Gas prices are approaching $3 per gallon and may go considerably higher. $100 a barrel oil is seen as likely. Obama has choked off some oil production in the Gulf and made us more dependent on foreign oil. The economy is in tatters. Unemployment is at 9.8%. Barack Obama has brought this country to its knees.Now comes the knockout punch.
On April 19 EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson ruled that carbon dioxide, a gas vital to the growth of green plants, is a pollutant. The ruling gave the White House an almost unlimited control of the country and its energy.
Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, signed a so-called endangerment finding, stating that carbon dioxide and five other products of fossil fuel combustion are harmful to both the environment and to human health. As a result, the EPA could begin regulating automotive CO2 emissions as soon as June. The ruling also gives the EPA broad power to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from industry and electric power utilities for the first time.
This ruling is estimated to cost at least $3 billion:
The Environmental Protection Agency said the new rule represented its most consequential effort yet to tackle pollution that contributes to smog and soot that hangs over more than half the country. The rule would cost nearly $3 billion a year, costs that are likely to be passed along to consumers.
“Likely to be passed along to consumers….”
Likely? Ya think? Those WaPo guys really deserve all those Pewlitzers. They’re geniuses.
The $3 billion cost is most likely a gross underestimate. When did the government ever get a fiscal projection right?
That cost is only the beginning.
But industry groups said it will boost power prices and force many older coal-fired power plants to be closed. Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA official who authored the original interstate rule, said it was not clear whether utilities will be able to meet the new standards while still providing affordable and reliable electric power.
The nation’s power need does not diminish- it grows each year. And it is going to hit the US population hard.
The Affordable Power Alliance recently released a study showing the cost impact of the EPA regulations on minority families, who live in these coal-reliant areas of the country. The APA found that, by 2025, the EPA regulations will increase the poverty rate by 20 percent for African-American families and 22 percent for Hispanic families, while decreasing median minority household incomes by as much as $660 per year and leading to hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a report outlining the impact of the new regulations:
•New standards for commercial and industrial boilers: up to 798,250 jobs at risk;
•New standards for Portland Cement plants: up to 18 cement plants at risk of shutting down, threatening nearly 1,800 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs;
•The Endangerment Finding/Tailoring Rules for Greenhouse Gas Emissions: higher energy costs; jobs moving overseas; severe economic impacts on the poor, the elderly, minorities, and those on fixed incomes; 6.1 million sources subject to EPA control and regulation; and
•The revised National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone: severe restrictions on job creation and business expansion in hundreds of counties nationwide.
The Washington Examiner compiled a list of the effects on small businesses:
Regulatory compliance costs are skyrocketing. According to a Small Business Administration report titled “The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms,” the total cost of complying with federal regulations is $1.1 trillion a year as of 2004. That’s more than $10,000 per household. The cost of regulatory compliance was just $7,000 in 1995 — up 30 percent in less than a decade.
Of that total, environmental regulation is estimated to cost $221 billion a year, second only to a broadly defined category of “economic regulation.”
The SBA also reports that environmental regulation is the leading regulatory expense for businesses with fewer than 20 employees, at $3,296 per worker.
Overall, regulatory costs are 45 percent higher for small businesses than for larger firms, and environmental regulations are the “main cost drivers in determining the severity of the disproportionate impact on small firms,” according to the SBA. Compliance with environmental regulations costs 364 percent more for small firms than large firms.
And what will these new regulations do? Has anyone actually guaranteed what the benefits will be? Well, the EPA has.
Tough new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency restricting greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the global mean temperature by only 0.006 to 0.0015 of a degree Celsius by the year 2100, according to the EPA’s analysis.
Billions in direct costs. More dependence on foreign oil. Perhaps as many as 1 million jobs lost.
For six thousandths of a degree Celsius.
If you’re tempted to believe anything the Obama administration says about these new rules, think “Obamacare.”
Then they’ll tell that this will be a boon for green technologies like solar panels.
Did you know that nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 more potent a greenhouse gas than is CO2? Did you know that the levels of NF 3 have increased twenty-fold in the last decade?
Why no, you say. Why do you ask?
Because NF3 is used in the manufacture of solar panels.
