EPA’s Clean Power Plan and its Moment of Truth

Guest essay by Stephen Heins, Energy Consultant, Business Writer and Practical Environmentalist

While many of us have actively tried to follow the broad-based scientific discussions about climate change including those at the Paris Meetings, most of us are stuck between to the “alarmist” and the “denier” narratives. The “luke warmers,” as we are called, suspect that the climate change discussion is far from over.

Most troubling to some observers of the current Washington DC bureaucracies, the FCC and the EPA, is that they fit the classic mold of federal agencies furiously trying to regulate industries while they themselves are many years behind the investment, technology and innovation of the industries they regulate.

Suffice it to say, the world’s 7.4 billion people of global economy and planetary environment are far too important to be left to silo thinking or national and global politics. This is especially true with the skyrocketing need for big data, huge wireless broadband and ongoing technological innovation, particularly in the under-developed and under-represented parts of the world.

With that in mind, here are several flaws in the final version of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) of 2015:

• The use of several studies (e.g. Harvard’s study of indirect health benefits) are likely examples of “study-bias;”

• Medical computations of indirect health benefits from the reduction of PM 2.5 (or fine particulate matter) have never been well demonstrated;

• The CPP places complete faith in the advancement of technology responding to political dictates instead of the marketplace;

• The CPP lacks a full accounting of the costs of stranding electrical assets and the large investment in new infrastructure, which essentially just replicate old distribution assets;

• The Clean Power Plan has never been properly vetted by the states, and there never was a state or national political mandate calling for its formulation;

• Currently, a clear cut democratic majority, 28 states, have officially challenged the legality of the Clean Power Plan;

• With the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia just beginning its En Banc proceedings, President Obama and Secretary McCarthy are likely to be in the rear view mirror by the time it is fully litigated;

• Indistinguishable from any political campaign, the robust public relations campaign conducted by the EPA and the White House, and a large number of related texts and emails, are shrouded in the lack of proper disclosure not unlike the Colorado Toxic Spills;

• Actual greenhouse gas reductions from the Clean Power Plan are miniscule, and, according to Scientific America and the Energy Information Administration (EIA), by 2015, 47 states had already achieved sharp decreases in emission from 2007 levels, with more than billion tons of reductions;

• The US is already on a glide path whereby America has reduced more Green House Gas (GHG) than any other country in the world, a fact which even the Sierra Club acknowledges;

• The EPA has never provided a real cost benefit analysis of the Clean Power throughout all versions of the regulations;

• The CPP gives the EPA and state environmental agencies first class status, making all other state and federal agencies (like the Department of Energy, Federal Energy Regulatory Committee, and State Utility Regulators) virtual second class citizens, with second class powers;

• With “cross state” and regional emission differences, the CPP makes states and regions compete against each other in energy markets previously regulated by states, and is de facto helping to create a national emissions market, which has already been defeated legislatively;

• The Clean Power Plan is fraught with backward looking and silo thinking, with no heed paid to the rapidly expanding convergence of energy, technology and wireless telecommunications. In the case of the above convergence, there is no consideration for the rapidly expanding need for electricity, big data and wireless broadband to allow significantly more energy efficiency, better environmentalism and economic development in all 50 states;

• The CPP has a serious lack of transparency, whereby much of the information remains undisclosed. Much of the grant money provided by the EPA for health and emissions studies (Harvard, Syracuse, George Mason et al) is essentially undeclared;

• The significant input provided by large environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the NRDC is largely buried in the footnotes or hidden in private emails;

• Finally, as Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard and the Wall Street Journal point out, the constitutionality of Clean Power Plan and its new found powers violate the separation of powers and the long standing principle of cooperative federalism between the states and the federal government.

 

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Greg Goodman
October 9, 2016 6:33 am

…the rapidly expanding convergence of energy, technology and wireless telecommunications.

Could you quickly outline how a ” rapidly expanding convergence ” works, I’m not familiar with this concept.

Reply to  Greg Goodman
October 9, 2016 10:24 am

In essence, it is now known as “Internet of Thing.”

rogerknights
Reply to  Steve Heins
October 9, 2016 4:22 pm

Things

Reply to  rogerknights
October 9, 2016 4:34 pm

Thanks for correcting the typo, Roger!

Javert Chip
Reply to  Greg Goodman
October 9, 2016 11:00 am

Greg
This is not a difficult concept.
The Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers do it every time it rains in Pittsburgh.

