Unleashing EPA bureaucrats on American livelihoods, living standards and liberties
By David Rothbard and Craig Rucker
Supported by nothing but assumptions, faulty computer models and outright falsifications of what is actually happening on our planet, President Obama, his Environmental Protection Agency and their allies have issued more economy-crushing rules that they say will prevent dangerous manmade climate change .
Under the latest EPA regulatory onslaught (645 pages of new rules, released June 2), by 2030 states must slash carbon dioxide emissions by 30% below 2005 levels.
The new rules supposedly give states “flexibility” in deciding how to meet the mandates. However, many will have little choice but to impose costly cap-tax-and-trade regimes like the ones Congress has wisely and repeatedly refused to enact. Others will be forced to close perfectly good, highly reliable coal-fueled power plants that currently provide affordable electricity for millions of families, factories, hospitals, schools and businesses. The adverse impacts will be enormous.
The rules will further hobble a US economy that actually shrank by 1% during the first quarter of 2014, following a pathetic 1.9% total annual growth in 2013. They are on top of $1.9 trillion per year (one-eighth of our total economy) that businesses and families already pay to comply with federal rules.
A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study calculates that the new regulations will cost our economy another $51 billion annually, result in 224,000 more lost jobs every year, and cost every American household $3,400 per year in higher prices for energy, food and other necessities. Poor, middle class and minority families – and those already dependent on unemployment and welfare – will be impacted worst. Those in a dozen states that depend on coal to generate 30-95% of their electricity will be hit especially hard.
Millions of Americans will endure a lower quality of life and be unable to heat or cool their homes properly, pay their rent or mortgage, or save for college and retirement. They will suffer from greater stress, worse sleep deprivation, higher incidences of depression and alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse, and more heart attacks and strokes. As Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) points out, “A lot of people on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum are going to die.” EPA ignores all of this.
It also ignores the fact that, based to the agency’s own data, shutting down every coal-fired power plant in the USA would reduce the alleged increase in global temperatures by a mere 0.05 degrees F by 2100!
President Obama nevertheless says the costly regulations are needed to reduce “carbon pollution” that he claims is making “extreme weather events” like Superstorm Sandy “more common and more devastating.” The rules will also prevent up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks in their first year alone, while also curbing sea level rise, forest fires and other supposed impacts from “climate disruption,” according to ridiculous talking points provided by EPA boss Gina McCarthy.
As part of a nationwide White House campaign to promote and justify the regulations, the American Lung Association echoed the health claims. The Natural Resources Defense Council said the rules will “drive innovation and investment” in green technology, creating “hundreds of thousands” of new jobs.
Bear in mind, the ALA received over $20 million from the EPA between 2001 and 2010. NRDC spends nearly $100 million per year (2012 IRS data) advancing its radical agenda. Both are part of a $13.4-billion-per-year U.S. Big Green industry that includes the Sierra Club and Sierra Club Foundation ($145 million per year), National Audubon Society ($96 million), Environmental Defense Fund ($112 million annually), Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace Fund ($46 million), and numerous other special interest groups dedicated to slashing fossil fuel use and reducing our living standards. All are tax-exempt.
As to the claims themselves, they are as credible as the endlessly repeated assertions that we will all be able to keep our doctor and insurance policies, Benghazi was a spontaneous protest, and there is not a scintilla of corruption in the IRS denials of tax-exempt status to conservative groups.
The very term “carbon pollution” is deliberately disingenuous. The rules do not target carbon (aka soot). They target carbon dioxide. This is the gas that all humans and animals exhale. It makes life on Earth possible. It makes crops and other plants grow faster and better. As thousands of scientists emphasize, at just 0.04% of our atmosphere, CO2 plays only a minor role in climate change – especially compared to water vapor and the incredibly powerful solar, cosmic, oceanic and other natural forces that have caused warm periods, ice ages and little ice ages, and controlled climate and weather for countless millennia.
The terrible disasters that the President and other climate alarmists attribute to fossil fuels, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are creatures of computer models that have gotten virtually no predictions correct. That should hardly be surprising. The models are based on faulty assumptions of every size and description, and are fed a steady diet of junk science and distorted data. We shouldn’t trust them any more than we would trust con artists who claim their computers can predict stock markets or Super Bowl and World Series winners – even one year in advance, much less 50 or 100 years.
