Free Republic

7000 ft below the city of Decatur, Illinois, population 74,710 people, is a high pressure reservoir which contains 1 million tons of CO2. From the press release: "One of the largest carbon sequestration projects in the U.S., the Illinois Basin – Decatur Project (IBDP) has reached its goal of capturing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and injecting it deep underground in the Mount Simon Sandstone formation beneath Decatur, Illinois. The project is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of carbon capture and storage. IBDP director Robert Finley talked about the million-ton milestone with News Bureau physical sciences editor Liz...

‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” The Bard was right, and it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that we have reached just such a point. We have a unique opportunity to end the rancorous debate about climate change, a debate that is poisoning the air — the political air, that is — and inhibiting progress on two fronts: progress on addressing the possibility that we are on the road to...

The Doom message version 48.2a (subclause i) has been released.Forget methane clathrate pits, now extra plant growth (blame CO2) could cause  global soil to unleash massive amounts of carbon.Carbon dioxide (aka “pollution”) feeds plants. This is bad (didn’t you know?). An all new “first” computer model with plants, soil, and fungus, warns us that more plants could get soil microbes excited which might break down more soil carbon and release it into the air. Disaster! It’s a could-be-might-be-catastrophe. (At  least until paragraph 6 — see that caveat below).In the meantime this is is so big, it’s practically nuclear — the...

Craig — Monday is the deadline to submit comments to the Environmental Protection Agency concerning the proposed Clean Energy Plan that aims to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. The next step is for the federal government to review submitted statements made during the past several months in order to make a final ruling on the plan by June. Originally, the deadline was Oct. 15, but it was extended to Monday after the EPA received nearly 750,000 comments before the first deadline, according to the EPA. Northwest Colorado houses two coal-fired power plants, Craig Station in Moffat County and...

Motorists are about to get drafted into California’s war on climate change. Starting Jan. 1, gas and diesel fuel will be subject to California’s cap-and-trade market, a 2-year-old regulatory mechanism that puts a price on carbon spewed into the atmosphere. The result will be higher gasoline and diesel prices, and probably more controversy for a state program that’s already been attacked in the courts by the business community.

Fresh off their legislative victory against the Keystone XL pipeline, Democratic senators are pushing a bill that would tax carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels that would rise every year. Democrats argue it would raise $2 trillion, which could be used for things like paying down the national debt or funding green energy production. The tax would be levied on fossil fuels produced domestically or imported in the U.S. and cover large emitting facilities, possibly power plants or refineries. “Right now we are subsidizing big polluters to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars annually by allowing them to...

He’s the Staller in Chief — President Obama has punted almost every hot-button issue past the key midterm elections on Nov. 4. Obama has postponed decisions on a raft of contentious issues related to ObamaCare, Gitmo, immigration and his Cabinet. This is partly to protect Democratic candidates and hold onto the Senate. But it’s more than that. Obama plans a number of radical moves later this year when the administration believes the media, and the public, are paying less attention. This includes a forced transformation of our neighborhoods, a huge influx of immigrants and billions of dollars in additional taxes....

We’ve had plenty of time for the discussion of the EPA’s new green energy initiatives and carbon restrictions to sink in to the American collective consciousness. (Even if it does get shoved out of the news on a daily basis.) It’s also been made clear that these regulations are going to affect the available energy pool on the grid and exert upward pressure on retail prices for fuel, heating and electricity. The greater goal, we are told, is to reduce the nation’s overall carbon footprint and, presumably, improve the climate change situation. So how generous is the public feeling about...

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-10-21/gore-to-stand-in-at-udall-fundraiser

Global climate models have underestimated the amount of CO2 being absorbed by plants, according to new research. Scientists say that between 1901 and 2010, living things absorbed 16% more of the gas than previously thought.

(CNSNews.com) - The United Mine Workers of America held a rally Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to protest Environmental Protection Agency regulations that they claim would destroy the nation’s coal industry and coal-related jobs while doing nothing to address climate change. On Tuesday, current and retired workers convened at Freedom Plaza, then marched to EPA offices to protest EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan, part of President Obama’s larger climate-change agenda, which aims to cut carbon pollution by imposing state-by-state emissions standards and fines for failure to meet those standards. CNSNews.com asked protesters, “If you could tell President Obama anything about these...

