Free Republic

In December 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency released new Clean Air Act “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.” Once again, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson touted the supposedly huge benefits of controlling emissions of mercury (Hg) and other air toxics from U.S. coal- and oil-fired power plants (or electric generating units, EGUs). The people of Idaho may welcome this new rule, since EPA’s miraculous modeling machine has promised to prevent “six premature deaths” and create “up to $54 million” in health benefits by 2016 – even though not one coal-fired EGU in Idaho fits the EPA’s final rules. Even the...

The is the first in a multi-part series of articles exposing the lies and misinformation behind legislation mandating the replacement of incandescent light bulbs with potentially unsafe compact florescent light (CFL) bulbs. ------- According to provisions of legislation passed by congress in 2007, the 100-watt incandescent bulb was to be off the shelves this January, followed by a phase-out of the 75-watt version in January 2013 and the 60- and 40-watt versions in January 2014. But last month congress granted consumers a reprieve by including in its spending bill a measure delaying enforcement of the ban until the end of...

By Kirk Myers, Seminole County Environmental News Examiner This article, the second in a series, focuses on the misleading performance claims surrounding the “more energy efficient” compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs now replacing traditional incandescent bulbs. These potentially harmful mercury-filled lamps (see my previous column describing the dangers) are being forced on consumers by the U.S. congress with support from the Green Lobby and light-bulb manufacturers like GE, Sylvania and Phillips. These and other manufacturers stand to make huge profits selling the more expensive CFLs (more on that issue in my next column). There is a growing body of evidence...

Scientists have uncovered a lot about the Earth's greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago when rapid climate change wiped out nearly all marine species and a majority of those on land. Now, they have discovered a new culprit likely involved in the annihilation: an influx of mercury into the eco-system. "No one had ever looked to see if mercury was a potential culprit. This was a time of the greatest volcanic activity in Earth's history and we know today that the largest source of mercury comes from volcanic eruptions," says Dr. Steve Grasby, co-author of a...

To understand how the Environmental Protection Agency operates, one must first understand that it lies all the time. Its “estimates” are bogus. Its claims of lives saved are bogus. It thrives on scare-mongering to a public that is science-challenged, but the science remains and the EPA must be challenged to save the nation from the loss of the energy it needs to function. It must be challenged to unleash the huge economic benefits of energy resources—coal, oil, and natural gas—that can reverse our present economic decline. The latest outrage is the MACT rule—an acronym for “maximum achievable control technology” intended...

A rider attached to the omnibus spending bill that will keep the government running through September 30 of next year contains language that would prevent the EPA from enforcing the ban on incandescent light bulbs. But this is only a short respite, as this Politico article explains: DOE's light bulb rules - authorized under a 2007 energy law authored signed by President George W. Bush - would start going into effect Jan. 1. The rider will prevent DOE from implementing the rules through Sept. 30. But Democrats said they could claim a "compromise" by adding language to the omnibus that...

Congressional negotiators struck a deal Thursday that overturns the new rules that were to have banned sales of traditional incandescent light bulbs beginning next year.That agreement is tucked inside the massive 1,200-page spending bill that funds the government through the rest of this fiscal year, and which both houses of Congress will vote on Friday. Mr. Obama is expected to sign the bill, which heads off a looming government shutdown.Congressional Republicans dropped almost all of the policy restrictions they tried to attach to the bill, but won inclusion of the light bulb provision, which prevents the Obama administration from carrying...

Compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, have been counted on to light the way to a more energy-efficient future. Compared to traditional incandescent bulbs, which will gradually be phased out starting in January, CFLs use about a fifth the power and have a life six to 10 times as great. However, since the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission launched its online safety complaints database in March, there have been 34 reports made by people about CFLs that emitted smoke or a burning odor and four reports of the devices catching fire. As perspective, though, 272 million CFLs were sold in 2009...

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency issued emission standards tightening the rules surrounding the output of mercury and other harmful pollutants. These standards will have the practical effect of making natural gas relatively more attractive than coal for electricity generation since coal-burning plants require the installation of expensive “scrubbers” to clean the emissions they generate. Converting older plants to operate more cleanly often fails to make economic sense and as a result new power plants are increasingly burning natural gas. The Wall Street Journal noted this in an article on Friday. .. But the longer term outlook is increasingly positive....

The EPA thinks it's worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone's homes?

The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil highly-anticipated regulations on Wednesday aimed at curbing mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants. The agency said Tuesday that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will make a “significant Clean Air Act announcement” Wednesday at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC. A source closely following the issue confirmed to The Hill that the agency will unveil the final mercury and air toxics standards. Jackson will be joined at the event Wednesday afternoon by public health experts and industry representatives, EPA said. But the agency did not name the officials. The long-delayed...

