-you-2-peas-in-a-pod/
http://www.conservativefact.com/2012/02/06/ruth-bader-ginsburg-joins-obama-and-admits-her-dislike-of-the-u-s-constitution/
I’m willing to bet the ranch Ginsberg finds the Individual Mandate just fine–even though it represents an unprecedented and extremely dangerous reversal of the US Government’s role in the lives of its citizens.
Bbut to counter: Name me just one thing the government has required that individuals must purchase in the past–just one. (And no, the requirement the infant government made on people go buy guns doesn’t count, for that applies to those in the militia.)
http://www.guncite.com/journals/jldevae.html