UN-backed event ends with unusual call from civil society groups to end capitalism A UN-backed conference in Venezuela has ended with a declaration to scrap carbon markets and reject the green economy. The Margarita Declaration was issued at the end of a four-day meeting of around 130 green activist groups, which the Venezuelan government hosted in order to raise the volume of civil society demands in UN discussions on climate change. “The structural causes of climate change are linked to the current capitalist hegemonic system,” the final declaration said. “To combat climate change it is necessary to change the system.”...

In the wake of increasingly successful divestment actions aimed at carbon-producing industries, coal has turned into the new tobacco. While even natural gas mining has its vocal supporters despite the dangers of fracking, the supporters of coal are shrinking as the “clean coal” touted by candidates of both political parties looks more and more like an oxymoron. But what about the people who live in coal country? What is happening to them as the institutional investors withdraw their assets from the companies topping the Carbon 200 list? As institutional investors including foundations pull their assets out of coal, are foundations...

Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Udall’s (Colo.) wife called for a carbon tax while appearing in a new anti-oil video produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. “People are ready for conversation,” says Maggie Fox, Udall’s wife and former president of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, in the Green World Rising video, entitled, “Carbon.” “They’re ready to understand that carbon pollution is causing this challenge and that there is a simple solution: put a price on carbon pollution,” she says. DiCaprio is releasing a series of environmentalist videos on climate change, the first focusing on gathering support for a cap and trade system. A...

For the first time ever, the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity in the United States has broken through the 14-cent mark, climbing to a record 14.3 cents in June. ... Back in June 1984, the seasonally adjusted price index for electricity was 103.9—less than half what it was in June 2014. Electricity prices have not always risen in the United States. The BLS has published an annual electricity price index dating back to 1913. It shows that from that year through 1947, the price of electricity in the United States generally trended down, with the index dropping...

As the Obama administration weans the U.S. off dirty fuels blamed for global warming, energy companies have been sending more of America's unwanted energy leftovers to other parts of the world where they could create even more pollution. This fossil fuel trade threatens to undermine President Barack Obama's strategy for reducing the gases blamed for climate change and reveals a little-discussed side effect of countries acting alone on a global problem. The contribution of this exported pollution to global warming is not something the administration wants to measure, or even talk about.

On July 8 I received the Climate Science Whistleblower Award at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute and other cosponsoring organizations held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The following are remarks I prepared for my acceptance statement:~~snip~~I wrote my negative comments on the Endangerment Finding support document because I believed EPA was using bad science ... But it is very encouraging to find that others agree with my decision to do so, which EPA clearly did not. My offending comments to EPA led to my being immediately muzzled at the same time that Obama was...

The Stunning Key That Could Unlock 160 Billion Barrels of Oil Trapped Underneath America By Matt DiLallo | More Articles July 20, 2014 | Comments (0)  Photo credit: Flickr/Melissa  It is estimated that there are 160 billion barrels of oil still trapped underneath this country in what are considered depleted oil fields. That's a tremendous amount of oil given that America uses about seven billion barrels of it each year. In fact, if we could only find the key to unlock this trapped oil we could extend fleeting our reserves by more than 22 years.That's why it probably comes as a surprise...

People who claim to worry about climate change use more electricity than those who do not, a Government study has found. Those who say they are concerned about the prospect of climate change consume more energy than those who say it is “too far into the future to worry about,” the study commissioned by the Department for Energy and Climate Change found. That is in part due to age, as people over 65 are more frugal with electricity but much less concerned about global warming. However, even when pensioners are discounted, there is only a “weak trend” to show that...

Can you imagine telling the IRS you don’t need to complete all their forms or provide records to back up your claim for a tax refund? Or saying your company’s assurances that its medical products are safe and effective should satisfy the FDA? Especially if some of your data don’t actually support your claims—or you “can’t find” key data, research and other records, because your hard drive conveniently crashed? But, you tell them, people you paid to review your information said it’s accurate, so there’s no problem. Do you suppose the government would accept your assurance that there’s “not a...