John Harmsworth
Reply to  Greg Goodman
October 9, 2016 11:47 am

It’s when things fly apart so fast they come together! Or maybe the opposite of that.

October 9, 2016 6:35 am

Is that the harvard study Joel Schwartz and co author worked on where they in total received $50m from the EPA and Schwartz actually asked the EPA for more money while working on the paper and the paper cites no COI?
I asked Oreskes about this and… tumbleweeds

Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
October 9, 2016 2:17 pm

Mark, yes it the one and the same Joel Schwartz.

Bruce Cobb
October 9, 2016 6:55 am

Show me a lukewarmist and I’ll show you someone who:
Used to Believe, perhaps fervently, but somewhere along the way began to have doubts.
Perhaps began to look into it more, but, finding that caused even more doubts to arise, became frightened, so stopped looking.
Is heavily influenced and coerced by co-workers, friends and families to stay within the safe fold of Belief, or risk ostracism or worse.
Relies heavily on the Argument from Authority (who am I to question the “experts”?), and the Argument from Consensus (how can so many scientists be wrong”?).
Takes the middle ground as a way of both reconciling doubts with heavy compulsion to stay on the “safe” path, as well as getting the benefits of appearing “reasonable” and “fair”.
Is someone willing to compromise what is true with what is safe for him.

Reply to  Bruce Cobb
October 9, 2016 9:49 am

Summed up very well and very nicely, Bruce. My sentiments exactly.

John Harmsworth
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
October 9, 2016 11:50 am

Oh! Gee! I don’t know… Lol!

Reply to  Bruce Cobb
October 10, 2016 4:47 am

To be fair, it is a bit tough to commit career suicide. That’s why most of the honest ppl are retired

October 9, 2016 7:20 am

Atmospheric CO2 represents less than 2% of the biospheric carbon balance, fossil fuel’s share is 0.3%.(IPCC Figure 6.1) Where it comes from & where it goes is anybody’s guess. All the numbers on Figure 6.1 were just pulled out of somebody’s butt in the first place.

Christopher Hanley
Reply to  Nicholas Schroeder
October 9, 2016 1:24 pm

In the 4:31 min she never uses the term “ carbon dioxide”.
It’s a form of equivocation and intended to mislead, in other words lying.

October 9, 2016 7:59 am

CO2, the life-giving gas, not “Carbon Pollution”. A Limerick – and explanation.
What then is this “Carbon Pollution”?
A sinister, evil collusion?
CO2, it is clean,
Makes for growth, makes it green,
A transfer of wealth, a solution.
Let me first state I am serious about this Limerick. It is not even tongue in cheek. I am an engineer with a degree in technical physics and look at the earth as a “living” organism that responds to changes in its environment.
First, the increase in CO2 concentration itself and how nature responds to it.
Second, the effect it has on the earth’s temperature and all its consequences, and finally
Third, the acidification of the oceans. https://lenbilen.com/2014/02/22/co2-the-life-giving-gas-not-carbon-pollution-a-limerick-and-explanation/

Bob Denby
October 9, 2016 8:15 am

Recognition of this grand deception, a amply illustrated above, is the first step in dealing with it. Where’s step two. Do we just sit on the railroad tracks and wait for the ultimate carnage?

Dave in Canmore
October 9, 2016 8:17 am

“The EPA has never provided a real cost benefit analysis of the Clean Power throughout all versions of the regulations;”
Hard to believe anything needs to be said beyond this!

Resourceguy
October 9, 2016 8:23 am

The Final Solution to the skeptics (with reasoned questioning and open science minds) has come. “als Partisanen auszurotten”

The Old Man
October 9, 2016 8:52 am

I was curious about the relative Electrical Energy mix on Canada and the US January past: Quite different.
https://notonmywatch.com/?p=467

John Harmsworth
Reply to  The Old Man
October 9, 2016 11:59 am

As a Canadian I would have to say that this is one of the stupidest and most irrelevant things I have ever read.

Reply to  John Harmsworth
October 9, 2016 11:30 pm

John, when you use such hash words, I think you also should explain why you think so.
The discussion becomes much more interesting, and nicer, if you try to add some information to your statement.
I think this article was quite interesting. One can for instance wonder why US has such a great lead over Canada in wind power.
Jan

October 9, 2016 9:06 am

What is the ‘denier’ narrative? Most of the skeptics I’ve run across seem aligned with the definition of a ‘lukewarmer’. It seems that the ‘denier’ narrative is a fabrication of the alarmists who want you to believe that the small subset of skeptics who say CO2 has no effect represents main stream skepticism, when its absolutely clear that the alarmists as a group are the ones denying basic physics. Yet another example of psychological projection applied by the alarmists in a vain attempt to diffuse the truth.