The models should absolutely not be trusted as the basis for regulations that will cripple our economy.
Contrary to model predictions and White House assertions, average global temperatures have not risen in almost 18 years. It’s now been over eight years since a category 3-5 hurricane hit the United States – the longest such period in over a century. Tornadoes are at a multi-decade low. Droughts are no more intense or frequent than since 1900. There were fewer than half as many forest fires last year as during the 1960s and 1970s. Sea levels rose just eight inches over the last 130 years and are currently rising at barely seven inches per century. There’s still ice on Lake Superior – in June! Runaway global warming, indeed.
This is not dangerous. It’s not because of humans. It does not justify what the White House is doing.
Asthma has been increasing for years – while air pollution has been decreasing. The two are not related. In fact, as EPA data attest, between 1970 and 2010, real air pollution from coal-fired power plants has plummeted dramatically – and will continue to do so because of existing rules and technologies.
For once the President is not “leading from behind” on foreign policy. However, there is no truth to his claim that other countries will follow our lead on closing coal-fired power plants and slashing carbon dioxide emissions. China, India and dozens of other developing countries are rapidly building coal-fueled generators, so that billions of people will finally enjoy the blessings of electricity and be lifted out of poverty. Even European countries are burning more coal to generate electricity, because they finally realize they cannot keep subsidizing wind and solar, while killing their energy-intensive industries.
Then what is really going on here? Why is President Obama imposing some of the most pointless and destructive regulations in American history? He is keeping his campaign promises to his far-left and hard-green ideological supporters, who detest hydrocarbons and want to use climate change to justify their socio-economic-environmental agenda.
Mr. Obama promised that electricity prices would “necessarily skyrocket” and that he would “bankrupt” the coal industry and “fundamentally transform” America. His top science advisor, John Holdren, has long advocated a “massive campaign” to “de-develop the United States,” divert energy and other resources from what he calls “frivolous and wasteful” uses that support modern living standards, and enforce a “much more equitable distribution of wealth.” The President and his Executive Branch bureaucrats are committed to controlling more and more of our lives, livelihoods and liberties.
They believe no one can stop them, and they will never be held accountable for ignoring our laws, for their corruption, or even for any job losses, deaths or other destruction they may leave in their wake.
Every American who still believes in honest science, accountable Constitutional government – and the right of people everywhere to affordable energy and modern living standards – must tell these radical ideologues that this power grab will not be tolerated.
David Rothbard is president of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), a nonprofit educational organization devoted to both people and the environment. Craig Rucker is CFACT’s executive director.
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Alan Robertson said on June 5, 2014 at 10:27 pm:
I made no comments in the 8:33 PM posting, I was just quoting. I gave the references.
If a presentation solely composed of the words of others is considered less than helpful, or even an ad hominem attack utilizing a person’s own words while adding none from the presenter, well, that’s the choice of the reader.
I’m really thinking that a big reason Obama did the Bergdahl terrorist swap right now was to take almost all the attention away from these brutal EPA regulations.
From joeldshore on June 5, 2014 at 8:49 pm:
What’s the point? It is clear you are a respected well-published researcher, in hard sciences like optics and solid state physics, yielding practical results…
…who got “Climate Change” tacked on to your published topics list by co-authoring a single piece in 2010, Comment on “Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within the Frame of Physics”. Which was the slapping down of nonsensical unscientific attacks committed falsely under the guise of climate skepticism. Thus that piece was a worthy thing to do, I’m not complaining about it.
So it is established you are knowledgeable in the hard sciences you normally research and publish about.
But as seen here and elsewhere, you do not respond well to criticism. For “replies” you prefer confrontational declarations.
For example, on June 5, 2014 at 7:30 pm you said:
As detailed in the press release concerning the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy report (link to report is there):
Where are those “all sorts of questionable assumptions” you said were there?
In a piece from just a few days ago, on June 4 they issued Setting the Record Straight on the Chamber’s Carbon Emissions Study—And How It Relates to EPA’s Proposed Rules. Basically, when the EPA finally announced, the proposed rules wanted 30% reductions by 2030. But since 2009 and the (failed) Copenhagen climate summit, the Administration’s stated goal was 42% by 2030. So that’s what the Energy Institute went with.
Now in the manner of a teacher, inducing learning and retention by a dynamic presentation of the facts and their relations with other knowledge, please show and discuss the fallacies of at least some of those many other questionable assumptions you are certain are in there.
