Obama unveils plans to skyrocket your electric bill today

CO2 is not a pollutant. It's a necessity of life...

Via Discovery

President Barack Obama will Monday unveil what he called the “biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken” to fight climate change, a sensitive issue central to his legacy.
The White House will release the final version of America’s Clean Power Plan, a set of environmental rules and regulations that will home in on the pollution from the nation’s power plants, setting limits on power-plant carbon emissions.
Laying out how climate change was a threat to the health, well being and security of millions of Americans, and adding that time was of the essence, Obama said in a video released early Sunday: “Climate change is not a problem for another generation. Not anymore.”
“Power plants are the single biggest source of harmful carbon pollution that contributes to climate change,” added Obama, who made the battle against climate change a core promise of his 2008 election campaign.
“But until now there have been no federal limits to the amount of that pollution that those plants can dump into the air.”
He added that without imposing limits, “existing power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of harmful carbon pollution into the air weekly.

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Amusing: New study claims Keystone XL pipeline will increase CO2 by lowering oil price $3 a barrel...

This just makes me want to build it more...

WASHINGTON -- The much-debated Keystone XL pipeline could produce four times more global warming pollution than the State Department calculated earlier this year, a new study concludes.
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The U.S. estimates didn't take into account that the added oil from the pipeline would drop prices by about $3 a barrel, spurring consumption that would create more pollution, the researchers said.
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Outside experts not connected to the study gave it mixed reviews. The American Petroleum Institute found the study to be irrelevant because regardless of the pipeline, the tar sands will be developed and oil will be shipped by railroad if not by pipeline, spokeswoman Sabrina Fang said.
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Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/08/10/6618336/study-keystone-carbon-pollution.html#storylink=cpy

Obama will advance his plan to destroy the coal industry Monday...

In his weekly address, Obama called atmospheric carbon pollution. CO2 is a necessary ingredient for life to exist on this planet.

Via FOX News:

The Obama administration is set to announce a rule Monday to limit carbon emissions in thousands of fossil-fuel burning plants across the country, a cornerstone of President Obama’s climate-change agenda and his first-term promise to reduce such emissions by 17 percent by 2020. The Environmental Protection Agency will ask existing plants to cut pollution by 30 percent by 2030, according to people familiar with the proposal who shared the details with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, since they have not been officially released.The draft rule, which sidesteps Congress, will go into effect in June 2016, following a one-year comment period. States will then be responsible for executing the rule with some flexibility.

US greenhouse gas emissions are down due to increased use of natural gas...

You can thank fracking which has increased the supply and decreased the cost of natural gas.

In 2012, total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were 6,525.6 Tg or million metric tons CO2 Eq. Total U.S. emissions have increased by 4.7 percent from 1990 to 2012, and emissions decreased from 2011 to 2012 b 3.4 percent (227.4 Tg CO2 Eq.). The decrease from 2011 to 2012 was due to a decrease in the carbon intensity of fuels consumed to generate electricity due to a decrease in coal consumption, with increased natural gas consumption. Additionally, relatively mild winter conditions, especially in regions of the United States where electricity is an important heating fuel, resulted in an overall decrease in electricity demand in most sectors. Since 1990, U.S. emissions have increased at an average annual rate of 0.2 percent.

Good News: European cap-and-trade system collapsing...

It is all a scam anyway...

Via Spiegel: 

The European cap-and-trade system has slid into near meaninglessness as Germany bickers on the sidelines. Hopes that the election in Lower Saxony might resolve the high-level bickering were misguided. Now Europe's carbon market has hit a new low.

For those involved in European Union climate policy, the German regional election in Lower Saxony on Sunday was a nail-biter. The hope for many was that Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) would suffer defeat and leader Philipp Rösler, who has been under pressure within his party for weeks now, would be forced to step down as economics minister. But that didn't happen. Instead, Rösler ended up in a stronger position than before, and the flagship project of Europe's climate policy settled deeper into a lifeless coma.[...]

'Something Has To Be Done Urgently' 
 
Indeed, the market for carbon credits has reached new lows. On Thursday, the price of carbon credits dropped 40 percent within 30 seconds before regaining most of the losses. In an indicator of just how vulnerable ETS threatens to become, the volatility followed a nearly meaningless vote for a non-binding recommendation by the industry committee of the European Parliament that the backloading plan be rejected.... Keep on reading...

Amusing: COP 18 participants agree to wear CO2 sequestration masks to "save the planet"

Some of these moonbats would put the CO2 capture masks on their pets...

