power plants

Al Gore’s bombast and hypocrisy, an energy debacle “no one saw coming,” lessons for USA.

During March 22 hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, under questioning by West Virginia Rep. David McKinley (R), EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted (once again) the Obama administration’s climate efforts will do nothing to protect public or environmental health. McCarthy instead acknowledged the efforts are merely a symbolic attempt to get other countries’ leaders to join the Paris climate agreement.

On October 5, 2009, President Obama issued an executive order, FEDERAL LEADERSHIP IN ENVIRONMENTAL, ENERGY, AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE, that showed his policies toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the rest of his term in office. The executive order is 15 pages, divided into 20 sections that provide strict guidance for all agencies in the executive branch and their interactions with outside organizations. Portions of the executive order follows (numerous words run together in the document are left in place):

Sixteen state attorneys general recently announced the filing of a multistate lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The lawsuit is neither the first nor the last time we will see states pushing back against the nation’s environmental “authority” and other outrages emanating from Washington, DC.

Top officials at the EPA collaborated with progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress, to help control a media portrayal of the EPA’s Carbon Capture and Sequestration technology, after a New York Times reporter discovered the technology didn’t work.

The Supreme Court determined that the EPA overstepped the boundaries of its authority when it tried to use the Clean Air Act to regulate certain hazardous chemicals without first considering the financial impact on industry.

Since 2011 NLPC has tracked the stimulus-funded fiascoes that were/are battery-maker A123 Systems and luxury electric automaker Fisker Automotive, who at one point were business partners (or stuck with each other, depending on your perspective). Both eventually went bankrupt, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars from Department of Energy awards that were never paid back. Chinese company Wanxiang Group ended up with both failed enterprises, buying their assets for cheap.

On June 2nd of this year the Obama administration announced new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with a goal of reducing carbon emissions over the next 15 years. These goals as outlined by the EPA in the Clean Power Plan impose significant restrictions on power plants already in existence, even natural gas plants. Power plants are cited by the EPA as the largest source of carbon pollution in the U.S., accounting for roughly on-third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate models help improve our conceptual understandings of climate systems and the forces that drive climate change. However, they are terrible at predicting Earth’s temperature and other components of its climate. They should never be used to set or justify policies, laws or regulations – such as what the Environmental Protection Agency is about to impose on CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants.

It is a shame that the U.S. Supreme Court continues to empower EPA to issue nonsensical interpretations of statutes with the primary goal of amassing more money and power.

Couple an organization with financial and political incentives to exploit the public’s ignorance of science with the buzzwords “climate pollution” and you get crummy, worthless, and misleading poll results.

The alarmists have systematically assaulted and corrupted genuine science.

I’m loath to even write about President Obama’s banal speech yesterday on his climate change/energy agenda — to be executed via fiat, of course, and not through a Constitutional legislative process…