KD,
joelshore repeatedly labels those he disagrees with as ‘ideologues’. That makes him the ideologue, no?
You give far too much credit to someone who uses the global warming scare for political gain. The planet is debunking shore and his ilk, but they will never admit what everyone here knows: they are wrong. Every prediction made by the alarmist cult has been wrong.
There is no runaway global warming. There is no climate catastrophe. They are being thoroughly dishonest in promoting that false alarm.
And there will be a reckoning…
joeldshore says:
June 5, 2014 at 7:30 pm
It must take some very creative mathematics to convert $51 billion into a cost of $3,400 per household.
Not nearly as creative as you attempting to conflate the cost per household with the cost to the economy. That’s a $51 billion per year anchor thrown to a still-struggling economy. We’d be better off hiring a million unemployed to dig holes at 25k a year, and another million to fill them in.
The economic costs are only the beginning. This will create needless human suffering, which you do not seem to care about. This is also a direct attack on the Constitutional separation of powers. The Obama administration is using the EPA to carry out an agenda which he was not able to push through Congress.
It would appear that EPA has not learned anything form the bad experience that the public had with the too sudden and too many complex changes introduced with Obama care across the nation. With so many new retirements( 32 plants plus possibly 36 other plants for a total of about 8% of nationwide coal generating capacity or about enough power to supply 11 million homes ) being forced out on top of previously planned normal retirements , the entire process is being rushed too much with too much change all at once . Also there are possibly as many as 500 units that need to be idled to install new pollution control equipment on plants that are not being retired. The problem will show up when there is an extra drain on the grid like we had this past winter. The grid nearly collapsed prior to these new changes.
***
joeldshore says:
June 5, 2014 at 8:42 pm
On the other hand, the history of estimates of the costs of environmental regulations is that not only does the regulated industry overestimate them (no surprise there!) but even EPA tends to overestimate them (although maybe EPA has changed some of their modeling assumptions to better account for market mechanisms to respond by taking the cheapest possible route…I don’t know).
***
The bottom line is any CO2 regulations the US impose produce only a negligible temp change — assuming no one else takes up the CO2-emitting industries (like China, Russia, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc, etc). So such regulations are much worse than useless. China and others are laughing at the US & Europe all the way to the bank. They must think we’ve lost our marbles.
Ever work in competitive industry? If you have, you know something that’s useless should be halted immediately to stop wasting time, effort & money on it.
All such economic modeling involves tons of assumptions. Here are a couple pieces discussing some of the questionable assumptions made:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/05/3444651/epa-regulations-inequality/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/may/30/its-epa-vs-us-chamber-commerce-over-climate-change/
When I talked about questionable assumptions, I didn’t even know it was as bad as this. They modeled a significantly more ambitious goal than the actual proposal made. (Since the switch toward natural gas over the past 9 years has already reduced emissions by 15%, the difference between the regs and what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce modeled is an additional reduction of 15% or an additional reduction of 27%.) They have reasons for modeling what they did…but the point is that their assumption about the rule was wrong by a significant amount and that would have a significant effect on the results they get. They try to come up with lame excuses for why this assumption might not be that bad (This is only the proposed regs, the final regs may be stricter after the big bad environmentalists get their hands on it [and apparently the poor coal industry hacks just cower in a corner]; different states will have different targets and some will have greater targets [so, apparently we can ignore that some will have lesser targets too…I’d call this the “everybody is above average” argument]).
As I have noted, actual studies of past EPA regulations of this type have shown that the tendency is that not only do the industry studies drastically overestimate compliance costs but even the EPA estimates tend to run higher than what the actual costs end up being.
BruceCobb says:
Okay, so explain to me how the regs can cost each household $3400 per year but only cost the economy $51 billion per year
An imaginary number based on economic modeling with some assumptions that are known not to be correct.
Yes, needless human suffering like the ancillary benefits of lowered air pollution.