Via NRO:

With the climate talks in Doha, Qatar limping along, and support for a new treaty waning among nations in attendance, one might expect spirits to be down among the global warming faithful. But this is not the case.

Yes, nations like Canada, New Zealand, and Japan seem eager to withdraw from the process. And yes, nature has not been exactly cooperative, with 16 years of no statistically significant warming. However, delegates here at COP 18 remain steadfast in their cause and willing to do almost anything it takes to “save the earth.”

CFACT highlighted this eagerness to go to extremes by introducing a new gadget called the “sequestration of exhalation device” — a mask that would filter CO2 from a person’s breath. Conference delegates were asked if they would wear such a mask if it would filter out all the CO2 they exhale. Surprisingly, many said yes.

Keep on reading…

Image of the Day: Abandoned Wind Farm

 Dis you know wind farms can actually increase CO2 emissions?

Kamaoa Wind Farm, Hawaii. Image from Waymarking.com

Green Fail: Carbon Credit Trading Causes Developing Countries To Increase Production Of Dangerous Greenhouse Gas

This is a prime example of unintended consequences from excessive government regulation...

Via NY Times:

Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions. 

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity. 

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year. 

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle. Keep on reading...

Latest Global Warming Scare: CO2 Will Delay the Next Ice Age

We are due an Ice Age withing the next 1500 years, but scientists claim high levels of CO2 will delay it. That is a bad thing? The 1000-year-long instant Ice Age that followed Mount Toba's eruption in the Late Pleistocene reduce human population to as little as 10,000 individuals.

Human emissions of carbon dioxide will defer the next Ice Age, say scientists.

The last Ice Age ended about 11,500 years ago, and when the next one should begin has not been entirely clear.

Researchers used data on the Earth's orbit and other things to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one.

In the journal Nature Geoscience, they write that the next Ice Age would begin within 1,500 years - but emissions have been so high that it will not.

"At current levels of CO2, even if emissions stopped now we'd probably have a long interglacial duration determined by whatever long-term processes could kick in and bring [atmospheric] CO2 down," said Luke Skinner from Cambridge University.

Dr Skinner's group - which also included scientists from University College London, the University of Florida and Norway's Bergen University - calculates that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have to fall below about 240 parts per million (ppm) before the glaciation could begin.
The current level is around 390ppm.

Good News: EPA CO2 Regulations On Hold Indefinitely

Al Gore just finished his “24 Hours of Reality” Goracalathon to revitalize the global warming climate change cult cause. It doesn't appear President Obama was watching. There is little doubt that President Obama still wants to use the unfounded fear of anthropogenic global warming as a hammer to force his left-wing agenda down Americans throats, but he is painfully aware of the political realities and their impact on his 2012 re-election chances. It doesn't appear Al Gore made much headway with anyone in his full court press to keep making millions off this scam save the planet. Even Al Gore's fellow global warming activists and environmental allies dissed the show. Some people are even wondering if Al Gore is now a hindrance to the global warming cause.

The Environmental Protection Agency is again delaying a plan to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, saying it needs more time to propose the rule. The move comes amid intense pushback from business groups and Republican lawmakers who complain a recent slate of EPA proposals are chilling business investment and hindering the economic recovery. “I am very pleased by today’s announcement that one of EPA’s most economically damaging rules will be delayed,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe said in a statement, adding that Republicans would work to block other EPA rules from coming into effect. –The Wall Street Journal, 15 September 2011

New Findings Disprove Global Warming Models

A new peer reviewed study has found CO2 traps less heat that previously thought. Al Gore is hardest hit.

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

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In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

Scientists on all sides of the global warming debate are in general agreement about how much heat is being directly trapped by human emissions of carbon dioxide (the answer is “not much”). However, the single most important issue in the global warming debate is whether carbon dioxide emissions will indirectly trap far more heat by causing large increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds. Alarmist computer models assume human carbon dioxide emissions indirectly cause substantial increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds (each of which are very effective at trapping heat), but real-world data have long shown that carbon dioxide emissions are not causing as much atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds as the alarmist computer models have predicted.

The new NASA Terra satellite data are consistent with long-term NOAA and NASA data indicating atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing in the manner predicted by alarmist computer models. The Terra satellite data also support data collected by NASA’s ERBS satellite showing far more longwave radiation (and thus, heat) escaped into space between 1985 and 1999 than alarmist computer models had predicted. Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.

