Wolfing Down Fossil Fuels

The Annual Energy Outlook from the U.S. Energy Information Administration sums up the government’s best estimates of energy trends through 2035. Buried in the projections is a seismic change in energy policy, and it’s about coal. The EIA is projecting that utilities won’t build any new coal-fired electricity plants in the United States, aside from the projects already under construction or built as “clean coal” experiments. The projections say that all our new electricity plants are expected to be either renewables like wind and solar, or natural gas (which releases about half the carbon emissions of coal).

BUT:





But if you look at the long-term projections, the amazing thing is how little the energy mix will change in 25 years. Right now, we get 84 percent of our energy from fossil fuels. In 2035, we’ll still be getting 78 percent of our energy from fossil fuels. Read the rest Here.

Bush's 'Schrodinger's Email'

EPA Determines that Carbon Pollution Threatens Health

Historic Step Will Allow Agency to Address Cause of Global Warming

WASHINGTON (December 7, 2009) -- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is expected to announce a final determination today that carbon pollution, which causes global warming, is a danger to public health and welfare. This will enable the EPA to move forward with implementing the 2007 Supreme Court ruling, which found that carbon pollution can be curbed under the Clean Air Act.

Following is a statement by David Doniger, Policy Director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council:

“This is a concrete sign that we need to address the rising impact of carbon pollution, which threatens our health -- and is causing glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise and more extreme weather to occur. Today’s announcement shows that the U.S. government is serious about tackling this problem and putting limits on the largest sources of carbon pollution, including vehicles and coal-fired plants. The Obama administration is prepared to use existing laws, even as it works with Congress on new ones, to move our country toward cleaner energy that will protect the health of people and of future generations."
“As world leaders gather in Copenhagen, this action is an important piece of the puzzle that will move the nation -- and the world -- toward a cleaner future.” NRDC Press Release

We could have had a year to work on this, had our last president not decided to apply whatever twisted lesson he might have learned regarding the Schrodinger's Cat theory to the quandary of whether or not to open an email containing this very information in 2008.

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail
By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: June 25, 2008

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant. Read the whole story Here.

Controversial Bush-Era EPA E-mail Released WASHINGTON, Oct. 13, 2009

Message Buried by Bush Administration Because of Its Conclusions on Global Warming Surfaces

(AP) A controversial e-mail message buried by the Bush administration because of its conclusions on global warming surfaced Tuesday, nearly two years after it was first sent to the White House and never opened.The e-mail and the 28-page document attached to it, released Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, show that back in December of 2007 the agency concluded that six gases linked to global warming pose dangers to public welfare, and wanted to take steps to regulate their release from automobiles and the burning of gasoline.

Adora Andy, a spokeswoman for EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, said Tuesday that the science in 2007 was as clear as it is today. "The conclusions reached then by the EPA scientists should have been made public and should have been considered," she said. Read the whole story Here.

Oil Executives Defend Profits to Congress : NPR

"Don't blame us," oil industry chiefs told a skeptical Congress.
Top executives of the country's five biggest oil companies said Tuesday they know record fuel prices are hurting people, but they argued it's not their fault and their huge profits are in line with other industries.


This is right up there with Mccain's "I don't care about the people and I don't know much about the economy but have Mr Greenspan's book", and Cheney's 'who care's what the American people think'.... Huh, I wonder how THAT Happened?!

Earthday 2008

"Earth Day April 22, 2008"

Earthdaynetwork Says:
This Earth Day, Make Noise. Make Them Uncomfortable.
Let our leaders know if they want to keep their jobs, they have to do something, something big and bold, to solve climate change.
Earth Day is on a Tuesday this year! They are in, they are at their desks, CALL THEM, go visit them, email them, let them know you are out there, watching!
Sound off To your Leaders :

Call your President
Call your legislature
Call your Mayor
Call your Council Members

If you are in the US...

White House 202.456.1111
Capitol Hill (our Capitol Hill Operators are really helpful, don't be afraid to call and ask for your Member of Congress!!) 202.224.3121
Don't know your congressperson? >Check Here!

March/Organize
Come to the Washington DC Mall on April 20th
Organize your own march to your Capitol
Protest against your local coal Plant
Organize an ED event and get media there
SEND US YOUR VIDEO AND WE'LL POST IT ON EARTH DAY TV!!
Share your plans and experiences with our partners from around the world, participate in our discussion board forums and visit our blog to keep up with the latest news. Earthdaynetwork

Climate Change - What if you held a conference, and no (real) scientists came?