Ah…a very conservative U.S. Supreme Court disagrees with you. They say that the Clean Air Act does indeed give the EPA the authority to issue such regulations.
beng says:
This sort of bottom line could be applied to anything that requires collective action, like voting. Nobody should vote because each person’s vote makes a negligible difference to the final vote tally. The actual numerical claims also tend to make assumptions like that the U.S. reduces emissions by this amount until 2030 and then immediately jumps back to emitting at levels that it otherwise would have emitted at had we not followed a path to greater energy efficiency, greater use of renewables, less reliance on coal, …
They won’t be laughing once the U.S. gets ahead in technologies necessary to do something that they will eventually have to do and that they should be trying to do sooner rather than later. China is also strongly dependent on the U.S. as a market for their exports, which means if they remain intransigent, then there are things that can be done to influence their decisions of what to do.
joeldshore says:
June 6, 2014 at 6:29 am
BruceCobb says:
Not nearly as creative as you attempting to conflate the cost per household with the cost to the economy.
Okay, so explain to me how the regs can cost each household $3400 per year but only cost the economy $51 billion per year
So, you admit that the two are completely different things, but now feign ignorance as to Economics 101? Obviously, that $3400/year cost per household is neither a cost to the economy nor a benefit. Where the cost to the economy comes in is what it does wrt business and industry, and the consequent job-losses.
An imaginary number based on economic modeling with some assumptions that are known not to be correct.
It is the best estimate (as all economics are) by a global economic research firm, IHS, and if anything, is probably conservative.
Yes, needless human suffering like the ancillary benefits of lowered air pollution.
Now you are conflating air pollution, which has declined significantly since the 70’s, with the imaginary “carbon pollution”. Typical.
Ah…a very conservative U.S. Supreme Court disagrees with you. They say that the Clean Air Act does indeed give the EPA the authority to issue such regulations.
“Very conservative”? Give me a break, Joel. And, at 5-4, the vote was a squeaker. All they did was kick the ball back to the epa’s court, saying that “greenhouse gases could be regulated under the Clean Air Act if the EPA determined that they posed a danger to human health or welfare”.
The EPA has done no such thing. What they have done is to essentially re-write the rules of the CAA, again, violating the Constitution.
EPA administrator answers questions on reddit, has a bad time
http://washingtonexaminer.com/epa-administrator-answers-questions-on-reddit-has-a-bad-time/article/2549382
From Bruce Cobb on June 6, 2014 at 8:33 am:
Sign found in the private Oval Office bathroom:
Gina McScience McCarthy, in response to a whiffleball question:
“We’re bullish on American ingenuity, that’s what makes this country so great. Thanks for your faith and optimism!”
LOL. They’re “bullish” all right. As in what comes out of a bull.
On Jan 20, 2017 a new president will be sworn in. And President Obama is doing everything he can to make sure the new president is a Republican.
What’s the point in shutting coal down early?
Breakthrough research in Fusion for power generation just published: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.0133v1.pdf
For the purpose of discussion, we estimate the power balance for a 1 meter radius hexahedral D-T Polywell fusion reactor operating at β=1 with a magnetic field of 7 T at the cusp points and an electron beam injection energy at 60 kV.
The required electron beam power to maintain a β=1 state would be 213 MW. Separately, this system will lose an additional 51 MW of power via Bremsstrahlung radiation for an average electron temperature of 60 keV, assuming no ions other than hydrogen isotopes are present.[19] In comparison, the expected D-T fusion power output would be 1.9 GW for a D-T cross section of 1.38 barns at a center of mass energy of 30 keV.
@ur momisugly JM VanWinkle
Boring. Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways sounds way more cool, and is the answer to all our problems. /sarc
OMG! EPA is rational by comparison. Or are they kidding? Stumbled on this today…
______________________________________
Why Deep Green Resistance?
> Industrial civilization is killing all life on our planet, driving to extinction 200 species per day, and it won’t stop voluntarily.
> Global warming is happening now, at an astounding speed. The only honest solution is to stop industrial civilization from burning fossil fuels.
> Most consumption is based on violence against people (human and non-human) and on degrading landbases across the planet.
> Life on Earth is more important than this insane, temporary culture based on hyper-exploitation of finite resources. This culture needs to be destroyed before it consumes all life on this planet.
> Humanity is not the same as civilization. Humans have developed many sane and sustainable cultures, themselves at risk from civilization.
> Most people know this culture is insane and needs radical change, but don’t see any way to bring the change about.
> Unlike most environmental and social justice organizations, Deep Green Resistance questions the existence and necessity of civilization itself. DGR asks “What if we do away with civilization altogether?”
> Unlike most environmental and social justice organizations, DGR asks “What must we do to be effective?”, not “What will those in power allow us to do?”