According to the Scripps Institute; “ the present 5,400 tons in the atmosphere…is on the rise at 11 percent per year” – that will stay there for 700+ years – creates the equivalent warming of all Finland’s CO2 emissions.
According to Lubos, given the fact that the solar panels produce about the same percentage of the global energy as Finland, it is reasonable to guess that the state-of-the-art solar panels that would replace fossil fuels would cause a comparable amount of warming per Joule as fossil fuels.
I’ll bet you neither Barack Obama nor Lisa Jackson know that.
And about that global warming?
It’s stopped. Dead.
Actually, with the exception of 1998 – a ‘blip’ year when temperatures spiked because of a strong ‘El Nino’ effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) – the data on the Met Office’s and CRU’s own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years.
They go up a bit, then down a bit, but those small rises and falls amount to less than their measuring system’s acknowledged margin of error. They have no statistical significance and reveal no evidence of any trend at all.
DADT repeal, DREAM Act, Cap and Trade and now this?
I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. Barack Obama is the Presidential version of Wrong Way Corrigan. It’s as though the patient enters the doctor’s office complaining of chest pains and Dr. Obama inserts breast implants, performs Restylane lip enhancement and injects botox.
The doctor does everything except for what the patient needs because the doctor is eager to make a name for himself.
The patient dies.
Heckuva job, Barry.
It’s a damn shame you can’t sue a President for malpractice.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
CO2 makes up only 12% of all so-called Greenhouse Gases.
And HUMANS only account for 3% of its total formation!
So, if all human activity ended today, all the CO2 savings would add up to only 1/2 of 1% of Greenhouse gases.
What would THAT sacrifice do for the climate?
It MIGHT lose 4/10th of a degree Centigrade in the first 100 years.
Now, if that happened the other thing that would also happen is plant growth would be retarded by the lack of CO2.
We wouldn’t be here to see it, but we would have causes a catastrophe!
Actually, the earth is pretty darn self-correcting.
Volcanoes would pick up the slack for us being gone.
LOL!
The president is like any other government employee. He has limits to his athority. When a government employee exceeds his level of athority, he can be personally liable. There just needs to be someone willing to file the suit.
Nan, the percentage of CO2 that is generated by man is only 2% of the CO2. Yet makes CO2 only .0115% of the atmosphere that can be regulated. Not only that, but the wave lengyh of rafiation that causes the warming is already absorbed by other gases before CO2 has a chance to absorb any. CO2 levels is a result of warming, not the cause. Warming of water bodies causes the release of disolved CO2.
I know I am preaching to the converted here but this can be used as another weapon in the arsenal. According to this paper, the climate models that are being used to direct poilcy cannot even predict what has happened in the past. Proof that it’s all a scam. (Not that we didn’t know that already)
Randy – I agree. All the evidence so far points to CO2 increases AFTER warming has already occured. Increases in CO2 simply do not cause warming.
Every time I hear someone complain about CO2, I ask them if they drink club soda, beer or any other carbonated beverage. CO2 is used in certain medical procedures, it is used in fast freezing of foods, it is used in certain pH control operations for wastewater streams and tons of other uses. The entire idea of demonizing such a LIFE-GIVING gas is beyond absurd. I wonder if lisa jackson and obama will be jailing all the folks that work in the CO2 divisions for Liquid Carbonic, Air Liquide, Praxair, BOC Gases, Air Products, Big 3, etc, etc.
I’ve had a blazing fire going in my Rumford fireplace for three days straight now – just belching CO2 into the atmosphere. Come and get me, Ms. Jackson!
More of the scam is the entire renewable energy credits programs.
RECs (renewable energy credits) are awarded to folks who do things like build hydroelectric dams.
They might get a dollar from companies like Cisco Systems Inc., Dell Inc., Intel Corp., Whole Foods Market Inc.
Then those companies can say, ”we are cutting our global- warming emissions by XX percent.”
In reality their emissions may be climbing!
But through spreadsheet magic they look like they are GREEN on paper.
Meantime the man trying to build really clean energy, like dams, needs each REC to be worth $40 if he is going to be in business.
And all he gets is $1 per REC because middlemen like Al Gore and others suck up all the cash while buying and selling the credits.