Greg
Reply to  co2isnotevil
October 9, 2016 9:36 am

yep, those under the illusion that climate would be static if it were not for the presence of anthropogenic ‘forcing’ are the climate change deniers. Projection certainly.
BTW did you defuse the truth? Sceptics are the ones trying to diffuse the truth.

Reply to  co2isnotevil
October 9, 2016 10:00 am

For what it’s worth, while I don’t deny that there’s been warming, I will NEVER call myself a lukewarmer. It probably boils down to what anyone’s definition of lukewarmer is, but to me it means sitting on the fence trying to appease both sides or – worse – trying to look from all angles to be on the “right” side once this whole sham implodes.
I’m happy to be listed as a deplorable. 🙂

JohnWho
Reply to  A.D. Everard
October 9, 2016 10:26 am

Hmm… do you claim deniable deplorability or deplorable deniability?

Reply to  A.D. Everard
October 9, 2016 10:55 am

John – I claim full-blown evil variety deplorable deniability. 😀

TA
Reply to  co2isnotevil
October 9, 2016 11:40 am

“main stream skepticism” equals “show me some proof”.

Reply to  TA
October 9, 2016 6:18 pm

“main stream skepticism” equals “show me some proof”
Yes, but isn’t this what main stream science should be?

TA
Reply to  TA
October 10, 2016 8:17 am

TA: “main stream skepticism” equals “show me some proof”
co2isnotevil, “Yes, but isn’t this what main stream science should be?”
Absolutely. I don’t see how it can be anything else. Skepticism is the only rational position to take, until proof is presented.

October 9, 2016 9:58 am

All greenhouse gases have negative feedbacks because they “saturate:” diminish the fraction of the IR spectrum which is eligible for absorption by the specific greenhouse gas. CO2 has an additional negative feedback due to its removal from the atmosphere. The atmosphere loses a bigger fraction of its input CO2 than it keeps. This is derived and described in the following link:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/16/nature-abhors-a-positive-feedback/

seaice1
October 9, 2016 10:25 am

The Niskanen Center recently came out in favor of a carbon tax in “The conservative Case for a Carbon Tax.” The argument is that IF the Govt. is going to try to limit carbon (whatever the rights and wrongs of that) then it were better done by a tax than by interfering in details. Leave it to the market.
http://niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/The-Conservative-Case-for-a-Carbon-Tax1.pdf

Reply to  seaice1
October 9, 2016 11:07 am

Steven Mosher of the Columbia Environmental Institute has written a great piece arguing that neither a carbon tax or cap and trade will work. As a former member of the Chicago Climate Exchange (and informally the European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme), I can say there is just no way that either idea will work, because of the politicization of any operating model, the poor global economics and the gaming of any system would create a larger United Nations with even less credibility.

seaice1
Reply to  Stephen Heins
October 9, 2016 12:04 pm

A lot of that applies to a cap-and-trade or global tax model, but not so much a US tax. Do you have the reference? I cannot find this piece you refer to.

seaice1
Reply to  Stephen Heins
October 9, 2016 12:07 pm

There is some evidence that the BC tax is working -whilst looking for the Steven Mosher article you mention I came across this:
“Empirical and simulation models suggest that the
tax has reduced emissions in the province by 5–15%.
At the same time, models show that the tax has had
negligible effects on aggregate economic performance…”
https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/sites/default/files/publications/ni_wp_15-04_full.pdf

October 9, 2016 12:15 pm

most of us are stuck between to the “alarmist” and the “denier”
stuck between or stuck to. Not stuck between to
Actual greenhouse gas reductions from the Clean Power Plan are miniscule
minuscule. But more people misspell it than spell it correctly…

Reply to  Leo Smith
October 9, 2016 2:15 pm

Thanks, Leo.