Every day, Care2 members are my inspiration to tackle challenges. You have shown that when we all band together to create change, we can accomplish amazing things. Over the years I've asked you to take on huge issues, and today I am asking you to take on one of the world's biggest problems -- dirty coal energy that poisons the environment, and us. My children are healthy, which I am grateful for every day. But those of us who live near coal plants or down-stream from a waste site may not be so fortunate. Just because of the food we...

Is a giant, cloaked spaceship orbiting around Mercury? That's been the speculation from some corners aftera camera onboard NASA's STEREO spacecraft caught a wave of electronically charged material shooting out from the sun and hitting Mercury. Theorists have seized on the images captured from the "coronal mass ejection" (CME) last week as suggestive of alien life hanging out in our own cosmic backyard. Specifically, the solar flare washing over Mercury appears to hit another object of comparable size. "It's cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very...

Durham Crematorium wants to install turbines in two of its burners, which would use the heat generated during the cremation process to provide the same amount of electricity as would power 1,500 televisions. A third burner is to be used to provide heating for the site's chapel and its offices. The scheme would be the first of its kind in the UK but industry experts say that it could be followed by other similar projects. Many crematoria are currently replacing their furnaces, to meet government targets on preventing mercury emissions from escaping into the atmosphere. Up to 16 per cent...

Hot and heavy little Mercury is warming up to NASA's MESSENGER probe and revealing its true planetary colors -- in enhanced-color images. Among the spacecraft's finds are bizarre landforms (shown here in blue) tucked inside impact craters on the planet's surface. David Blewett of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and his colleagues report these puzzling scarlike hollows in the Sept. 30 Science, which features seven papers describing the compact world. The pits resemble sunken Swiss cheese holes -- smooth, rimless depressions that vary in size between several meters and a few kilometers across. Irregularly shaped, the clustered hollows...

Mercury's Fading Magnetic Field Fits Creation Model by Brian Thomas, M.S. | Oct. 26, 2011 Planets, including the earth, generate magnetic fields that encompass the space around them. Observations have shown that, like earth's, the planet Mercury's magnetic field is rapidly breaking down, and NASA's Messenger spacecraft confirmed that again earlier this year. If the planets in the solar system are billions of years old, why do these magnetic fields still exist? In 1974 and 1975, the Mariner 10 spacecraft measured Mercury's magnetic field strength with its onboard magnetometer and sent the data to earth. The astronomers analyzing the data...

Explanation: One solar day on a planet is the length of time from noon to noon. A solar day lasts 24 hours on planet Earth. On Mercury a solar day is about 176 Earth days long. And during its first Mercury solar day in orbit the MESSENGER spacecraft has imaged nearly the entire surface of the innermost planet to generate a global monochrome map at 250 meters per pixel resolution and a 1 kilometer per pixel resolution color map. Examples of the maps, mosaics constructed from thousands of images made under uniform lighting conditions, are shown (monochrome at left), both...

Washington, D.C.—Only six months into its Mercury orbit, the tiny MESSENGER spacecraft has shown scientists that Mercury doesn't conform to theory. Its surface material composition differs in important ways from both those of the other terrestrial planets and expectations prior to the MESSENGER mission, calling into question current theories for Mercury's formation. Its magnetic field is unlike any other in the Solar System, and there are huge expanses of volcanic plains surrounding the north polar region of the planet and cover more than 6% of Mercury's surface. These findings and other surprises are revealed in seven papers in a special...

Ford says it will create 170 jobs in the next two years at two of its plants near Detroit, as the automaker seeks to bring battery-pack manufacturing and hybrid-transmission assembling for its next line of pure electric cars and hybrids to the U.S., a report says. According to the Associated Press, Ford will invest $10 million in its Ypsilanti factory to build battery packs, resulting in around 40 new jobs. These battery packs are currently being assembled in Mexico by Delphi. Ford hasn't revealed the identity of the supplier who will be providing the company with advanced lithium-ion battery cells,...

The great recession hit the automotive industry hard — so hard in fact — five famous auto brands ceased to introduce any more cars. Most of these brands were axed after Rick Wagoner, then CEO of GM, was asked to step down at the behest of the Obama administration (See: Government Forces Out Wagoner at GM). For many brand-loyalists, the fall of these brands represent a sad day — watch the videos for first hand testimony and interviews. VIEW THE FIVE CAR BRANDS...