And with this little tidbit falls one of the stanchions on the 'Non-Believers' tally sheet of evidence. Long have they stated that the 'Believers' have paid or otherwise compensated scientists to lend credence to their cause. You only have to have met a scientist or two to understand the chances of so many of them participating in such a scheme is none to zilch.



PeakOil.com: "The Heartland Institute must have realized that this is not what drives the kind of people they are trying to attract as speakers: they are offering $1,000 to those willing to give a talk. This reminds us of the American Enterprise Institute last year offering a honorarium of $10,000 for articles by scientists disputing anthropogenic climate change.

So this appear to be the current market prices for calling global warming into question: $1000 for a lecture and $10,000 for a written paper." (click on the headline to view the full article)

Shame on the Media, Again

I woke to the local FOX news station this morning, reporting on the rise in ridership for our local Metro bus system. I was initially excited, but soon aggravated. I thought to myself 'YEAH', people thinking green! Even if it was the higher gas prices that contributed. This station chose to announce the cause as increased employment downtown and increased fuel costs, but then went on to conclude ONLY that this means people can't afford to drive anymore. That's it. Nothing else was discussed. Not that the point had finally been reached where concern for the environment combined with the rising cost of fuel resulted in a greener lifestyle swing, no rational as to how higher employment results in fewer people with money to drive. Appalled, I switched over to the local CBS news to see if they were taking this same stance. Fortunately they were not. They reported the facts as presented by the Metro Transportation media service. Cheers CBS! As a sidenote, if CBS ran watchable late night television I might wake to CBS news. As a second thought, this sort of goes along with a previous blog "Not all is As it Appears".

View the MetroKC News Release Here.

It Bears Repeating

People against efforts to improve our environment have long perplexed me. It's not that I don't understand that some people are more concerned with personal gain, I think it may be that I don't understand how a person could put a price on their own and their families lives. Have they convinced themselves that they breath somehow cleaner air? That their food is grown in magically pure soil? Are their cows of a level they can move away from the grass accidentally sprayed with this or that toxin by a stray strong wind?

I've come to understand, if not accept, that it all comes down to money. I still don't get it.
If your town's waterfront (usually the highest income producing area in town if there is one) floods, even by a few inches, that is economic disaster. No supplies, no jobs, no taxes and no revenues.
If your town's farmlands are struck by drought, economic disaster. No food, no jobs, no taxes and no revenues.
If your town is struck by heat/cold wave and aging power grids fail.....
Now realize this is happening around the world...

Now no one cares about the newest car model, or fashion lines or football scores or....
No one is spending any money on anything except food shelter and protection...

There is money to be made in this endeavor, just like any other thing. Climb on board now, be a pioneer, those guys always make a ton of dough!
And if we are wrong, the worst thing that happens is we have clean air to breath, water to drink and food to eat

Please take 15 minutes to watch the 2 videos below
And then take 5 minutes to forward or post it.






Saturday January 12, 2008 - 01:37am (PST)

Speaking of China

Ever wonder who is funding the recent (relatively) industrial and economic reform in China? It's pretty clear they aren't going to be very grateful for it, nor should they be. It doesn't take a super computer to predict the outcome of this particular model.
American Imports, Chinese Deaths: The human cost of doing business
Their lungs shut down, their kidneys fail, they lose fingers, limbs, all so Americans are guaranteed an unfettered flow of cut-rate merchandise.

Meet Wei Chaihua - he's dying of silicosis.

By Loretta Tofani Special to The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 10/21/2007 01:06:01 PM MDT

GUANGZHOU, China - The patients arrive every day in Chinese hospitals with disabling and fatal diseases acquired while making products for America. On the sixth floor of the Guangzhou Occupational Disease and Prevention Hospital, Wei Chaihua, 44, sits on his iron-rail bed, tethered to an oxygen tank. He is dying of the lung disease silicosis, a result of making Char-Broil gas stoves sold in Utah and throughout the U.S. Down the hall, He Yuyun, 36, who for years brushed America's furniture with paint containing benzene and other solvents, receives treatment for myelodysplastic anemia, a precursor to leukemia.
In another room rests Xiang Zhiqing, 39, her hair falling out and her kidneys beginning to fail from prolonged exposure to cadmium, which she placed in batteries sent to the U.S. "Do people in your country handle cadmium while they make batteries?" Xiang asks. "Do they also die from this?" 'Big problem for Americans': With each new report of lead detected on a made-in-China toy, Americans express outrage: These toys could poison children. But Chinese workers making the toys - and countless other products for America - touch and inhale carcinogenic materials every day, all day long. Benzene. Lead. Cadmium. Toluene. Nickel. Mercury. Many are dying. They have fatal occupational diseases.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_7239727