October 9, 2016 12:28 pm

First, here is a link to Professor Mosher’s piece: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/professor-steven-cohens-carbon-tax-feasible-practical-steve-heins?trk=mp-reader-card
Second, read this recent piece “A Growth-Friendly Climate Change Proposal, by Greg Ip of the wsj.com
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/activities/steve-heins+0_2SDnnhDzR1E0kccrIeome6?trk=mp-reader-h
Finally, The BC is really small sampling with little time of implementation under its belt. Greg Ip of the WSJ recently wrote a piece about the British Columbia experiment and the Carbon Tax.
That said, “Cap and Trade” and “Carbon Tax” gambits are too complex, too political, too gamable and too inefficient for a world of limited resources and poverty.” Steve Heins
Published on May 31, 2016
Principal at the Word Merchant, LLC
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cap-trade-carbon-tax-gambits-too-complex-political-gamable-heins?trk=mp-reader-card
California’s Cap-and-Trade Bubble
The carbon-credit market sputters, as it also has in Europe. Wall Street Journal Editorial
May 30, 2016 5:25 p.m. ET
When carbon cap and trade flopped in Europe, liberals blamed design flaws and hailed California’s embryonic program as a better regulatory model. But cap and tax is struggling in the Golden State too.
A mere 2% of the carbon emissions credits that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) put up for auction in May were sold. The quarterly auction raised only $10 million of the $500 million that CARB projected. That’s awful news for Democrats in Sacramento who planned to spend the windfall on high-speed rail, housing and electric-car subsidies.
Each year, CARB ratchets down the statewide emissions cap. Most energy-intensive businesses including refiners, manufacturers and fuel suppliers must cut their carbon output or buy credits for exceeding the cap.
In 2005 the European Union launched its Emissions Trading System, which the Obama Administration and even some Republicans hoped to copy before Rust Belt Democrats revolted. Europe’s cap-and-trade bubble has since burst as sluggish economic growth and heavily subsidized renewables have produced a glut of credits. By 2013 the roughly €30 price per ton that was putatively needed to reduce use of coal had plummeted to a few euros. Politicians have been reluctant to withdraw credits to prop up the price because they don’t want to handicap struggling businesses. Regulatory uncertainty has amplified price fluctuations.
As Europe went, so heads California. CARB’s auctions kicked off in 2012 with robust demand and have raised nearly $5 billion. But demand has shrunk this year amid regulatory and legal risks. The California Chamber of Commerce has challenged the auctions as an illegal tax that CARB imposed without the constitutionally required two-thirds vote of the legislature.
Cap-and-trade revenues are supposed to fund only projects that reduce emissions, and the state Legislative Analyst’s Office has questioned whether the funding recipients are doing so. For instance, the bullet train will release more carbon over the next three decades.
The legislature will likely also have to reauthorize cap and trade beyond its 2020 expiration date, and many Democrats will want changes. In 2014, 16 Assembly Democrats exhorted CARB to exempt transportation fuels. CARB estimates that cap and trade increases the price of gasoline by about 12 cents per gallon.
While a Sacramento superior court has upheld the program, an appellate court last month appeared more skeptical. Traders who hoped to flip allowances at a higher price have since been offloading credits and undercutting CARB’s auction floor.
In 2014 then Senate President Darrell Steinberg warned that cap and trade was “asking the trading market to enter directly into the energy segment again and that brings back bad memories” of rolling blackouts and electricity price spikes last decade. Reading Europe’s tarot cards, he told the Los Angeles Times that “this is an experiment that is yet unproven.”
CARB says this spring’s auction bust is no big deal and regulators can withhold credits until the price rises. Unlike their European counterparts, California’s climate crusaders don’t seem to care if their businesses and consumers suffer.
######

October 9, 2016 12:38 pm

seaice1 now adds unfalsifiable economic models to unfalsifiable climate models. A heroic leap in justifying new taxes.

seaice1
Reply to  charlieskeptic
October 10, 2016 6:43 am

I said there is some evidence – that is some evidence. What would you use?

