Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules for existing coal-fired power plants, a 30 percent reduction in allowable carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The only way this will be possible will be by upgrading almost all combustion units, and the ultimate cost of the upgrades will make coal noncompetitive with much-less-expensive natural gas–fired facilities.
The EPA’s proposed new greenhouse-gas regulations are a campaign promise come true. In 2008, Senator Barack Obama announced that, if elected, his climate policies would “necessarily bankrupt” anyone who wanted to build a new coal-fired power plant.
Public comments on EPA’s proposal to do just that closed on May 9, and there is no chance that the president will renege — or that this policy will have any detectable effect on global temperature.
The EPA’s own model, ironically acronymed MAGICC, estimates that its new policies will prevent a grand total of 0.018ºC in warming by 2100. Obviously, that’s not enough to satisfy the steadily shrinking percentage of Americans who think global warming is a serious problem.
MAGICC tells us that the futility of whatever Obama proposes for existing plants will be statistically indistinguishable from making sure that there are no new coal-fired ones. In fact, dropping the carbon dioxide emissions from all sources of electrical generation to zero would reduce warming by a grand total of 0.04ºC by 2100.
This is hardly going to stop the crescendo of global-warming horror stories, perhaps best summarized by the government’s recently released “National Assessment” of the effects of climate change on our country.
For example, the assessment tells us that global warming will increase mental illness in our nation’s cities. The obvious implication is that people in Richmond are crazier than they are in Washington, 100 miles to the north. Or that people must really be loony in Miami.
But what about all the weird weather plaguing the country? What the alarmists don’t tell you is that not since records were kept in the 1860s have we have gone this long without a Category 3 hurricane’s crossing our shoreline. They omit that there’s no evidence of an increase in weather-related damages once you adjust for the fact that there are now more people with more expensive stuff to hit. Even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so often cited to justify our futile policies, acknowledges that one.
The politics of scaring people to death over climate change are probably more dangerous than the weather. And research suggests that the more people read that some “scientists say” the world is about to end, the less they believe them.
Chalk it up to apocalypse fatigue. By my best guess, global warming is the eighth environmental Armageddon I have lived through. Who even remembers that, according to some of our most esteemed scientists, “acid rain” was going to cause an “ecological silent spring”? Like so many global catastrophes, it was a bit exaggerated.
You’d think the administration would see not just how futile these policies are in addressing climate change but also how costly they are politically. Some compelling analysis of polls shows that the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election because, under Democratic leadership, it passed cap-and-trade, which the Senate wisely stopped short of. In Australia, similar policies favoring cap-and-trade cost the Liberal party its leader in 2009 and subsequently sacked two Labour prime ministers, Keven Rudd and Julia Gillard.
Is this really the road the administration wants to go down in 2014? If history is any guide, a pretty steep price will be paid on Election Day — all for policies that will have no measurable effect on climate change.
This article appeared on National Review (Online) on May 30, 2014.
Patrick J. Michaels is director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow in research and economic development at George Mason University.
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So is Obama’s “proposed legislation” actually binding, or is it at this point still just a proposal?
“The only way this will be possible will be by upgrading almost all combustion units”
So. Totally. Wrong.
They will purchase carbon offsets. Cap and Trade. The National Review is an American right-wing rag. It is almost axiomatic that they cannot follow the money if it infringes in any part on their fantasies about how businesses operate in the real world,
George Steiner says:
June 2, 2014 at 1:08 pm
The administration will not pay a steep price. In fact a Democrat president will be elected when Obama leaves office. This is because the Republicans have no stomach for real political combat on any issue and this is just one of them.
It is worse than no stomach for combat. They don’t know how to do it even if they developed a stomach.
http://classicalvalues.com/2014/06/rock-meet-hardplace/
Does anyone know precisely what this means for US power generation? The EPA documents are not exactly models of clarity, so no doubt plenty of money for lawyers. How much of the 30% reduction from 2005 has happened already via shale gas, and how much more would have come anyway from that fuel?
Is this all just a political game with few actual consequences?
…you would think….they would clean up our water first
The power companies just Pull The Plug, NOW!
“Does anyone know precisely what this means for US power generation?”
Coal power will go up in costs, and there fore the nat gas and nuke people can raise their prices without losing market share to coal. The next big battle will be between coal and the banksters/traders. Big Coal will ask for free offset allotments from the govt, which would harm the profits of the cap and traders.
A Little off topic. The IPCC paperwork showed a chart with the likelyhood of adverse events, many of which it didn’t see much reason to worry about. Can anyone please give me the reference. Stupidity has broken out here in NZ with the greens wanting to introduce a carbon tax. I need ammo.
Mike UK,
According to the article I’ll link to below, the 50 states have quite variable reduction targets to hit, and they have until 2017 or 2018 to even submit a plan in the first place. Also, the article states that 13% of the 30% target has already been attained, so we’re already about halfway there. The plan may not survive legal challenges or changes in Washington’s political landscape.
http://centurylink.net/news/read/article/the_associated_press-epa_seeks_to_cut_power_plant_carbon_by_30_percent-ap
Neil said:
It’s all about presidential legacy. Obama is doing to the economy what Clinton did to the middle-east peace process.