Sunday October 21, 2007 - 08:16pm (PDT)

Two Voices, One Message on Climate

Video

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize is being conferred for two starkly different ways of communicating about human-caused global warming.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change speaks in the measured voice of peer-reviewed science and government-negotiations. In four reports issued since 1990, it has always focused on the most noncontroversial findings. In 2001, for instance, it concluded, “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.”
The other awardee, former Vice President Al Gore, delivers brimstone-laden warnings of an unfolding “planetary emergency.” He has not shied from emphasizing the most emotionally potent, though least certain, consequences of warming, such as its link to hurricane intensity and the likely pace of sea-level rise.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: October 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/science/13climate.html?ex=1349928000&en=f556a7ed3042384a&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Feb. 6, 2007)

Friday October 12, 2007 - 04:48pm (PDT)

Movers Meet Shakers at Third Annual Gathering of Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative

We need more of these sorts of gatherings. Or maybe we just need better coverage. I remember being in a Tokyo hotel lounge in ‘91 and overhearing a group of men, Japanese American and Australian I believe, discussing global warming and the various treaties and other measures currently in place. They were quite animated over the course of about 2 hours. At first I thought (or perhaps presumed) they were corporate magnates gathered to imbibe and complain about the restrictions forced on them. It wasn’t too long before I realized that they were, in fact, passionately discussing the corporate world’s refusal to participate in the cause, instead focusing their efforts (i.e. money) into fighting the regulations. This group formed several smaller groups to take on several projects geared toward improving their company’s efforts and getting the word out to other industries. I never did figure out exactly what industry they represented, but it hardly mattered. I was so happy to witness this I bought the table a round of drinks.
Below are excerpts from the article, the link to read the entire article is at the bottom.

Movers Meet Shakers at Third Annual Gathering of Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: October 1, 2007

“It was conceived as a kind of activist answer to the gathering of politicians, business people and academics at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The origin of this is Davos,” said John Podesta, who was Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff in his presidency’s final years. “There was a feeling that everyone was talking about these causes and no one was doing anything.”
The Clinton event, held over three days at a Sheraton Hotel, featured tightly choreographed sessions to come up with solutions to specific world problems. Each participant was required to promise to do something concrete to make the world a better place. This year’s themes were poverty alleviation, global health, education and climate change.
Here, the people with causes gained access to people with seriously deep pockets. Chad Hurley, a YouTube founder; Larry Brilliant, who leads Google’s philanthropic foundation, and Carlos Slim Helú, ranked by Fortune the world’s richest man, were among almost 1,300 participants.
The furious networking was not subtle. Standing in the midst of a loud party at the Museum of Modern Art, Nancy Collins, a journalist who has covered her share of society events, described the gathering as “one of those where you have to look over your left shoulder for someone more important.”

In hallways, at cocktail parties and around conference tables, leaders of nonprofit groups hustled for valuable connections.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/world/01clinton.html?ex=1348977600&en=85e25e1125bf1831&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink


Wednesday October 3, 2007 - 05:07pm (PDT)

Bush to Skip U.N. Talks on Global Warming

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — Dozens of world leaders are to gather at the United Nations on Monday for a full agenda of talks on how to fight global warming, and President Bush is skipping all the day’s events but the dinner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/24warming.html?ex=1348372800&en=bb85b6229a5d7b6a&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: September 24, 2007
The New York Times

Monday September 24, 2007 - 03:15pm (PDT)

