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Energy and the Environment Archive

Wednesday

9

February 2011

0

COMMENTS

Reining in the Bureaucracy

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Energy and the Environment

Like an unindicted co-conspirator, the bureaucracy is the unofficially acknowledged fourth branch of government. In the centuries since the Constitution was passed, it has grown exponentially in both size and power. Congress has freely delegated power to ruling technocrats to such a degree that it is at least constitutionally questionable. With this in mind:

There is an effort by Rand Paul requiring “both houses of Congress to sign off on all major rules, which are defined as any regulation with a total yearly impact of $100 million or more.”

There’s also a growing effort to rein in the EPA, the most flagrant of extra-constitutional regulatory bodies.

I can only hope that these renewed efforts to rein in various regulatory bodies bears fruit.

Saturday

29

January 2011

1

COMMENTS

About Those Disappearing Himalayan Glaciers

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

First, we learned that the IPCC relied on claims that were not peer reviewed and turned out to be made up to justify it’s claim that the Himalayans would have no ice by 2035. Once exposed, they backed off that claim and simply said it was disappearing fast. Now, reality hits the Warmists in the face once again:

Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.

The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that global warming is not the deciding factor in whether a glacier survives or melts.

The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world’s highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.

It further challenges claims made in a 2007 report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035.

Although the head of the panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri later admitted the claim was an error gleaned from unchecked research, he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at “a rapid rate”, threatening floods throughout north India.

Hat-tip: QandO

Tuesday

18

January 2011

0

COMMENTS

We’re All Gonna Die! Pt. 33

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

If Global Warming doesn’t wipe out all life on this miserable little planet first, it might still bring down our great civilization, just like it did Rome:

Climate change seems a factor in the rise and fall of the Roman empire, according to a study of ancient tree growth that urges greater awareness of the risks of global warming in the 21st century.

…Periods of climate instability overlapped with political turmoil, such as during the decline of the Roman empire, and might even have made Europeans vulnerable to the Black Death or help explain migration to America during the chill 17th century.

If only the Romans had listened to Al Gore and abandoned their oil-based economy for a life of low carbon footprints.

Saturday

18

December 2010

0

COMMENTS

We're All Gonna Die! Pt. 32

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

According to two doom-mongering M.D.’s writing at HuffPo, we’re all going to die…of everything!

…[T]he urgency for solutions is rapidly increasing and leading medical and public health groups across the country agree: climate change is hazardous to our health.

…Heat waves can cause illness and death from heart disease, diabetes, stroke, respiratory disease and even accidents, homicide and suicide.

At the same time, increased evaporation arising from warming seas is generating heavier downpours. …  This year, sudden, heavy downpours — some lasting several days — caused lethal flashfloods in Rhode Island, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Rains two inches a day and above are associated with water-borne disease outbreaks, when flooding overwhelms sewer systems and contaminates drinking water.

…With warming, more winter precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow, increasing the chance of ice storms when temperatures do drop. …And such conditions — along with heavier, wetter snowstorms — can be treacherous for travel and ambulation.

…[W]armer winters favor insect migration. In the past decade case reports of tick-borne Lyme disease rose ten-fold in Maine and northern counties are experiencing Lyme for the first time. In Alaska, especially warm winters have ushered in swarms of allergy-inducing, stinging insects, along with mosquitoes and devastating pine bark beetle infestations. The spread of forest and crop pests — requiring chemicals for control — pose additional long term health and environmental risks.

There’s more….

More? MORE? How can there be more when everyone has clearly died already!

Hat-tip: Yid- With LID

Sunday

12

December 2010

0

COMMENTS

Not Exactly Confidence Inspiring

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

Just in case we needed more reason to doubt the so-called climate authorities, we have it (via John Stossel):

Some people will sign anything that includes phrases like, ”global effort,” “international community,” and “planetary.” Such was the case at COP 16, this year’s United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico.

…It was euphemistically entitled “Petition to Ban the Use of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO)” (translation water). It was designed to show that if official U.N. delegates could be duped by college students into banning water, that they could essentially fall for anything, including pseudo-scientific studies which claim to show that global warming is man-caused.