I was sure that sentence was going to end with “…what Clinton did to Monica Lewinsky.”
“The EPA’s own model, ironically acronymed MAGICC, estimates that its new policies will prevent a grand total of 0.018ºC in warming by 2100”
Does anyone have a reference / link for this statement. If accurate should be all that is needed to stop this.
“DDT is not exempt from the resistance problem – in fact, resistant mosquito strains exist. Had its use continued on the same scale as in the sixties, resistance would have spread more rapidly, and it would likely have long since been rendered totally ineffective.”
Hmmm… how is that worse than not using it at all. Are we saving it for just rich folks in developed countries? Or maybe you expect that the resistant critters will mutate into something horrible? I thought the problem with DDT was supposed to be that it is persistent in the environment so will build up and kill all the insects (Silent Spring!) Now your are saying that the insects will evolve to not be effected by it?
What’s especially important, in my opinion, is for opponents to juxtapose two elements — first, the degree to which electricity rates would rise because of this initiative, and second, the degree to which temperatures would be affected, even according to the U.N. climate modeling.
No need to even take on the Church of Climatology. Have this fight next to the collection box in the vestibule.
Shut ’em all down tomorrow June 3rd, 2014. I hear it’s going to be warm in DC. Let’s see how the EPA likes sweating out their own rules in their own cubicles and offices.
Oh wait! You say there’s an exception for all coal generated electricity that goes to DC? (Wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.)
My dear co-commenters,
This is just government doing what governments do. They are a gang of thieves writ large. Follow the money and you will see that this is about looting the people and not about “saving the planet”.
Once upon a time a political philosophy called “Liberalism” dominated the West and led to the industrial revolution and the greatest expansion of wealth and innovation in the history of mankind. Those Classical Liberals (have to add “classical” now) believed in private property rights, a laissez-faire market economy, the rule of law, limited government, and international peace based on free trade. This is the opposite of what we call “liberals” in the US in modern times.
Let historian Ralf Raico tell you about it in his post: “What Is Classical Liberalism?” http://mises.org/daily/4596
The problem is that if you cede power to the State and allow it to be strong enough to give you what you want from its looting of the people it is thereby strong enough to take all you have. The war against CAGW is really a war against the growing police state and the destruction of individual freedom and liberty in the US and most of the rest of the Western World. Make no mistake about that.
The Democrats are going to lose the next election anyway so why not pass a poisoned chalice in the form of a hobbled economy onto the Republicans. When the Republicans get in they need to clean out the alarmists with their snouts in the trough of public funds, both at a personal and at an institutional level. The EPA needs to be gutted with those who blatantly lied about CO2 fired.
Looking on the positive side, Obama’s govt. will be gone soon, and the US can follow in the footsteps of Australia & toss this nonsense out.
I don’t know if the coal fired plants have an organization, but I would go on strike for at least 1 day to show what happens when 40% of US energy shuts down for 1 day. (or even 10% depending on how many would participate).
Close a power plant NOW, possibly whichever one supplies Washington DC then see the rhetoric and back-flipping rationale to re-open it.
The real threat is from the proposed solutions to this non-problem.
Michael Palmer / Richard Sharpe / GaryW
In the interest of putting this to bed: the reference by Joseph Murphy is valid,
‘The same year of the ban, 1972, the ALJ appointed by the EPA Edmund Sweeney conclude after seven months of hearings in his report of that review:
“DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man … DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife.”
(Sweeney , MS. 1972. “Recommendations of the Hearing Examiner EPA, and findings concerning DDT hearings,” April 25, 1972 (40 CFR 164.32, 113 pages)
However, the EPA administrator, William Ruckelshaus, dismissed the judge’s opinion and banned virtually all uses of DDT to consider it a “potential carcinogen for humans.”
The controversy seemed revived, perhaps under a pressure campaign that May 24 of 2006 was denounced by scientists at the EPA in a letter made public after an association of environmental officials, PEER .
The September 15, 2006 the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the insecticide will be part of its program to eradicate malaria spraying inside homes and thus kill the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. Scientific studies 1 show that the use of DDT for indoor associated with mosquito itself is effective in preventing malaria and presents no hazards to wildlife and the ineffectiveness medium term indiscriminate use as a biocide itself has on crops, etc.
More to the topic of this thread is: it’s worse than we thought. They (Obama et al) are going to execute their plan in spite of the facts, and inevitable consequences. I hope we are all writing our congressmen!
The purpose isn’t to reduce temperatures, which the Warmistas know is a lie. The goal is centralized state control of society.
Robert of Ottawa says:
June 2, 2014 at 3:09 pm
What he said…
For example, the assessment tells us that global warming will increase mental illness in our nation’s cities. The obvious implication is that people in Richmond are crazier than they are in Washington, 100 miles to the north. Or that people must really be loony in Miami.
=========================================================================
180 out on that one.
Back in 1975 John Holdren wrote a paper in which he declared that the greatest danger the US faced was from too much and too cheap energy.
Is it not somewhat annoying, that government of the people, by the people, for the people have perished from the earth?