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Obama To Unilaterally Impose New Carbon Emission Caps On America’s Power Plants. By Mike Miller 7 hours ago
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/06/143479-obama-unilaterally-impose-new-carbon-emission-caps-americas-power-plants/



In his latest and most sweeping effort to combat “climate change” (aka, “global warming,” “climate disruption,” “the end of the world as we know it”), President Barack Obama has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new rules on carbon emissions by America’s power plants.

It’s not like he didn’t tell us from the beginning exactly what he planned to do. For those in need of a refresher, here’s Obama in 2009:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket.”

Yeah, cap and trade is back. Despite being soundly rejected by Congress a few years ago. Hey, it’s not like Obama has let Congress get in his way in the past, right? (See: DOMA, DREAM Act, Federal Immigration Law)

On Monday, Obama’s EPA will unveil a new rule limiting the amount of carbon emissions from America’s coal power plants:

The rule will impose a cap on the level of emissions existing power plants are permitted and it will provide each state a series of options to implement the cap.



Among other options, power plants will be allowed to increase the energy they derive from renewable sources like wind and solar power, adopt new technology to increase energy efficiency, and join or create a statewide cap-and-trade system to effectively tax the excess carbon emissions.

Obama explained the unilateral action on Saturday:

“Today, about 40 percent of America’s carbon pollution comes from power plants. But right now, there are no national limits to the amount of carbon pollution that existing plants can pump into the air we breathe — none.



That’s why, a year ago, I directed the Environmental Protection Agency to…come up with commonsense guidelines for reducing dangerous carbon pollution from our power plants.”

While the president claimed that the new “guidelines” were developed in “an open and transparent way, with input from the business community,” let’s not forget this quote from 2008:

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Greenhouse gases. It’s always about greenhouse gases with the global-warming crowd.

Yet, a 2013 report from Obama’s own darling – the United Nations – found that the effect of greenhouse gas on the environment have been vastly overstated. But, to borrow a question from Hillary, when your objective is to bankrupt the coal industry, what difference does it matter?

gypsy

gypsy
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again I Obama To Unilaterally Impose New Carbon Emission Caps On America’s Power Plants 729264 

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White House looks to regulate cow flatulence as part of climate agenda
2:50 PM 03/28/2014
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/28/white-house-looks-to-regulate-cow-flatulence-as-part-of-climate-agenda/



As part of its plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama administration is targeting the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions in their operations.

This comes despite falling methane emission levels across the economy since 1990.

The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeable portion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas.

Some of these methane emissions come from cow flatulence, exhaling and belching — other livestock animals release methane as well.

“Cows emit a massive amount of methane through belching, with a lesser amount through flatulence,” according to How Stuff Works. “Statistics vary regarding how much methane the average dairy cow expels. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters a day… while others say it’s up to 500 liters… a day. In any case, that’s a lot of methane, an amount comparable to the pollution produced by a car in a day.”

“Of all domestic animal types, beef and dairy cattle were by far the largest emitters of [methane],” according to an EPA analysis charting greenhouse gas emissions in 2012. Cows and other animals produce methane through digestion, which ferments the food of animals.

“During digestion, microbes resident in an animal’s digestive system ferment food consumed by the animal,” the EPA notes. “This microbial fermentation process, referred to as enteric fermentation, produces [methane] as a byproduct, which can be exhaled or eructated by the animal.”

It’s not just the dairy industry that the Obama administration is clamping down on. The White House is looking to regulate methane emissions across the economy from agriculture to oil and gas operations — all this despite methane emissions falling 11 percent since 1990.
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Methane emissions have largely been reduced because of the incentive for companies to capture it and sell it for monetary gain. Oil and gas companies, for example, have been looking for ways to increasingly capture methane leaked from drilling operations which they can then sell.

“The industry has led efforts to reduce emissions of methane by developing new technologies and equipment, and recent studies show emissions are far lower than EPA projected just a few years ago,” said Howard Feldman, head of scientific and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute. “Additional regulations are not necessary and could have a chilling effect on the American energy renaissance, our economy, and our national security.”

“Methane is natural gas that operators can bring to the market,” he added. “There is a built-in incentive to capture these emissions.”

Environmentalists have been pushing the Obama administration to crack down on methane emissions for some time, arguing that they drive global warming and pollute the air and water. Activists have argued that the methane leakage rate from natural gas operations is 50 percent higher than the EPA estimates.

“President Obama’s plan to reduce climate-disrupting methane pollution is an important step in reining in an out of control industry exempt from too many public health protections,” Deborah Nardone, campaign director of the Sierra Club’s Keeping Dirty Fuels in the Ground campaign. “However, even with the most rigorous methane controls and monitoring in place, we will still fall short of what is needed to fight climate disruption if we do not reduce our reliance on these dirty fossil fuels.”

Republicans and the oil and gas industry argue that the methane leakage rate has been estimated to be 50 times lower than the EPA’s estimate. The GOP argues that the EPA’s estimate is simply an attack on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

“The EPA has been on a witch hunt to shut down hydraulic fracturing, and yet again the evidence doesn’t back up their excessive claims,” said Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter. “All too often we see the Agency using flawed science for political purposes, but this report – partially funded by environmental activists no less – shows EPA’s emissions estimates from hydraulic fracturing are way off.”

gypsy

gypsy
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:rotflslap:  still laughing. I pray they stop fracking to many hazardous accidents, and mishaps from people not doing their job..correctly.

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More success with fracking than damages and to worry about cow farts and belches...lmao only this administration could possibly come up with this.

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Networks Blame Wildfires, Droughts on Climate Change, Despite Fact They’ve Declined

By Sean Long | June 5, 2014

Hot-headed climate alarmists continue to make wilder and wilder claims about the effects of global warming, but they often desert the actual evidence.

