By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
In his speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday, President Obama announced, “So today…I’m directing the Environmental Protection Agency to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants.” This is the first proposal in the President’s new climate initiative. The President also called for expanded efforts to use “clean energy” and for the US to lead the world in bold actions to “combat climate change.”
For the last decade, an obsession with global warming has dominated a wide array of US government policies. Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, skews federal automobile, transportation, energy, and infrastructure policies. Billions are spent in the ongoing effort to fight climate change.
Today, US policies toward the automobile industry are “driven” by Climatism. In his speech, the President praised new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that rise to 54.5 miles per gallon by year 2025 and that are designed to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Plug-in electric vehicles are promoted and subsidized as a solution to global warming.
Transportation is shaped by climate policy. Ethanol mandates result in the consumption of 40 percent of the US corn crop in vehicle fuel. Biodiesel is promoted as a way to reduce emissions. Even high-speed rail is proposed as a solution to move citizens from airplanes to trains to reduce emissions.
US energy policy is dominated by Climatism. Earlier this week, Dr. Daniel Schrag, an advisor to the president on climate, stated that “a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” Despite the fact that more than 30 percent of US electricity is produced from coal today, regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency will make it impossible to build a new coal-fired plant. At the same time, the Obama administration provides loans and subsidies that promote wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy.
At Georgetown, the President addressed the proposed Keystone Pipeline, which has been delayed for almost five years, stating, “…the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determine whether this project will be allowed to go forward.” When operating, the Keystone Pipeline can replace 45 percent of Persian Gulf oil imports with oil from Canada and the northern United States. But our President considers emissions to be a larger issue than reducing OPEC oil imports.
US infrastructure policies are heavily impacted by global warming fears. Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is at the core of LEED building standards. Urban planning aims to reduce emissions by replacing private automobile transit with public transit. The current administration proposes tens of billions for a “smart electrical grid” to promote renewable energy and residential “smart meters” to promote energy efficiency, both pushed forward by the ideology of Climatism.
The bad news is that US citizens pay twice for the President’s war on climate. First, taxpayers subsidize green energy. The Production Tax Credit for wind energy will cost over $12 billion this year. Department of Energy loan guarantees to more than 20 bankrupt renewable energy companies, including Abound Solar, Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Trust, and Solyndra have cost taxpayers billions. Taxpayers also pay for US military efforts to make biofuel out of algae at exorbitant prices.
Second, citizens pay higher costs for electricity, automobiles, and housing from green policies. The Department of Interior offshore wind program will deliver electricity to homeowners at three times the price of conventional power. Fuel economy mandates will raise the price of automobiles. Consumers must pay for smart meters that can curtail electricity usage.
The good news is that, despite fears, man-made emissions have very little effect on Earth’s climate. Water vapor, not carbon dioxide, is Earth’s dominant greenhouse gas. Emissions from human industry cause only about one percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect. And contrary to predictions by all 73 of the world’s top climate models, global temperatures have failed to rise over the last 15 years.
Someone needs to inform the president.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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If my memory serves, in the “90’s, the National Center for Disease Control was going to do studies that would show guns were very dangerous and should be banned as a health hazard. Congress decided that was not an appropriate use of tax money and defunded the NCDC budget for that idea.
Maybe it is time (past time?) for Congress to do their oversight thing and defund some of the EPA budget.
I loved the way he kept mopping his brow, theatrically making some point about the heat. The temperature was about average for June in DC.
So far Obama has accomplished nothing. The low interest rate policies are designed to goose the economy by promoting the sales of oversized vehicles and houses. The lifetime energy wasted by those misguided economiic policies completely dwarfs the energy saved by tweaking a few regulations. The energy wasted on most of the green companies and biofuels is essentially flushed for all time. The only true impacts have been caused by forces out of Obama’s control. Americans use less oil because they are poorer and the price of oil has remained stubbornly high even in a sluggish economy. The coal industry has been hurt by the fortunate boom in the shale gas production which has reduce CO2 emissions. Obama has essentially continued the burn it all as fast as possible economic policies we have followed ever since we learned to utilize fossil fuel energy. They don’t want to admit the free market would utilize energy more efficiently without any government interference. If Obama cared about the environment he would cut the Federal government in half.
I may be delusional, but I keep getting the impression, that skeptics are winning all the battles, but are losing the war, for reality. Fuzzy, feel good, gestures… cannot be defeated. They rule. GK
“Someone needs to inform the president.”
Read the UN’s Agenda 21. They want us living at subsistence levels, as in N Korea, their standard country. Everything he is doing is in line with this agenda. He has no interest in climate, none, nada. It’s all about destroying our standard of living and devolving our industry and economy. Telling him anything is useless. HE DOES NOT CARE. IT’S WHAT HE WANTS.