Australian Carbon Taxing Scheme Forcing Quantas to Raise Airfare Prices

The really sad part is it won't make a drop-in-the-bucket difference. The scheme is projected to cut 159 million tons of carbon pollution from the atmosphere by 2020. While Australia is doing this, China will increase their carbon emissions by 496% by 2020. If Australia completely eliminated carbon emissions today, it would only make a 15 thousandths of one degree of warming (0.0154 °C) difference by 2050.

Washington Examiner – Australia’s tax on carbon emissions will cost Qantas 110 million to 115 million Australian dollars ($118 million to $123 million) for the 2013 financial year and lead to an increase in passenger fares, the airline said Monday.

The flagship Australian carrier is one of the first of the nation’s major companies to release details of the financial impact of the tax, which will force the 500 worst polluters to pay AU$23 for every ton of carbon they emit.

The government released details of the tax on Sunday, saying it would help Australia lower its massive carbon emissions. Australia is one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas polluters because of its heavy reliance on coal for electricity.

The Kyoto Protocol is dying and good riddance

The Kyoto Protocol was mostly a scheme to redistribute wealth to third world countries and impose control on free societies by locking down their energy sources. It is dying a slow death because of the global recession and the astronomical costs associated with CO2 reduction.

(The Globe and Mail)- The United States has little credibility at the negotiating table; China is showing signs of “buyer’s remorse” for commitments already made, and the European Union is desperately trying to save the Kyoto Protocol from a premature death.

Negotiators concluded two weeks of climate talks in Bonn on Friday, providing a sobering view of the political roadblocks on the way to Durban, South Africa, where ministers will meet in December

With the world economy still reeling from financial and debt crises, there is a fading hope that countries will accept a pact that would see greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2015 and then begin to drop. And more important, that they will follow through with their own promised emission reductions.

The UN’s chief climate negotiator acknowledged Friday that economic and political challenges are competing with the scientific urgency of reducing emissions.

The thing that should be killing anthropogenic global warming is the data. AGW true believers still claim the science is settled and the refuse to consider recent data. CO2 is still climbing at a steady pace, but the temperature has leveled off. The AGW climate models predicted temperature would rapidly escalate its increase as CO2 rises. That clearly isn't happening. Anyone who can look at the graph posted below and claim CO2 is has a major effect on temperature has left the realm of science and entered Harry Potter's world of magic.

Anthropogenic Global Warming True Believers Propose Giant CO2 Sucking Towers or Something

Haven't they heard the temperature has stabilized over the last 10 years?

(AFP) — On the heels of another halting round of talks on climate change, UN scientists this week will review quick-fix options for beating back the threat of global warming that rely on technology rather than political wrangling.

Experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meeting for three days from Monday in the Peruvian capital Lima, will ponder “geo-engineering” solutions designed to cool the planet, or at least brake the startling rise in Earth’s temperature.

Seeding the ocean with iron, scattering heat-reflecting particles in the stratosphere, building towers to suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere, and erecting a giant sunshade in space are all on the examining table.

Critics say such schemes — some of which have been tested experimentally — are a roll of the dice with Earth’s climate system and its complex web of biodiversity.

"The startling rise in Earth’s temperature"? The actual recent data does not support this statement.

UN Global Warming Chief: "we will have to develop more powerful technologies to capture emissions out of the atmosphere"

Has he heard of trees? Of course, trees don't cost much and climate change is really all about the money. If climate change true believers were really concerned about CO2 levels, they would stop breathing.

(Guardian) – The world may have to resort to technology that sucks greenhouse gases from the air to stave off the worst effects of global warming, the UN climate change chief has said before talks on the issue beginning on Monday.

“We are putting ourselves in a scen we will have to develop more powerful technologies to capture emissions out of the atmosphereario where,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change. “We are getting into very risky territory,” she said, stressing that time was running out.

The UN climate talks starting on Mondayin Bonn, which run for the next two weeks, will try to revive the negotiations before the next climate conference, taking place in Durban, South Africa, in December. But little progress is expected, as the negotiating time is likely to be taken up with details such as rules on monitoring emissions.

GOP Tries To Hamstring EPA CO2 Regulation

Republicans aren't wasting anytime trying to stop EPA from imposing greenhouse gas regulations. Several bill were introduced on the second day of the 112th Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- On their second day in power, GOP lawmakers introduced several bills that would hamstring the Environmental Protection Agency from moving forward with regulations to reduce heat-trapping pollution from factories and other sources that they say contributes to global warming. The bills are part of an effort by House Republicans to reverse what they consider job-killing policies of the administration. The bills introduced by Rep. Ted Poe of Texas, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia would stymie the EPA in different ways.