JPeden
October 9, 2016 2:04 pm

Not long ago Gina McCarthy said, ~”We’ll release our [already penned] Regulation when we finish the science.”
Quite “naturally”, such Totalitarian Administration Flaks no longer have to care about the Inconvenient Facts and Method of Pre-Post Normal Science, and can therefore ignore The Empirical Facts of its “False Consciousness”; which naturally the Totalitarians who just conveniently thought it up [Karl Marx] and who must otherwise be subject to their own mechanism of “False Consciousness”, naturally don’t have to apply to themselves.
Instead, their only “logic” in practice is that through a gradual process of thought control’s “nudge-nudge”* effect as it applies to America, means=ends=thought control=Totalitarianism, so that eventually all that’s left is “Might makes Right.” [*Cass Weinstein]
But despite the verbal gibberish Totalitarian shills and practitioners such as the Administration’s Gina McCarthy and now even James Comey employ in service of eventually Controlling the Planet, Nature, Humanity, and especially America, because it still is and has been their mortal enemy, the Empirical Facts negating CO2-Climate Change still exist because Reality does exist – it has to exist for even their own demonstrably “False Consciousness” to exist:
1] CO2-Climate Change is Scientifically Falsified by its [100%] Empirical Prediction Failure.
[Its current focus on Arctic ice conveniently forgets that its own ostensible Empirical Prediction also included a decrease in Antarctic ice, which “The Science” of its CO2 Polar Amplification itself dictates must also decrease. That equals another Failed Empirical Prediction – which also got wrong the necessity of an ineluctable Death Spiral once the Arctic ice significantly decreases, as they’ve already asserted over and over again: Degrees of Separation from what is said by their pliant, often source-fed Media don’t count – if anyone’s still counting the “how many ways” in which they feverishly and incessantly express their “love” for The Planet, Nature, all of Humanity, and sometimes even America, while still failing to show any real evidence of it, and instead somewhat more of a Pandora’s Box to the opposite.]
2] CO2 is not a “Pollutant” because of 1] alone.
[Although we could add on the fact that CO2 at levels above ~180 ppm are apparently necessary for the existence of the vast majority of Nature’s life as it exists today; and that also, so far even Fossil Fuel’s own CO2 Fertilization of plants is only inconveniently “Healthy” to the Plants. I know U.S. Government Forest Service Officials and on-the-ground employees who don’t know these facts, even though these same people are otherwise very dedicated to exerting what is objectively rational “management” of their charge – even when it comes to the promoting the “Values” Environmentalist Whackos say they want to preserve.
Naturally among the Whackos, Human Health and Well-Being now ranks last as a “Value”, although it used to come in at least tied for first back in the “False Consciousness” Days of John Muir, to whom our own Mental Health was perhaps even paramount.
“The Wild And Scenic Rivers Act” has Humans ranked last as a “Value” at #5, and that’s only for “Recreation” not Re-Creation. Not all or even most Americans can get close to a Wilderness as it is. And if the Wild and Scenic River Area I’m familiar with – because I’ve actually lived solely in it for net long periods of time – burns up in a Catastrophic Fire, the Wilderness almost completely surrounding it is going to get some of it too.
The USFS has a great Safety Project now in the Public Review Process planned for this Wild and Scenic River Area, with not much of a large opposition to it yet, although the so-called Environmental Stake Holders and their wannabe “secret” minions are firing some of their usual rounds of lies at the USFS and spreading their usual Propaganda in the Community, which need to be shot down again and again.]
3] CO2 is not a “Toxin” since our own Human Bodies run at a normal healthy CO2 level of ~56,000 ppm vs the Atmosphere’s “dangerous and becoming Apocalyptic” 400 ppm.
The large differential of our body’s CO2 level compared to the Atmosphere’s, allows for easier control of the optimal internal pH necessary for our metabolic reactions to take place in order to keep us alive and able to move around. Enough movement produces enough CO2 to require an almost instant response = increased rate and depth of Breathing = elimination of CO2, to keep the body’s pH where it should be at around pH = 7.41-7.43.
The rather inconvenient Pre-Post Normal Henderson Hasselbalch equation for H2CO3/Carbonic Acid still captures the elements of this physiologic response and is used very many times per day in figuring out the real causes of Acid-Base disorders in real people in and successfully treating them.
[Making a whole lot of ballpark assumptions, I calculated that the average production of CO2 for an average person in the world – who doesn’t even need to exist – is ~1000 gm/day. And a “U.S. Government” source comes in at 900 gm/day – but I can’t find how they did it. It’s also possible to calculate, from my old book on “Respiratory Physiology” – which also cites the above normal “5.6%” CO2 concentration in the human body I calculated long before I came upon it there, but which anybody can calculate using Empirical Data’s average real values – that a person ~”strenuously exercising” can produce ~one pound=454 gm CO2 per hour from calories; which in turn then still need to be resupplied mostly by direct Sun light, its Fossil Fuel, and money.]
But 4] quite..er..”naturally” the “mainstream” Climate Scientists who sit around “Addicted To Love” by their Warming Models and “Experimenting” right then and there on them, and therefore “proving” their great value toward “Saving the Planet!” don’t have to worry about these kinds of Inconvenient Facts or the Method and Principles of Real Science.
They are fed quite well by their Totalitarian Leaders, who have commandeered the real Wealth others have produced, and have then produced the gibberished “Equality” of North Korea, for example, which involves an Empirical Reality of equal Poverty, Slavery, and Death “for thee, but not for me, Of The All-Caring Communist Party!”
And after all, the Obama Administration’s Post Modern “good intentions” are surely not the way to pave a road leading to Hell! “B-but It’ll be different this time because we really care. Don’t we and the rest of all ‘real’ Americans know it’s true because we always say it’s true?”
No.