The EPA, under Obama, is giving awards to companies because they buy a lot of these RECs.
http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/awards/index.htm
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Buy lots of oil and oil service stocks.
Get rich off the continued American stupidity.
@ John Cooper
And fire up the snowmobiles. Those things are massive spewers of pollutants.
“Paging Mr. Redford…..”
This is obviously a bad thing. Its a scam and therefore if you discuss the details you lose. CO2 is not pollution and you can’t debate/reason with liars of mal intent.
Read Lord Monckton’s expose on Nopenhagen and yes we Cancun. Also on Watts Up With That, the viscount has an important duty to fulfill. He has to shop for bananas because the hotel he’s staying at cannot make banana diaquiris. There’s also a flow chart on how to demonize global worming skeptics or deniers. Too funny.
You can defang Lisa Jackson and the EPA. Defund them.
The Washington Post
November 22, 1922
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/14/inside-the-beltway-81073443/
We normally travel to the foot of a glacier to pick up ice for the ise box when we fish out of Valdez Alaska. This year, there were small ice bergs floating all over Prince William Sound. The natives said that was a rare situation. This year was colder in Alaska so the ice floated further before it melted.
Global cooling is evidence of global warming.
Given that the states have never delegated to Congress via the Constitution the specific power to regulate the environment, Nixon and Congress wrongly established the EPA without constitutional authorization.
In fact, the Founding States had established the federal Senate to protect the interests of the state legislatures in Congress. So the Senate probably should have killed the legislation that established the EPA since it usurped 10th Amendment protected powers of the states to regulate their own environment. And the reason that the Senate didn’t kill EPA legislation is probably the following, IMO.
Corrupt federal senators have been using the 17th Amendment as a license to help the HoR pass constitutionally indefensible legislation.
The remedy to this situation is the following, IMO. Patriots need to light a fire under their newly elected conservative lawmakers in the state legislatures in January to do the following. Given the unique Article V power of the states to ratify proposed amendments to the Constitution, patriots need to pressure state lawmakers to repeal 17A, the sacred cow of the anti-republic Progressive Movement.
Then once the state legislatures have control of the Senate again, they can do the following. The states can use the Senate to help destroy the phony powers of Congress and the Oval Office, including stopping Congress from creating “independent” federal agencies like the EPA (Federal Reserve, etc.) as a way to bypass its Article V responsibilities to petition the states for new powers.
@Ivan: You said:
As evidenced to a great degree by Ivan…
@Wm T Sherman: You said:
Almost – global cooling is CAUSED by global climate warming change… 😛
Remember that scary joke about ”polywater?”
If it got loose in the world it could gel all of the water on the planet?
We shared it in 6th grade in the mid 1960’s.
Well, it seems a bit scary if it acts like polywater, but science is trying to tie up free carbon by creating molecules that ”need” carbon like crazy.
The saving grace of this thing is it is so un-natural that it tends to fall apart rather than turn neighboring molecules into being more like it.
So, polywater it is not.
Resolved and passed by consensus the delegates in Cancun have banned dihydrogen monoxide(h2o). When it evaporates, it creates a dangerous greenhouse gas. It corrodes metal, erodes mountains and causes flooding. Shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol. Boosh left the Gulf of Mexico full of it and the bamster has to deal with it and must stop it from rising.
The tequila must be flowing well in Cancun. Taxpayers must be proud of the delegates.
@ Nan G, RECs have the exact SAME value as Confederate Currency printed by banks in the South during the War between the States. Years from now they will be Museum Pieces and nothing more.
Great Scam though! Like selling Snake Oil at a County Fair.
@oil guy from Alberta:
And, it’s fatal if inhaled. 😉
Here’s the fools signing the petitions to cripple the US economy and ban H2O”
A footnote to #17:
“Polywater” first appeared as ice-nine in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 science fiction novel, Cat’s Cradle. He credited the idea to Irving Langmuir, an American chemist and physicist, who proposed the concept to H.G. Wells in the early 1930s.
In Vonnegut’s novel, ice-nine is accidentally introduced into the ocean and all oceans, rivers, streams, and lakes instantaneously freeze. Nearly all life on earth is extinguished as the world turns into a room-temperature ice cube.
