U.S. States Already Moving To Blunt Obama’s Carbon Dioxide Plan
U.S. States Already Moving To Blunt Obama’s Carbon Plan
http://www.thegwpf.org/u-s-states-already-moving-to-blunt-obamas-carbon-plan/
As President Barack Obama prepares to announce tougher new air quality standards, lawmakers in several states already are trying to blunt the impact on aging coal-fired power plants that feed electricity to millions of consumers.
The push against Obama’s new carbon emission standards has been strongest in some states that have large coal-mining industries or rely heavily on coal to fuel their electricity. State officials say the new federal regulations could jeopardize the jobs of thousands of workers and drive up the monthly electric bills of residents and businesses.
It remains to be seen whether new measures passed by the states will amount to mere political symbolism or actually temper what’s expected to be an aggressive federal effort to reduce the country’s reliance on coal. But either way, states likely will play a pivotal role, because federal clean air laws leave it up to each state to come up its own plan for complying with the emission guidelines.
The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules to be announced Monday could be the first to apply to carbon dioxide emissions at existing power plants. Coal is the most common fuel source for the nation’s electricity and, when it’s burned, is a leading source of the greenhouse gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.
Without waiting to see what Obama proposes, governors in Kansas, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia have signed laws directing their environmental agencies to develop their own carbon emission plans that consider the costs of compliance at individual power plants. Similar measures recently passed in Missouri and are pending in the Louisiana and Ohio legislatures.
Missouri lawmakers went even further in their defense of the coal industry. When activists proposed a ballot initiative barring local tax breaks for St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, state lawmakers quickly passed a measure banning such moves.
Some states have specifically empowered local regulators to develop emission plans that are less stringent than federal guidelines. According to measures passed recently, the state policies are to take into account the “unreasonable cost” of reducing emissions based on a plant’s age and design and the “economic impacts” of shutting down particular power plants.
“The concern is that the federal standards — if they come out the way that most people expect them to — are going to drive the cost of electricity up …
WSJ: Dems in energy-producing states distance themselves from EPA regulations on CO2 – ‘Becoming an explosive point of debate in some Senate and House midterm races’
WSJ: Dems in energy-producing states distance themselves from EPA regulations on CO2
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/06/wsj-dems-in-energy-producing-states.html
EPA Carbon-Emissions Rules Carry Risks for Some Democrats
Candidates in Energy-Producing States Distance Themselves From InitiativeBy REID J. EPSTEIN And KRISTINA PETERSONJune 1, 2014 5:40 p.m. ET THE WALL STREET JOURNALWASHINGTON—The Obama administration’s proposal for forcing power plants to cut carbon emissions, due out Monday, is already becoming an explosive point of debate in some Senate and House midterm races that could prove treacherous for Democrats in energy-producing states.The proposed rule, to be unveiled Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency, will kick off one of the largest political battles since the rollout last year of the Affordable Care Act. The rule will affect hundreds of fossil-fuel power plants and is destined to trigger lawsuits from states and industry, as well as attempts by Republicans and other opponents to craft a legislative response.For President Barack Obama, the rule is the centerpiece of efforts to combat global warming and a major element of his attempt to secure a second-term legacy. While the president is expected to remain out of the spotlight when the EPA unveils the rule Monday, he plans to join a conference call with the American Lung Association, casting the rule as needed to protect public health as well as to reduce the carbon emissions that scientists say contribute to climate change.But the rule has splintered Mr. Obama’s own party and could weaken his political hand in his last two years in office by giving new ammunition to Republicans, who have a strong chance of stripping Democrats of their majority in the Senate.Rep. Nick Rahall (D., W.Va.), who is among the most vulnerable House Democrats seeking re-election, said the rule’s impact on coal-state Democrats is simply not the top priority at the White House.”I’m sure that’s not No. 1 in their minds. Probably, the president’s legacy is No. 1,” said Mr. Rahall, who opposes additional restrictions on coal plants.The Republican message on the proposed rule is largely consistent across the country—an assertion that Democrats will raise energy costs and kill jobs, and that carbon restrictions are futile in the absence of similar action by China and other large polluting nations. Many Republicans are linking the rule to other Obama administration actions that they view as overly intrusive in the economy.While Democrats are more vocal than Republicans in saying that man-made climate change is a problem, candidates in …
Obama Science Advisor John Holdren in his own (radical) words: ‘De-develop’ the U.S. & ‘reduce’ its population?
http://www.cfact.org/2014/05/31/john-holdren-in-his-own-radical-words/…
EPA Power-Plant Proposal Will Seek 30% Carbon Dioxide Emissions Cut by 2030
Watch Now: Contentious Global Warming TV Debate on The McLaughlin Group
Analysis: Obama, Coal & Climate – ‘An utterly futile climate-change gesture’
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2014/06/01/obama-coal-climate/…
It’s Cold That Causes Famines, Not Warmth – ‘Carbon dioxide won’t cause famines’
It’s Cold That Causes Famines, Not Warmth
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/its-cold-that-causes-famines-not-warmth
By Paul Homewood
Climate Change Dispatch have an interesting guest post from Dennis T Avery, an agricultural and environmental economist:
Carbon dioxide won’t cause famines
Historian Geoffrey Parker is the author of Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century. In a recent opinion piece, he suggested that the desperate climate from 1600 to 1700 is a template for human collapse in our twenty-first century. There are two massive flaws in his theory.