Despite the apparently not-so-obvious reference to H2O, almost every delegate that collegian students approached signed their petition to ban that all too dangerous substance, which contributes to the greenhouse effect, is the major substance in acid rain, and is fatal if inhaled.

Perhaps together, the footage associated with these two projects will illustrate to mainstream America the radical lengths many current U.N. delegates are willing to go to carry out an agenda no more ethical, plausible or practical than the banning water.

Wednesday

10

November 2010

0

COMMENTS

We're All Gonna Die! Pt. 31

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

The latest death hazard from global warming is toxins.

Global warming may be making pesticide residues, heavy metals and household chemicals more dangerous to fish, wildlife and, ultimately, humans, scientists warn.

At the North American branch of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry’s 31st annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, on 8 November, environmental chemists warned that complex interactions between chemistry and climate change might be making chemicals more toxic and the environment more susceptible to damage.

For example, Erin Mann, a graduate student studying environmental chemistry at the University of Toronto in Scarborough, Canada, said that melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean exposes more seawater to the atmosphere, which may make it easier for toxic chemicals in arctic waters to escape into the air. “So global warming could produce more air pollution in the arctic,” she said.

In fairness, the words “could,” “may,” and “might” were used 12 times in the article, so they’re not exactly guaranteeing death…yet.  But I don’t expect popular media to be as scrupulous when they pick this story up and throw it into the giant grab bag of ways in which global warming will KILL US ALL.

Monday

25

October 2010

0

COMMENTS

Environmental Red-Tape Hinders Border Security

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Energy and the Environment, Waste & Government Reform

No matter your position on enforcement of the US border, this report should demonstrate how ineffective government is, as a general principle, at executing the tasks it chooses to take on:

Several White House agencies charged with enforcing environmental laws are preventing thousands of Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border from disrupting illicit trafficking operations, according to a study by the investigative arm of Congress.

The report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that about 15 percent of the 26 Border Patrol stations in the southwestern region say the Interior Department and the Agriculture Department have prevented them from catching illegal aliens coming over the border.

…Under federal law, before Border Patrol agents can build roads or establish surveillance posts on this land, they must first receive permission from the land managing agencies. This process can take months while the land management agencies conduct tests to ensure the environmental safety of the land and its species, the GAO report said, resulting in the souring of actionable intelligence with the ranks of the Border Patrol.

Environmental law is a convoluted mess unparalleled in its ability to produce bureaucratic red-tape. We’re getting to the point where one can hardly take a step without first clearing it with four different agencies, conducting three environmental impact reports, defending against two lawsuits from environmental groups, and then after all that, learning that there’s some endangered partridge in a pear tree that will prevent you from proceeding. The weight of our excessive bureaucracy is dragging all aspects of government and society down.

Friday

22

October 2010

0

COMMENTS

We're All Gonna Die! Pt. 30

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment

Just because I don’t talk about it as much anymore doesn’t mean our collective lives are no longer in danger. The ongoing series highlighting our impending dooooooooooooooooooooooooooom continues:

Of all the questionable lessons our schools are imparting to young kids, the idea that Legos are destroying the planet might just be the most absurd.

“Riding in the car one day with his parents in Tacoma, Wash., Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, was worried about whether it would be bad for the planet if he got a new set of Legos,” reported The New York Times in May. Where once we dispensed practical advice to children about children about consumerism, “waste not, want not” is being supplanted by the lesson that want (sic) a new toy makes children part of an apocalyptic death cult.

…the Environmental Protection Agency, in conjunction with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is now paying Leonard to produce more propaganda.

Leonard describes herself as an “unapologetic activist,” and isn’t shy about painting hyperbolic doomsday scenarios for children where corporations and consumerism end up destroying life as we know it. Such anti-capitalist radicalism doesn’t seem to concern many educators.

In Leonard’s 20 minute Story of Stuff documentary, she explains the production of consumer goods by starting with natural resources. “Extraction which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planets,” she says.