Reply to  JPeden
October 10, 2016 3:04 pm

Um, that is blood pH. The working tissue pH is a bit lower (around 6.8 for working muscle, if I am remembering correctly). Stomach acid is a lot lower (0.1N HCl), except when there is food in it. Small intestine luminal pH is higher than blood pH once maximal bicarbonate secretion has occurred to 1. neutralize the stomach acid and 2. so that the alkaline optimized digestive proteins can function. Large intestine luminal pH varies a lot. Urine pH also varies a lot, too.

JPeden
Reply to  cdquarles
October 10, 2016 6:55 pm

“that is blood pH”
Right. The diagnosis and treatment angle of this very pivotal “Arterial pH” is to get an idea of what’s going on with the blood during the repetitive circulation cycles of the blood as it get pumped out by the “Left” side of the Heart, to the whole body via the Arterial Tree/Supply System, and to the cells, tissues, and organs, including the areas you mention.
There the Arterial blood does it’s thing at a cellular and fluid level in the capillaries; and the cells, tissues, and organs do their own things, to produce a changed blood. The blood becomes “Venous” as it returns to the “Right” side of the Heart, and it’s pH does vary per organ or tissue. But all the returning blood is “well-mixed” to an average just before it gets to the “Right” side of the Heart, which pumps it to the Lungs, which then do their thing to pO2 and pCO2 before the blood returns to the Left side of the Heart again.
The Arterial pH is measured from blood drawn from almost any artery with a Pulse, such as the Radial Artery at your wrist, as a “Blood Gas” measurement giving the pH, HCO3- concentration, and pCO2 and pO2 as partial pressures of this Arterial blood before it gets to the rest of the body, but after it’s been ‘treated’ by the Lungs.
The Arterial pH etc values resulting help show how far the pH is from the normal/optimal, and where the problem is, starting with whether it’s related to the Lungs as “Respiratory” or the rest of the body as “Metabolic”. There are a bunch of possibilities involved with each kind, including both kinds.
But if the Arterial pH is way off, usually too acid aka “Acidosis”, bad things producing say Coma are happening to the metabolic processes within cells which depend upon a “normal” pH to function correctly, so that they don’t do what they should to keep you alive.

JPeden
Reply to  cdquarles
October 11, 2016 7:36 am

[Acidosis can produce Coma and Death at an Arterial pH below 7.1 But in ~1973 I had a guy in the ICU with a Phenformin – an oral hypoglycemic med for Diabetes – Metabolic Acidosis of pH=6.9 who was awake and breathing like a Mad Man to drive down pCO2 to I don’t remember what, and he lived. I must have given him enough i.v. HCO3-, bicarbonate over time, until the Arterial pH became more basic back toward a normal Arterial pH by the Mechanism pH = pKa[H2CO3] 6.1 + log[HCO3-]/.03[pCO2] as his breathing slowed down, but I really don’t remember. MD’s are supposed to worry about giving i.v. HCO3- because it can theoretically worsen Brain pH by increasing its pCO2, because CO2 gets increased in the body apart form the Brain, then diffuses across the Blood-Brain Barrier before HCO3-, increasing the Brain’s acidity. But I always just said “screw it”, because there really wasn’t anything better to do. Weird things happen inside the Gold Mine.]

Reply to  cdquarles
October 11, 2016 1:01 pm

Hmm. I’ve never seen a metformin acidosis. I’d need to look it up. Anyway, people forget that hemoglobin also binds carbon dioxide through a pH mediated conformation change. Blood pH changes help pump carbon dioxide out and oxygen in, under normal (here read typical physiological metabolic chemistry).