One Answer to Global Warming: A New Tax

One Answer to Global Warming: A New Tax

New York Times
September 16, 2007
Economic View
By N. GREGORY MANKIW

IN the debate over global climate change, there is a yawning gap that needs to be bridged. The gap is not between environmentalists and industrialists, or between Democrats and Republicans. It is between policy wonks and political consultants.
Among policy wonks like me, there is a broad consensus. The scientists tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that when you tax something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. Q.E.D.
The idea of using taxes to fix problems, rather than merely raise government revenue, has a long history. The British economist Arthur Pigou advocated such corrective taxes to deal with pollution in the early 20th century. In his honor, economics textbooks now call them “Pigovian taxes.”
Using a Pigovian tax to address global warming is also an old idea. It was proposed as far back as 1992 by Martin S. Feldstein on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. Once chief economist to Ronald Reagan, Mr. Feldstein has devoted much of his career to studying how high tax rates distort incentives and impede economic growth. But like most other policy wonks, he appreciates that some taxes align private incentives with social costs and move us toward better outcomes.
Those vying for elected office, however, are reluctant to sign on to this agenda. Their political consultants are no fans of taxes, Pigovian or otherwise. Republican consultants advise using the word “tax” only if followed immediately by the word “cut.” Democratic consultants recommend the word “tax” be followed by “on the rich.”
Yet this natural aversion to carbon taxes can be overcome if the revenue from the tax is used to reduce other taxes. By itself, a carbon tax would raise the tax burden on anyone who drives a car or uses electricity produced with fossil fuels, which means just about everybody. Some might fear this would be particularly hard on the poor and middle class.
But Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts, has shown how revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden approximately unchanged. He proposes a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, together with a rebate of the federal payroll tax on the first $3,660 of earnings for each worker.
The case for a carbon tax looks even stronger after an examination of the other options on the table. Lawmakers in both political parties want to require carmakers to increase the fuel efficiency of the cars they sell. Passing the buck to auto companies has a lot of popular appeal.
Increased fuel efficiency, however, is not free. Like a tax, the cost of complying with more stringent regulation will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher car prices. But the government will not raise any revenue that it can use to cut other taxes to compensate for these higher prices. (And don’t expect savings on gas to compensate consumers in a meaningful way: Any truly cost-effective increase in fuel efficiency would already have been made.)
More important, enhancing fuel efficiency by itself is not the best way to reduce energy consumption. Fuel use depends not only on the efficiency of the car fleet but also on the daily decisions that people make — how far from work they choose to live and how often they carpool or use public transportation.
A carbon tax would provide incentives for people to use less fuel in a multitude of ways. By contrast, merely having more efficient cars encourages more driving. Increased driving not only produces more carbon, but also exacerbates other problems, like accidents and road congestion.
Another popular proposal to limit carbon emissions is a cap-and-trade system, under which carbon emissions are limited and allowances are bought and sold in the marketplace. The effect of such a system depends on how the carbon allowances are allocated. If the government auctions them off, then the price of a carbon allowance is effectively a carbon tax.
But the history of cap-and-trade systems suggests that the allowances would probably be handed out to power companies and other carbon emitters, which would then be free to use them or sell them at market prices. In this case, the prices of energy products would rise as they would under a carbon tax, but the government would collect no revenue to reduce other taxes and compensate consumers.
The international dimension of the problem also suggests the superiority of a carbon tax over cap-and-trade. Any long-term approach to global climate change will have to deal with the emerging economies of China and India. By some reports, China is now the world’s leading emitter of carbon, in large part simply because it has so many people. The failure of the Kyoto treaty to include these emerging economies is one reason that, in 1997, the United States Senate passed a resolution rejecting the Kyoto approach by a vote of 95 to zero.
Agreement on a truly global cap-and-trade system, however, is hard to imagine. China is unlikely to be persuaded to accept fewer carbon allowances per person than the United States. Using a historical baseline to allocate allowances, as is often proposed, would reward the United States for having been a leading cause of the problem.
But allocating carbon allowances based on population alone would create a system in which the United States, with its higher standard of living, would buy allowances from China. American voters are not going to embrace a system of higher energy prices, coupled with a large transfer of national income to the Chinese. It would amount to a massive foreign aid program to one of the world’s most rapidly growing economies.
A global carbon tax would be easier to negotiate. All governments require revenue for public purposes. The world’s nations could agree to use a carbon tax as one instrument to raise some of that revenue. No money needs to change hands across national borders. Each government could keep the revenue from its tax and use it to finance spending or whatever form of tax relief it considered best.
Convincing China of the virtues of a carbon tax, however, may prove to be the easy part. The first and more difficult step is to convince American voters, and therefore political consultants, that “tax” is not a four-letter word.
N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He was an adviser to President Bush and is advising Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, in the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Monday September 17, 2007 - 10:30am (PDT)