As if that weren’t bad enough, she embraces a largely discredited and radical Malthusian view regarding resource development. Leonard intones darkly that “we are running out of resources and we are using too much stuff … In the past three decades, one third of the planets natural resource base has been consumed – gone.”

Don’t let the children forget: “Doooooooooooooooooooooooomed!”

Tuesday

19

October 2010

0

COMMENTS

China Calls Out Obama's Subsidy Hypocrisy

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment, Labor Unions

When Barack Obama promises green subsidies, it’s an energy plan that will create “green jobs” (it isn’t and it won’t, but that’s another story). When China does it, it’s time for an investigation!

China’s top energy official said the U.S. was playing electoral politics with an announcement that it will investigate a union complaint that the Chinese government gives unfair subsidies to its alternative energy industry.

“Does America want to get fair trade or a genuine dialogue, or get transparent information?” National Energy Administration Director Zhang Guobao asked at a Beijing press conference last night. “I think not — it seems America’s main reason is to get votes.”

The U.S. acted on a complaint from the United Steelworkers union that China’s aid to its clean-energy producers violates global trade rules. Accepting the petition may lead the U.S. to file a protest at the World Trade Organization. The complaint, called a Section 301 filing, is the first filed and accepted by President Barack Obama’s administration after his predecessor, George W. Bush, turned down trade complaints against China.

Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress are under increasing pressure ahead of the Nov. 2 congressional elections to take measures to reduce China’s trade surplus. The trade gap widened to a record $28 billion in August, bolstering claims that a weak Chinese currency is hurting American jobs. Last week Montana Democrat Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said a bill targeting China’s yuan may pass the Senate later this year and be sent to Obama for his signature.

And here we go with the trade deficit nonsense again. The “trade gap” is just a fancy way of saying that we get more stuff from China than we have to give them in return. I run a similar deficit with BestBuy, and it’s certainly not a bad thing for me.

But the real point here is the absurdity of an administration that promotes subsidies and protectionism to shield unions from competition – which incidentally raises prices for consumers and reduces overall prosperity – even considering complaining to the WTO when other countries do the same. Obama’s consistent disgust at practicing free trade gives him zero moral authority on the matter.

Thursday

7

October 2010

1

COMMENTS

EPA's Newest Overreach: Regulating Dust

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

The EPA, which easily contends for the dubious distinction of being the most flagrantly unconstitutional of our government’s many unconstitutional activities, has found yet another vehicle through which to expand its near dictatorial powers: dust.

What horrible substance is the EPA trying to protect us from now? Dust.

…Kelsey Huber, writing for “The Foundry,” a blog of The Heritage Foundation, explains that “when EPA regulations were first applied to particulates in 1971, they were created to target soot,” which consists of carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of coal, oil, wood and other fuels, and soot actually is harmful, in sufficient quantities. “Dust,” on the other hand, is merely soil that has gone airborne.

Apparently, soot is no longer a problem, or perhaps the agency just realized that it wasn’t creating enough turmoil for the country. We can’t be sure. In any case, the EPA now wants to regulate dust.

…Mr. Huber continues: “From this regulation, several problems arise. First, while human activity can create dust, it is also … a natural occurrence. How can it be effectively regulated?” A fair question.

Be careful ballplayers. The next time you slide into second, you might just be visited by the environmental gestapo.

Ok, that’s not actually likely, but the costs for this nonsensical proposed power grab are real:

…[A]nytime some government body imposes new requirements on businesses, one result is an increase in the cost of doing business, and in this case the cost of domestic food products will rise accordingly. When a farmer works his fields producing the food we eat, that may stir up some dust. Is the EPA going to fine farmers for planting or harvesting food if in the process of doing so they kick up some dust?

Does that mean that farmers will have to water fields before working them? How much is that going to cost in additional water use and time? Some crops, like corn, cannot be harvested that way.

Tamara Thies, chief environmental counsel for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the regulations under consideration would prove twice as stringent as the current standard.

“It would be virtually impossible for many critical U.S. industries to comply with this standard, even with use of best management practices to control dust,” she said.

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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