> DGR offers organized, reliable ways to promote sane ways of living and surviving the ongoing crisis.
> DGR has a realistic plan to stop the insanity, Decisive Ecological Warfare.
_______________________________________
Delusional.
Deep Green Resistance — Read “Directive 51”, “Daybreak Zero”, and “The Last President”. DGR=Daybreak. (“In late 2024, Daybreak, a movement of post-apocalyptic eco-saboteurs, smashed modern civilization to its knees…”)
Joel D Shore: Good to see an alternate view point expressed here, as I have been reading recently at other sites that WUWT is considered to be somewhat of a one-sided “echo chamber”. I can see that if someone comes to WUWT with a preconceived viewpoint, not based upon sound logic or empirical data, that they run the risk of being summarily(and verbally) run out of town on a rail by the knowledgeable WUWT regulars!!! Just an observation. Trolls – Nah, please stay away. Those that bring thoughtful, sound science based arguments? And an open mind? Bring it on. Discourse and the potential to broaden knowledge – even to change a lukewarmer over – all for it.
Another irony overload from the left.
O’Bomber is attacking his own voter base with higher heating costs which affects the poor people hardest.
So what’s it to be today children. Heat or eat?
It’s only superficially about the science. Tim DeChristopher, the fellow who bid on oil and gas leases and spent 21 months in prison as a result, has this to say…
“I’ve never seen a place in this movement or in the discourse around climate change where it’s considered appropriate for your people to express their anger at old people. But it’s just under the surface….if it’s never addressed, I think it’s hard to move forward in a trusting way.
“I’ve met very few baby boomer liberals who understand what i means to be a young person facing the reality of climate change. It means that we’re never going to have the opportunities that our parents’ and out grand parents’ generations had, and that we’ve got this massive burden weighing on our future.”
How to your talk to a guy like this? He is delusional. Deeply and destructively indoctrinated. Perhaps because of personality defects he succumbed when others didn’t. At any rate it is a mental health issue. I hope he gets professional help before he harms an old person.
Bruce Cobb says:
So, you think a regulation that reduces a household’s purchasing power by $3400/yr will only cost the economy $53 billion? That’s an interesting conjecture.
What a joke. “Probably conservative”? Based on what? When has any organization commissioned a study that underestimates the costs of regulations that they don’t want? (Actually, as a baby step, you might want to see if you can find a case where the EPA has clearly underestimated the costs of regulations.) In this case, I have given links to specific critiques of their assumptions that lead to overestimation. Heck, even kadaka’s link admitted that that they assumed a more drastic cut in emissions than the Administration went with, and hence their study would overestimate costs for that reason alone.
I said “ancillary benefits” because coal is our dirtiest source of power even given the regulations that have required it to be burned a lot cleaner than it used to be. (And, unfortunately, the regs tend to come with grandfather clauses that don’t require as much cleaning up of a coal-burning plant as long as it is not significantly refurbished.)
Which means that they had to get the one conservative who is not ultra-conservative (Kennedy) to agree with them.
Really? http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/
Actually, it is also important to understand the full history of the Court ruling and the EPA (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-will-propose-a-rule-to-cut-emissions-from-existing-coal-plants-by-up-to-30-percent/2014/06/02/f37f0a10-e81d-11e3-afc6-a1dd9407abcf_story.html):
So, no, they didn’t just say that greenhouse gases could be regulated if the EPA made such a determination. They said that EPA must undertake to determine whether or not greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health or the environment. Hence, it was the not the Obama EPA that is violating the Constitution, but rather the Bush EPA that was found to be clearly dragging its feet on making such a determination in violation of the Clean Air Act.
joeldshore, you fail to convince. .01C temp reduction (or whatever — it’s negligible) is worth billions? To whom, academics? Regulators? Bureaucrats? Sierra Club lawyers? And how is anyone going to notice or even measure that tiny difference? And then extrapolate that immeasurable change to some imaginary benefit?
The EPA isn’t about science anymore, it’s about growing its budget, personnel and influence, like any other goobermint agency.
joeldshore says:
June 6, 2014 at 8:32 pm
“Hence, it was the not the Obama EPA that is violating the Constitution, but rather the Bush EPA that was found to be clearly dragging its feet on making such a determination in violation of the Clean Air Act.”
_________________________
Joel, words fail me…