Free Republic

BREAKING: House bill unveiled late Friday cuts EPA budget by $3 billion, blocks funding for all current and pending EPA climate regulations for stationary CO2 source The Hill E2 wire reports:House GOP spending bill prohibits funding for EPA climate regsBy Andrew Restuccia - 02/11/11 07:33 PM ET A government spending bill unveiled Friday night by House Republicans would prohibit funding for Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations through September of this year.The continuing resolution, which would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, is the latest attempt by Republicans to stop EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Republicans...

Oh this is delicious sweet irony…they adopted a plan but didn’t bother to make a complete environmental review like any other project in the state is required to do. That’s what they get for ramrodding the thing. From the:Calif. cap-trade plan dealt blow by S.F. judgeWyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento BureauFriday, February 4, 2011(02-04) 04:00 PST Sacramento - –The California Air Resources Board violated state environmental law in 2008 when it adopted a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse gases and again last year when it passed cap-and-trade regulations, a San Francisco Superior Court judge has ruled in a tentative decision. If...

This is a Guest Post by Dr David EvansThe big temperature picture. Graph and insight from Dr Syun Akasofu (2009 International Conference on Climate Change, New York, March 2009).The global temperature has been rising at a steady trend rate of 0.5°C per century since the depths of the little ice age in the 1700s (when the Thames River would freeze over every winter; the last time it froze over was 1804). On top of the trend are oscillations that last about thirty years in each direction:1882 – 1910    Cooling 1910 – 1944    Warming 1944 – 1975    Cooling 1975 – 2001   ...

Sacramento -- The California Air Resources Board violated state environmental law in 2008 when it adopted a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse gases and again last year when it passed cap-and-trade regulations, a San Francisco Superior Court judge has ruled in a tentative decision. If the decision is made final, California would be barred from implementing its ambitious plan to combat global warming until it complies with portions of the California Environmental Quality Act, though it's not yet clear what the air board would have to do to be in compliance. The state's plan, which implements AB32, the Global Warming...

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in the House of Representatives intend to try to prohibit the U.S. environmental agency from regulating greenhouse gases, officials said, in a sharp challenge to the Obama administration. Officials said legislation to be offered Wednesday would nullify all of the steps the Environmental Protection Agency has taken on the issue, including its finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health.In addition, it seeks to strip the agency of its authority in attempts to crack down on emissions from factories, utilities and other sources. Numerous House Republicans already have introduced legislation that would hamstring the agency from moving forward...

House GOP Readies Ban on EPA Greenhouse Gas RegulationsPublished February 02, 2011 Associated Press WASHINGTON – In a sharp challenge to the Obama administration, House Republicans intend to unveil legislation Wednesday to ban the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and expect to advance the bill quickly, officials disclosed Tuesday night. The officials said the bill would nullify all of the steps the EPA has taken to date on the issue, including a threshold finding that greenhouse gases constitute a danger to the public health and welfare. In addition, it seeks to strip the...

Eleven Republican senators introduced a bill that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, which scientists blame for global warming, without explicit approval by Congress. Under Obama, the federal agency has steadily increased standards on gas emissions. The Republicans accused Obama of circumventing Congress, where a so-called "cap-and-trade" bill to mandate emission curbs died last year. "My bill will shrink Washington's job-crushing agenda and grow America's economy," said Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming and skeptic of climate change who is leading the effort. "I will do whatever it takes to ensure that Washington doesn't impose...

GOP sees looming 2012 elections as key to blocking climate rulesBy Andrew Restuccia - 01/30/11 07:41 PM ET Republicans are banking on the looming 2012 election to provide a political boost for their efforts to undercut the Environmental Protection Agency's pending climate change rules this year. While a bill blocking EPA’s climate authority is likely to pass the House, the legislation faces an uphill battle in the Democrat-controlled Senate, as well as a potential veto from President Obama. Still, Republicans are planning to push forward with the legislation, hoping that the threat of the 2012 elections will yield support from...

The EU carbon market is in trouble again. Shucks.  Who would have guessed?Hackers have created so much disarray the EU market has been shut down. (Reuters) – The European Commission has frozen spot carbon trade in its 72 billion euro ($97.1 billion) emissions trading scheme after carbon permits were allegedly stolen. [Reuters] A market based on an unmeasurable entity — an atmospheric nullity that-might-have-been-worse  — was asking for trouble. It’s not that the market has loopholes, it is a loophole. Offering an infinite array of ways to cheat, guarantees the crooks will come. “Lead us Not into Temptation” ought to...

Last night’s State of the Union Address shows that President Obama learned only one lesson from the failure that was Copenhagen, the farce that was Cancun, the death of cap-and-trade, and the “slaughter” of House Democrats who voted for Waxman-Markey. Namely, dissemble, repackage Kyotoism in new verbiage, and press on with an agenda that voters rejected in November. Anyone paying attention to Obama EPA’s campaign to ‘legislate’ climate policy through the regulatory backdoor would expect as much. But — true confession — I was surprised when Obama proposed to restructure the U.S. electric power sector along the lines contemplated by H.R. 2454, the American Clean...