On June 2, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a new plan to restrict carbon emissions in an attempt to combat climate change. This move came less than a month after the White House released a high-profile report fear-mongering over the impacts of climate change, including wild fires and droughts.

Over the past three months, the broadcast networks have fretted over increased wild fires and worsening droughts, while blaming both on man-made climate change. Despite this hysteria, recent analyses reveal a decline in the frequency of wildfires and droughts in the United States.

ABC, CBS and NBC connected “hundred-year forest fires” and “periods of severe drought” to climate change in 23 morning and evening shows between March 1 and June 1. They never questioned the hypothesis that these incidents were caused by climate change

Instead, reporters warned that “something is very dangerously happening with the weather,” but scientific and historical evidence revealed that neither droughts nor fires are increasing due to man-made climate change.

Throughout these 23 stories, the networks regularly interviewed or played clips of famous climate alarmists, such as President Barack Obama and scientists like Michael Oppenheimer and Heidi Cullen. Each network accepted and promoted alarmist claims, especially hyping major reports pushing a global warming agenda.

Journalists consistently made over the top claims. For example on May 18, NBC “Nightly News” correspondent Joe Fryer claimed that “for the first time, all of California is in a serious drought or worse.” Ironically, there is evidence that this “historical” California drought is far from unique. Similarly, CBS’ Charles Osgood, on May 11’s “Sunday Morning,” wondered “whether the dust bowl is really so far away and so long ago after all.”

On May 6, the White House released its Third U.S. National Climate Assessment which purported to “confirm that climate change is affecting Americans in every region of the United States.” The administration claimed that “drought and increased warming foster wildfires,” and the networks immediately promoted this claim.

While reporting on these findings, the broadcast networks were uniformly sympathetic to the government’s position. NBC’s Al Roker, on May 7’s “Today,” cited the report as detailing “wildfires burning more often with less water on hand to put them out. And on the heels of America’s warmest decade, more heat waves and periods of severe drought. All these symptoms set to grow more severe.”

ABC also pushed the assessment with May 6’s “World News” correspondent Ginger Zee saying “it means more heat waves and exceptional drought, bringing those wildfires. All of it, according to the National Climate Assessment report, is from the impact of a warming planet.”

Overall, the networks spent over 27 minutes on this report in the 24 hours after it was released. But contrary to this hype, even the report’s fine print undermined the propaganda. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the National Climate Assessment admitted, “There has been no universal trend in the overall extent of droughts across the continental U.S. since 1900.”

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released another installment of its Fifth Assessment Report, the networks rushed to repeat its claims that “drought frequency will likely increase.”

On March 31, ABC “World News” correspondent Jim Avila said “today’s ominous report, blaming the increase in extreme weather on global warming. Here in America, more wildfires, intense burns like this one in Colorado.” He also connected it with a “devastating drought in the American West.”

That morning, on CBS’ “This Morning,” Michio Kaku, an alarmist climate scientist, predicted “hundred–year droughts, hundred-year forest fires” and said “something is very dangerously happening with the weather.

Evidence Undermines Media Hype

Unfortunately for the media and climate alarmists, there is little evidence that droughts and wildfires are increasing due to man-made global warming. In fact, recent research both disputes the connection to climate change and reveals more intense periods of droughts and fires when carbon dioxide levels were much lower.

Writing for Forbes Magazine, James Taylor pointed out that, “2013 was one of the quietest wildfire years in U.S. history.” He cited the National Interagency Fire Center, which lists the number of forest fires each year since 1960. This data showed that 2013 had the fewest forest fires during this period. Taylor said, “From 1962 through 1982, for example, at least 100,000 wildfires occurred in the United States every year” but after 1982 “not a single year has registered 100,000 wildfires.”

Historically, the United States was struck by severe fires even before carbon dioxide reached current levels. In fact, the two largest fires in American history, according to the Weather Underground occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A Wisconsin fire in 1871, “the single worst wild fire in U.S. history,” burned almost 3.8 million acres and killed 1,500 people. The second-worst was a 1910 fire in Idaho and Montana that killed 87 people and destroyed 3 million acres. By contrast all 47,579 fires in 2013 destroyed only 4.3 million acres, a mean average of 90.79 acres per fire.

In fact, geological records bolster the evidence that earlier fires were more frequent. A 2009 analysis by R.M. Beaty and A.H. Taylor examined charcoal records in northern California to study wildfires over thousands of years. They found that “current fire episode frequency is at one of its lowest points in at least the last 14,000 years.”

Similar evidence challenged the connection between climate change and droughts. Roger Pielke Jr., an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, posted a graph on his blog on May 22. This data showed a slight decrease in global drought since 1982, based on a 2013 publication in Nature which monitored “historical drought severity data.”

This information is not surprising, given historical evidence that Californian droughts, at least, used to be much worse. The San Jose Mercury News reported in January that “studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence” have revealed “severe megadroughts [that] make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame.” In fact, Scott Stine, an environmental studies professor at California State University, East Bay, studied tree ring data and found that while 2013 was a very dry year, this past century “has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years.”

Further evidence has found that periods of drought and rainfall in California fluctuate naturally over time. According to the Heartland Institute’s Climate Change Reconsidered II, current Western droughts can be explained by natural variability. A group of researchers led by J.A. Kleppe found in 2011 that “dry conditions have occurred regularly, in cyclical fashion, ‘every 650-1150 years,” suggesting “there is nothing unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented about the nature of [Californian] drought.”

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/sean-long/2014/06/05/networks-blame-wildfires-droughts-climate-change-despite-fact-they-ve-dec#ixzz33oT5fNi9

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