I’ve got a petition against it going around, if anyone wants to sign.
Thanks Greg.
I knew it was something we were reading in those days.
Man!
It sure was fun to pull gullible students into it!
I bet it would still work, if you did it right.
Saw my 1st GAS LINES today.
We usually tank up at one station because it is close to our favorits supermarket.
Apparently it is also a bit lower priced than some others.
There was a line about 10 cars deep to go there.
We went elsewhere.
For a few cents more there is only the issue of finding an open spot, no line.
Still it was a shock.
And a sign of the times.
I hope it starts to get news coverage.
The Legislation Branch of government has the power to reign in the bureaucracy of the agencies. Only they can act to stem the overreaching arm of power-hungry officials. The question is: Will the American people be getting a new Congress that will curb the rabidly fascist dogs of big government, take back their proper place of setting the laws under which the bureaucracy must play, and re-instate the rights and freedoms of American citizens, or will they only patronize us with us lip-service rhetoric.
Ditto —
The Legislative branch can reign in the Executive branch in only two ways: passing a statute or cutting certain funding. Both the statutory approach and the budgetary approach, of course, require either the president’s acquiescence (via a signature on the statute or the budget) or a veto proof majority. For the sake if discussion, (1) name any “bureaucratic overreach” exhibited by the Obama administration and (2) explain where the veto proof majority exists in Congress to undo it.
Nan G. —
You know what that gas line meant? Demand is picking up, and on a Saturday before Christmas, people are standing in lines to fuel up. No one was in lines at Christmas two years ago, as the economy crashed, or in spring and summer 2008, when gas hit $4 under Bush, now were they? Your gas line was not a supply driven line, like in the 70s during the embargo, but a demand driven line, where people wanted fuel.
B. Johnson —
Your statement about the states not “delegating” to Congress the power to regulate the environment ignores a few things. First, the Constitution, not the states’ supposed authority, gives Congress the power to regulate environmental dumping — which is what they ACTUALLY regulate, dumping in the waters, dumping in the air, and dumping on land that will spoil the water and air. The Supremacy clause (giving Congress the authority to overrride conflicting state laws), the interstate commerce clause, the general welfare clause, and even the clause regarding disputes among the states, provide the framework for the Environmental Protection Act.
In addition, it has been 40 years since the EPA was put into effect. I am about 100% sure some polluter has claimed that Congress did not have the authority to alleviate their pollution; the polluter lost the argument more that 25 years ago. Indeed, less than three years ago, the Supreme Court said that the Bushies were REQUIRED under the Clean Air Act to alleviate Co2 pollution. You might want to look into that, too, OK?
If there was actual popular support for eliminating the EPA, I would think that one of the two main political parties would have actually proposed that in their last national platform. Neither did, of course. Indeed, the con party platform said
Notice what was missing, other than putting “the air” in private hands to ensure environmental protection? Yes, the concept of abolishing the EPA. No where in the platform. So where, pray tell, do you think support for this “great idea” resides?
And that is the fundamental problem with your anti-EPA screed —
(1) there is no popular support for returning clean air, clean water and clean land policing to the states that failed so miserably to do the job prior to the passage of the Environmental Protection Act;
(2) the EPA actually works well, as evidenced by the fish in the formerly burning Cuyahoga River;
(3) no industrialized country lacks federalized environmental protection laws, though Third World countries leave it to the discretion of states or property owners; and
(4) what countries regulatory scheme would you have us adopt? Mexico’s or China’s? Yeah, try selling that!
(5) in the absence of an EPA, you have given no practical framework for keeping our environment from returning to the degraded state that led to the Environmental Protection Act in the first place!
Indeed, on a basic level . . . why is coal slurry running into rivers unchecked something that we should allow to occur again if a state permits it? What is the good part about allowing smokestacks in a state to be entirely unregulated the way they were in the 1950s and 60s? Why should we support a scheme where mining interests are, once again, releasing arsenic and heavy metals into the water, destroying their neighbors land? Indeed, it would be a litigation attorneys wet dream to, once again, resurrect the “public nuisance” cause of action and have California residents suing Nevada, Arizona, etc., over pollution of upstream waters.