Meanwhile, his home state of Illinois has two refineries shut down for maintenance (and for switching from winter to summer blends) and the closer you get to Chicago the higher the price of regular gasoline gets. It was $4.25 the past weekend in the city, while only $3.50 or so in Michigan and Wisconsin. Driving Tip: Enter Illinois with a full tank of gas.
A “progressive” leader would be busting his butt to see that the infrastructure we actually use in this country was being modernized, i.e., that the roads we use and the refineries that produce the gasoline needed to use those roads were being built when and where needed. But no, we haven’t built a refinery in the U.S. in a long, long time, and now we get to pay for this “leadership.”
As for the roads, massive traffic jams around Chicago at 2 in the afternoon?
Today’s Democrats, having defiled the word “liberal,” are now well on the way to doing the same with the word “progressive.”
Obama says we have to “put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants…”
This is what comes from measuring carbon instead of carbon dioxide. “Carbon pollution” sounds so menacing, black stuff all over the place, our lungs filling up with it, almost worse than smoking even…
Every time a liberal uses the term “carbon pollution” a dozen sane people should shout back, yes, shout: “It’s carbon dioxide, not carbon. You know, the stuff we exhale every few seconds; the stuff that plants require for existence. It’s not a pollutant; it’s essential to life on earth.”
The language of the Left gets more Orwellian with each passing year.
“Rod Everson says:
June 27, 2013 at 7:07 am”
In Australia, we have had media taking the “carbon pollution” theme to the extreme. We have adverts depicting “black balloon” or “carbon pollution” floating up into the sky!! It’s funny it hurts…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcMNZueIyNI
BillD says:
June 27, 2013 at 4:15 am
No, BillD–they’re scientific, just not YOUR brand of CAGW/AGW “science”. Maybe you should read some of what they’ve published before making a fool of yourself on the most-read Web site regarding climate. You might even change your tune.
If fear of CO2’s impact on the climate drives a WAR ON CARBON, shouldn’t the response to the next flood be a WAR ON HYDROGEN?
Heartland never denied that smoking was bad. It argued that 2nd-hand smoke wasn’t as bad as portrayed, and that the case hadn’t been proven yet (true at the time they argued this). (It’s also true that casual 2nd-hand smoke in restaurants, etc. isn’t in the same category as unremitting smoke from a family member.)
Warmist smearers have deliberately avoided using the accurate term “2nd-hand smoke” when mentioning Heartland and instead stating that Heartland denied the harm of tobacco, knowing that their readers would make the incorrect inference )smoking) that BillD did. This is classic suppresso veri, suggesto falsi. This is a warmist tactic on other topics.
I don’t see that Goreham is “from” Heartland on Heartland’s bio page for him. I.e., no affiliation is mentioned, he’s just described as an “expert.” Here’s the link: http://heartland.org/steve-goreham. Heartland’s “experts” page lists 358 experts for whom it has similar profiles. Here’s the link: http://heartland.org/experts. The lead-in paragraph on that page says:
That, plus the absence of any Heartland-affiliation in his bio, implies that Goreham is independent of it. So BillD is repeating another smear. Or inventing one.
Obama said he wouldn’t approve the Keystone pipeline unless it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution”. Let’s try applying some simple logic to that statement.
There are three ways to deliver crude oil: rail, tanker or pipeline, pipelines by far deliver oil with the least amount of “carbon pollution”. Regardless of how the oil is delivered and who buys it, Canada is going to produce it. If we don’t buy it they will deliver it by rail to the west coast put it on tankers then ship it to China, who will deliver it by rail to their refineries which have little to no environmental regulations.
With or without the pipeline the U.S. will still have a shortage and need to import oil from somewhere else, probably the middle east via tanker to our ports then deliver it by rail to our refineries.
If Obama did approve the Keystone pipeline we could reduce the shipping oil all over the world we wouldn’t have to import as much from the Middle East. This would reduce the possibility of tankers sinking and causing oil slicks plus it would reduce the emissions the ships and railroads produce.
So the obvious conclusion is the pipeline would not exacerbate the problem but reduce the problem. Of course there actually is no problem when it comes to CO2 emissions but that’s another subject.
“…a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”
———————————–
war on coal = war on prosperity
In order to curtail some CO2 emissions,
President Obama has ordered the light at the end of the tunnel
to be turned off.
In his speech Obama says America is doing a good job on reducing our CO2 emissions and that “our carbon emissions are roughly back to where they were 20 years ago.” then seconds later he pledges “to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent from their 2005 levels by the end of this decade” well… we’ve already achieved that. About 17% of 2005 levels is basically where we are today and where we were 20 years ago, we’ve almost already reached his goal. Whatever we are doing now is working, so we don’t need carbon taxes.
