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Better for states not to comply with the EPA’s plans than to go along and absolve the feds of accountability for the mess. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) set off a firestorm recently when he advised states not to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Yet that advice isn’t as radical as his detractors make it sound. As a state public utilities commissioner who deals with the effects of federal regulations on a regular basis, I also recommend that states not comply. ... While the short-term effects may be painful, the long-term consequences of submitting...

The Washington Post Energy and Environment Obama to visit Florida Everglades on Earth Day — to talk about climate change Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google Plus Share via Email Share on WhatsappShare on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Tumblr Resize Text Print Article Comments 4 By Chris Mooney April 18 at 6:20 AM A bird flies over the sensitive ecological landscape of the Everglades National Park, home to many endangered and rare plants on March 16, 2015 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Saturday morning, President Obama gave a speech on climate change...

A new study debunks the theory that melting permafrost in the Arctic region will release a “carbon bomb” that will cause catastrophic global warming. “The data from our team’s syntheses don’t support the permafrost carbon bomb view,” A. David McGuire, a climate scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, said in a statement. News reports have hyped up the study saying melting Arctic permafrost could release lots of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere — only adding to worries that global warming will get out of control....

American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) is preparing to close six coal-fired power plants in four states on May 31 to comply with stricter federal emissions standards. Columbus, Ohio-based AEP recently gave notices of the closures to the states and to workers at the Philip Sporn, Kammer and Kanawha Valley plants in West Virginia, the Muskingum River Plant in Ohio, the Tanners Creek Plant in Indiana and the Glen Lyn Plant in Virginia. The notices are required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. More than 250 workers will be affected by the plant shutdowns, which were announced by...

Next they'll be banning singing in the 5-minute-or-less-shower. Singing in the shower blots out the sounds of jet engines overhead transporting carbon footprint Sasquatch to their next jet stop Overlooked in the Barack and Michelle Obama same-day separate flights to L.A.: Their indelible Sasquatch carbon footprints. “President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama flew to Los Angeles on Thursday for TV appearances but took separate flights, collectively costing taxpayers at least $1 million. (FoxNews. March 15, 2015) “The president went to appear live on comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show on ABC, while the first lady went to Warner Bros.’ studios...

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival is happening now in Austin, Texas. Running from March 9 to 22, it’s a massive film, interactive and music festival that is nearly 20 years old. The festival brings together designers, developers, investors, entrepreneurs and politicians for panels and discussions about technology and innovation. For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to “punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should...

Buckybomb shows potential power of nanoscale explosives Mar 05, 2015 by Lisa Zyga Enlarge Molecular configuration of an exploding buckybomb. Credit: ACS (Phys.org)—Scientists have simulated the explosion of a modified buckminsterfullerene molecule (C60), better known as a buckyball, and shown that the reaction produces a tremendous increase in temperature and pressure within a fraction of a second. The nanoscale explosive, which the scientists nickname a "buckybomb," belongs to the emerging field of high-energy nanomaterials that could have a variety of military and industrial applications. The researchers, Vitaly V. Chaban, Eudes Eterno Fileti, and Oleg V. Prezhdo at the University of...

A short paper recently released by the Heritage Foundation takes a look at the expected manufacturing job losses as a result of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. Predictably, they are significant. Using a social cost of carbon (SCC) equal to $37 per ton, the Heritage Energy Model (HEM) was used to determine the economic impact such climate regulations would have on the U.S. economy down to the state and, most interestingly, even to a congressional district level. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Rust Belt, home to what remains of the country’s once dominant industrial sector, can expect to see the largest losses...

Global Warming is real and is definitely caused by human-produced carbon . . . pencil lead, that is....adjustments are the dominant factor in the global warming trend....The obvious intent of adjustments is to create the illusion of a dramatic global warming signal in recent times.

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.