JPeden
Reply to  JPeden
October 11, 2016 8:17 am

Oops, “Cass Weinstein Sunstein”

October 9, 2016 2:51 pm

She should be called out on stating that these emissions are Carbon Pollution. She means CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CO2 is not pollution. I would love to get the so-called climate scientists on the record as to whether CO2 is pollution. I think they could all be lectured by one such as Dr, Patrick Moore.
Obama also calls CO2 carbon. It’s like calling water: hydrogen. (H2O)

Reply to  J. Philip Peterson
October 9, 2016 3:10 pm

Gina McCarthy should be called out for many, many reasons. I tried to do that with my wonkish piece.

rogerknights
Reply to  J. Philip Peterson
October 9, 2016 4:30 pm

Unfortunately, the alarmists have a comeback. They say that “carbon pollution” is an umbrella term for CO2 and methane.

Reply to  rogerknights
October 9, 2016 4:39 pm

Although, the environmental arguments haven’t measurably improved. New fracking technology is solving the methane leakage problems. North Dakota is the new frontier of global energy technology.

Reply to  rogerknights
October 9, 2016 5:07 pm

Well, they never say “carbon based pollution”, which would be a little more truthful…JPP

October 9, 2016 9:07 pm

“California with a lot of NG …”
I love when people explain how a plan will work based on getting the facts backwards.
Pipelines and power lines supply gas and electricity to California.
“we would have 10-20 Nuclear Power Plants under construction in the USA just like China does.”
China got serious about about building nuke plants in 2005 when they could no longer produce enough slave labor coal and had to import coal from places that observed safety rules for mining.
The reason only 4 new nukes are under construction is the price of natural gas in the US
As others have pointed out it all about economics and nothing to do with ‘clean’ energy.

October 10, 2016 12:18 am

“Medical computations of indirect health benefits from the reduction of PM 2.5 (or fine particulate matter) have never been well demonstrated”
I think Steve Molloy has already totally debunked the PM2.5 myth.

Berényi Péter
October 10, 2016 3:07 am

The Clean Air Act does not specify carbon dioxide as a pollutant, the matter hinges on whether the substance poses a danger to public health and welfare or not.
As carbon dioxide in conceivable environmental concentration is neither toxic nor harmful to human health in any way, what is more, it does contribute to increasing foliage coverage in semi-arid regions (greening of the planet), which is not exactly harmful to public health and welfare, the danger it poses should be established in another way.
That’s what IPCC does.
If climate model projections are exaggerated, carbon dioxide does not even pose a threat to future climate, in which case it is not a pollutant. If it is not a pollutant, EPA does not have the right to regulate its emission to the environment. It may still have the right to regulate other, possibly harmful substances, that may accompany it, but that has nothing to do with carbon dioxide as such.
Anyway “carbon pollution” is the silliest concept I have ever heard of, even if carbon dioxide is not completely benign.

Reply to  Berényi Péter
October 11, 2016 9:07 am

@Berényi Péter
“The Clean Air Act does not specify carbon dioxide as a pollutant, the matter hinges on whether the substance poses a danger to public health and welfare or not.”
Quote taken right from the EPA Clean Power Plan home page heading: “Learn About Carbon Pollution From Power Plants”.
And they are talking about CO2 – Carbon Dioxide…

Berényi Péter
Reply to  J. Philip Peterson
October 12, 2016 1:09 am

The only way out I can see is an amendment by Congress to the Clean Air Act, that carbon dioxide is not Carbon, and those who say otherwise can’t be called experts, therefore their opinion is not an expert judgement, but just that, an opinionated opinion, with no relation to reality whatsoever.

October 10, 2016 7:20 am

Thermalization of terrestrial radiation explains why CO2 has no significant effect on climate. http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com identifies the three things which do (98% match with measured 1895-2015).
Rising water vapor is the only significant factor countering the average global temperature decline which would otherwise be occurring.

Snarling Dolphin
October 10, 2016 8:29 am

Did she say “cobbin”? What the heck is “cobbin”? And “azmur”? Never heard of “azmur”. There’s nothing quite as unsettling as a self-satisfied un-elected bureaucrat touting the righteousness of his or her own opinion. The administrative state and this agency in particular are completely out of control.

Snarling Dolphin
Reply to  Snarling Dolphin
October 10, 2016 8:42 am

Hillsdale College Constitution 101 Lecture 9 totally nails this phenomenon. Worth a listen.