G. Karst says:
June 27, 2013 at 6:45 am
I may be delusional, but I keep getting the impression, that skeptics are winning all the battles, but are losing the war, for reality. Fuzzy, feel good, gestures… cannot be defeated. They rule. GK
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The problem is the media is a propaganda outlet for the elite who control the government. How ever I heard a glimmer of hope on the radio today.
On CBS of all things they were talking about how the ‘weird’ weather was caused by the jet steam and science DOES NOT KNOW what is happening to the jet stream and why it has moved. “….Contrary to what some say THE SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED….”
I was so shocked I nearly drove off the road.
Looks like the AP is a bit upset with Obummer still and may not be backing him up on his Climate Wars.
PS: I see that Heartland’s bio page for Steve Goreham hasn’t been updated in a year, because it contains this sentence: “ href-“http://www.amazon.com/Mad-World-Climatism-Mankind-Climate/dp/0982499620/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372347932&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+World+of+Climatism”>The Mad, Mad, Mad, World of Climatism is Steve’s second book on climate change, scheduled for publication in August, 2012.”
I have the original book, Climatism!, and it’s exellent—very readable. Lots of charts, almost all from official sources. The newer book, presumably a second edition of the first, is $12 for the Kindle edition. A free Kindle sample of the first 10% of the book can be downloadd by clicking on a button in the right sidebar of the Kindle-version page, accessible from the link above.
Oops–typo in the link above (delete that comment if possible)
PS: I see that Heartland’s bio page hasn’t been updated in a year, because it contains this sentence: “ href=“http://www.amazon.com/Mad-World-Climatism-Mankind-Climate/dp/0982499620/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372347932&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+World+of+Climatism”>The Mad, Mad, Mad, World of Climatism is Steve’s second book on climate change, scheduled for publication in August, 2012.”
I have the original book, Climatism! and it’s exellent—very readable. Lots of charts, almost all from official sources. The newer book, presumably a second edition of the first, is $12 for the Kindle edition. A free Kindle sample of the first 10% of the book can be downloadd by clicking on a button in the right sidebar of the Kindle-version page accessible from the link above.
Oops again. Third time’s a charm, I hope:
PS: I see that Heartland’s bio page hasn’t been updated in a year, because it contains this sentence: “ href=”http://www.amazon.com/Mad-World-Climatism-Mankind-Climate/dp/0982499620/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372347932&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+World+of+Climatism”>The Mad, Mad, Mad, World of Climatism is Steve’s second book on climate change, scheduled for publication in August, 2012.”
I have the original book, Climatism! and it’s exellent—very readable. Lots of charts, almost all from official sources. The newer book, presumably a second edition of the first, is $12 for the Kindle edition. A free Kindle sample of the first 10% of the book can be downloadd by clicking on a button in the right sidebar of the Kindle-version page accessible from the link above.
rogerknights says
You can find the html mark-up information for WUWT at Ric Werme’s Guide to Watts Up With That at the bottom of the web page where he also has an index to the posts by category and by date.
Thank You Ric Werme
We all know Obama’s not planning to approve Keystone, he just said so.
But he also left enough wiggle room so that if other special interest group supporters raise enough stink or raise enough money to override the radical environmentalists, he will give it a reluctant go-ahead. After all, the pipeline itself doesn’t emit “carbon pollution.” So if the trade unions and unemployed make themselves heard and felt, we’ll get Keystone built.
Without Keystone, that oil isn’t staying in the ground. Remember, Warren Buffett’s railroads are transporting the oil to refineries right now and the Canadians will build a pipeline to their west coast and sell to China if we don’t want their oil.
Meanwhile back in the UK:
2% spare electricity generating caapacity could lead to blackouts within two years
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10145803/Risk-of-UK-blackouts-has-tripled-in-a-year-Ofgem-warns.html
Wind turbines get a subsidy for another six years
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10146403/Wind-farms-get-generous-subsidies-for-another-six-years.html
A rare swift gets killed by a wind turbine
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10146135/Birdwatchers-see-rare-swift-killed-by-wind-turbine.html
I’m glad I have a stand-by generator
Der Fuehrer is acting out his hatred of civilization and above all of America. He is fully aware that AGW is crap but it provides him the excuse to act out his attitude, which was perfectly summed up in Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America.” He WANTS poor people to be strapped by high energy prices (which will make everything else cost more, not just electricity or gasoline, since everything moves by energy). These are NOT unintended consequences. And yes, the object is to reduce people to dependence and slavery and make them support his and the other super-rich alarmies’ lavish lifestyles. That $100 million vacation in Africa is the ultimate screw you to little people trying to cope with the higher costs his policies cause.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but i don’t want to be driving a car that gets 54 mpg with current technolgy. It will be more or less a gokart with plastic fenders. Hopefully new technolgies will be developed that will improve the engine & allow a stronger outer shell.
The cartoon was cute, but he should have had $ flowwing out of the instrument not mucsical notes.