Poe's measure would prohibit the EPA from using any money to implement or enforce regulations to impose a limit on global warming gases. Blackburn's bill would change the Clean Air Act so the EPA could no longer use the law to control greenhouse gases.

China’s chief negotiator admits China is world's largest CO2 producer and says they are going to keep increasing

Everyone blames the U.S. for rising global CO2 emissions, but the truth is China surpassed the U.S. three or four years ago and became the world's largest greenhouse gas producer. China has now admitted this truth and they have a message for those who want them to cut back. It's "go pound sand.' They are going to keep increasing their emissions.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China acknowledged on Tuesday it is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases stoking global warming, confirming what scientists have said for years but defending its right to keep growing emissions.

China’s chief negotiator in international climate change talks, Xie Zhenhua, made the comment while spelling out his government’s position ahead of negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 over a new global pact to fight global warming.

Scientists and overseas bodies have said that since 2006-2007, China’s greenhouse gas pollution has surpassed the United States’, the world’s top emitter for the 20th century.

CO2 Hog Al Gore Leaves Car Running One Hour at Swedish Seminar

Reducing their carbon footprints must be for the 'little people.' Al Gore is a complete phony.

Climate Depot reported:

Intriguingly, the Master of World Climate himself arrived in a rental car (with or without driver is unclear), from the airport, and subsequently left the engine running for the entire lecture. That is to say, about one hour. Incidentally, local legislation prohibits – for very good environmental reasons, i.e. pollution – any car engine running on empty for more than 60 seconds. Fines are severe. As far as I know, he was not fined.

Several commentators on other sites have asked for proof Al Gore was in Sweden recently. He was a speaker at a ""Sustainable Capitalism" seminar in Gothenburg, Sweden on November 25, 2010. He probably collected his normal six figure payday for speaking.

The Carbon Market Scam

Cap and Trade has two major components. First the government sets limits for carbon emissions. The, they set up a complicated carbon trading market allowing companies who reduce emissions to sell their carbon emission allotment to others. Several other countries, who are signatories to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, are already participating in this scheme under the auspices of the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism. President Obama has proposed a similar system for the U.S. Allegedly, China has figured out a way to scam the program.

An obscure U.N. board that oversees a $2.7 billion market intended to cut heat-trapping gases has agreed to take steps that could lead to it eventually reining in what European and U.S. environmentalists are calling a huge scam.

At a meeting this week that ended Friday, the executive board of the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism said that five chemical plants in China would no longer qualify for funding as so-called carbon offset credits until the environmentalists' claims can be further investigated.

Five plants in China are producing an ozone friendly chemical and getting paid for that under the U.N.'s ozone treaty. Unfortunately, production of this ozone friendly chemical creates a byproduct that is a very powerful climate-warming gas. These companies get $100,000 a ton to destroy this chemical.

The chemical makers are paid as much as $100,000 or more for every ton they destroy of a potent greenhouse gas, HFC-23. The price for destroying it is based on its being 11,700 times more powerful as a climate-warming gas than carbon dioxide.

The solution to generating more profits at these companies is simple. They overproduce the ozone friendly chemical in order to get paid for destroying the byproduct. This is typical of what happens when governments excessively meddle into private markets. They change in an unexpected way.

EPA rejects petitions to reverse its 2009 decision to regulate CO2 as a pollutant

The states of Virginia and Texas, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups petitioned the EPA to reverse it's December 2009 decision to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. Not only did EPA completely dismiss the Climategate scandal, they are claiming global warming is getting worse.

The petitions to reconsider EPA’s Endangerment Finding claim that climate science cannot be trusted, and assert a conspiracy that invalidates the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. After months of serious consideration of the petitions and of the state of climate change science, EPA finds no evidence to support these claims. In contrast, EPA’s review shows that climate science is credible, compelling, and growing stronger.

Here is the Monthly Mean Surface Temperature Anomaly chart for 1996~2010 from NASA GISS. Does this look like global warming is "growing stronger" or stalled out since 1998?



One of the reasons EPA cited for continuing belief in global warming was loss of Arctic sea ice. However, that isn't a representation of the entire Earth's temperature. A better gauge is Global Sea Ice Area. Here is a chart from the University of Illinois' The Cryosphere Today. Do you see clear evidence of global warming?