Almost all past agricultural and cultural collapses occurred during “little ice ages,” not during our many global warm periods. In addition, today’s seeds, fertilizers and modern farming techniques and technologies are far superior to anything mankind possessed during previous crises.
The seventeenth century was part of the 550-year Little Ice Age, the most recent of at least seven “little ice ages” that have befallen the planet since the last Pleistocene Ice Age ended some 13,000 years ago. Studying sediment deposits in the North Atlantic, Gerard Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found such centuries-long “little ice ages” beginning at 1300 AD, 600 AD, 800 BC, 2200 BC, 3900 BC, 7400 BC, 8300 BC, and perhaps at 9100 BC. In fact, these worldwide Dansgaard-Oeschger disasters arrived on a semi-regular basis some 600 times over the past million years.
Each of these icy ages blasted humanity with short, cold, cloudy growing seasons, untimely frosts, and extended droughts interspersed with heavy and violent rains. Naturally, their crops failed. Humanity’s cities starved to death, repeatedly – with seven collapses in Mesopotamia, six each for Egypt and China, two for Angkor Wat and at several calamities in Europe.
The early cultures gave the illusion of continuity: the Nile and the Yangtze always had at least a little irrigation water. However, “little ice age” hunger and disease drove human and animal migrations across thousands of miles and over continents, led to major invasions like the Huns into Europe’s Dark Ages, and caused the collapse of kingships and ruling dynasties around the globe.
While acknowledging the existence of the cold, chaotic periods, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has barely factored them into its computer models. The IPCC seems to think it is just coincidence that our warm and relatively stable Modern Warming directly followed the latest awful Little Ice Age.
Moreover, our recent climate has been more stable than the chaotic “little …
Ice Still on Lake Superior in June!
By Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer
Ice Still on Lake Superior in June!
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/06/ice-still-on-lake-superior-in-june/
Unless everything melted overnight, there is still ice on Lake Superior — and snow on the ground in Michigan — in freakin’ June.
Here’s the MODIS satellite image from early afternoon on 31 May, 2014…I’ve outlined the main areas of ice which are concentrated near the south shore of Lake Superior, mostly near Marquette and Pictured Rocks:
Also from yesterday, here’s what it looked like at ground level (photo courtesy of my friends at Lake Superior Photo in Marquette):
And here’s another photo from yesterday, showing that not even all of the snow on the ground has melted…this from Ben Musielak, in Paradise, Michigan (I’m sure there are lots of examples of this across the Upper Peninsula in the lake effect snow belt areas):
In case anyone needed to be told…this past winter’s persistent “polar vortex” was not that unusual, and wasn’t due to global warming climate change climate disruption.…
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith: UN, White House Climate Reports ‘an Excuse to Control the American People’
Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo: ‘Why Obama’s EPA plan is not needed and dangerous to our country’ – ‘CO2, which is conflated with soot, is a harmless (actually beneficial) gas and every breathe every human makes has 100 times as much CO2 as is in ambient air’
Why Obama’s EPA plan is not needed and dangerous to our country
One of the claims is 97% of scientists agree man is responsible for warming that is accelerating and due to man’s production of greenhouse gases, most notably carbon pollution and that with the warming this is increasing asthma and health problems related to ozone.
First of all carbon pollution is ‘soot’ which we don’t have a problem with – the EPA’s own data shows in fact it is well below EPA standards, declining 50% since 1999. CO2 which is conflated with soot is a harmless (actually beneficial) gas and every breathe every human makes has 100 times as much CO2 as is in ambient air. It is critical for plant life and we are at the low end of the scale of CO2 for the earth’s history just above the survival level needed for plants which require it for photosynthesis – around 280 ppm.
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Second ozone that presents a health hazard is near the ground and produced from nitrous oxide and hydrocarbons in sunlight on hot days when there is little mixing of air. This was a problem in places like the LA Basin where a marine layer just above the surface formed an inversion trapping low level air. Ozone levels have declined even more rapidly that particulates thanks to catalytic converters and more efficient combustion removing hydrocarbons and converting toxic NO to NO2. An air quality alert day in LA has become rarer.
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Third the number of hot days has declined not increased.
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It is during the day that smog forms and you can see that lack of accelerated warming in the TMAX for US stations.
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How about the warming Mr. Obama will reassure is happening?
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It is not there in the state records with 23 of the 50 all time highs in the 1930s and 8 before 1960 with more state lows than highs since the 1940s.
Most of the warming is in the ‘adjustments’ to the data. See in this graph depicting the adjustments made to the original data in 1999 in latest data set. There has been an artificial cooling of the early century and warming of the post 1960s.
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It is even more blatant in the global data sets. First a plot of the original and then version 3.
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It is now into the …