The European carbon market has been thrown into turmoil after the scandal-hit scheme was suspended for a week over suspicions of fraud. More than €2bn (£1.7bn) of trade is likely to be disrupted after the European Commission said it would prevent transactions until January 26. The suspension follows allegations that 475,000 carbon credits worth €7m were stolen in a hacking attack on the Czech carbon register. It appears that the intangible allowances were bounced between eastern European countries before disappearing without a trace. France's Bluenext exchange was the first to close its platform, while Austria, Poland, Estonia and Greece also...

After failing to get climate-change legislation through Congress, the Obama administration plans on pushing through its environmental policies through other means, and Republicans are ready to put up a fight. On Jan. 2, new carbon emissions limits will be put forward as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares regulations that would force companies to get permits to release greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Critics say the new rules are a backdoor effort to enact the president's agenda on global warming without the support of Congress, and would hurt the economy and put jobs in jeopardy by forcing companies to...

And so it begins, and on the most fertile red-state territory in the nation. Texas, which got four more seats in the House through the 2010 Census reapportionment, has had its air-quality rules superceded by the EPA as part of its aggressive new action on carbon emissions. Governor Rick Perry promises a fight: The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday effectively declared Texas unfit to regulate its owngreenhouse gas emissions and took over carbon dioxide permitting of any new or expanding industrial facilities starting Jan. 2.The EPA also set up a framework for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in seven other...

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Ryan Maue EPA Agrees to Limit Emissions From Power Plants, Refineries From the NY Times:  the headline would make it sound like there was some sort of debate going on inside the EPA…First paragraph:  “Threatened with lawsuits from environmental groups, the Obama administration has agreed to issue another round of greenhouse gas limits for both power plants and refineries — this time through a provision of the Clean Air Act that allows U.S. EPA to require pollution controls at both new and existing facilities.” I’m sure the Obama administration was quaking in its boots...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -In another sign of the desperation European finance ministers are dealing with headed into 2011, Spain has taken a step that many solar industry watchers thought was unthinkable: retroactively lowering feed-in tariff rates.Ever since the problems across the Euro zone became evident in 2010, Spanish politicians have raised the issue of retroactively lowering solar subsidies. Some argued that the move would be illegal, others that it simply wasn't possible in any rational decision-making process that took into account the fact that Spain approved the FIT structure years ago, and solar project economics were developed based on specific...

California hasn’t learned from the failure of the Chicago Climate Exchange this year, when a ton of Carbon traded for a mere 5 cents. Nobody wanted to buy it even at that ridiculously low price. But, like a zombie, carbon trading rises again in brain dead broken California.final day on CCX - click to enlarge Now the the AB32 madness begins, and PCarbX (which sounds like some over the counter antacid remedy) is the new trading scheme. I give it two years, max. Here’s the story from the San Francisco Chronicle.California poised to enter carbon-trading marketAndrew S. Ross Today could...

As if Barack Obama didn’t have enough trouble with the progressive revolt this week after the tax compromise, the New York Times reports today on another retreat that will have Obama’s base even further outraged.  Until now, the EPA had threatened to go around a hostile Congress to enforce Obama’s goals on greenhouse-gas emissions, perhaps going as far as to pursue a de facto carbon cap.  Suddenly, after the disastrous midterms, the EPA wants more time to study the science first: The Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial...

Cancun is hosting the U.N. conference on man-made climate change — amid record cold temperaturesBest Opinion:  Wall St. Pit, Independent The irony: As negotiators from nearly 200 countries met in Cancun to strategize ways to keep the planet from getting hotter, the temperature in the seaside Mexican city plunged to a 100-year record low of 54° F. Climate-change skeptics are gleefully calling Cancun's weather the latest example of the "Gore Effect" — a plunge in temperature they say occurs wherever former Vice President Al Gore, now a Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist, makes a speech about the climate. Although Gore is...

California's effort to cap carbon emissions by gasoline refiners, utilities and other large polluters will have little impact on consumers and businesses in the state while creating up to 623,000 new jobs over the next decade, according to a new report. Next 10, a San Francisco nonprofit group that supports green technology, estimated the state's cap-and-trade program will increase electricity costs by an average of 2.3 percent percent to 4.1 percent per household by the year 2020. The forecast – which comes a week before the California Air Resources Board's will vote on whether to approve the new rules for...

The abdication of the WestFrom The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Cancun, Mexico, Dec 9th, 2010I usually add some gentle humor to these reports. Not today. Read this and weep. Notwithstanding the carefully-orchestrated propaganda to the effect that nothing much will be decided at the UN climate conference here in Cancun, the decisions to be made here this week signal nothing less than the abdication of the West. The governing class in what was once proudly known as the Free World is silently, casually letting go of liberty, prosperity, and even democracy itself. No one in the mainstream media will tell...