First US greenhouse gas auction set for Sept. 25

Albany, N.Y. (AP) -- Connecticut and nine other northeastern states this week will take steps to check global warming by conducting the nation's first carbon auction.

Environmental groups, energy producers, and government leaders will be watching closely as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative sells carbon credits in the first of a series of quarterly online auctions. The cap-and-trade greenhouse gas reduction program, which aims to hold carbon dioxide emissions steady through 2014 and then gradually reduce them, is widely viewed as a model for future programs around the globe.

The approach is patterned after the acid rain-reducing program targeting sulfur dioxide that began with a New York law in 1984 and was expanded nationally with amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990.

RGGI caps the total amount of carbon that power plants in the 10-state region can pump out of their smokestacks at the current level -- 188 million tons. Electric power generators must pay for allowances covering the amount of carbon they emit and RGGI will provide a market-based auction and trading system where the generators can buy, sell and trade the emissions allowances.

The initiative aims to gradually reduce carbon going into the atmosphere by lowering the cap in several steps, until it is 10 percent below the current level in 2018. During that 10-year span, businesses will have to reduce their emissions. Those that can't, because of cost or technical hurdles, can buy allowances from companies that have achieved cleaner emissions.

Networks Wrong On Global Warming Again; Arctic Ice Still There

"So much for the media hype about Arctic ice disappearing this summer.

Less than three months ago, NBC’s Anne Thompson was warning ominously of ice loss. “But this summer, some scientists say that ice could retreat so dramatically that open water covers the North Pole, so much so that you could sail across it.”

Both are still with us – the ice and the hype. According to a September 16 National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) report, such predictions were off by 1.74 million square miles.

NSIDC reported ice loss was less than in 2007. “On September 12, 2008, sea ice extent dropped to 4.52 million square kilometers (1.74 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest point of the year, as sea has now begun its annual cycle of growth in response to autumn cooling,” according to the organization.

Two days after Thompson’s report, on July 30, ABC weatherman Sam Champion told the “Good Morning America” audience that Arctic ice loss was on a record pace. “Every summer we're on a record pace for losing it last summer and this summer we're at the exact same pace.”

The NSIDC assessment makes it clear that claim was also wrong, calling it “above the record minimum set on September 16, 2007.” “The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the second-lowest extent recorded since the dawn of the satellite era. “

Earlier in the summer, media outlets warned ominously that the ice could melt away. “Today” host Lester Holt described the story as “surprising and, frankly, alarming news from the scientific community, a new report that says the North Pole could soon be ice-free.”

Thompson, NBC's chief environmental affairs correspondent, went on to interview two scientists who said the ice loss was ahead of schedule and had potential dangerous impact on U.S. weather. “Scientists say the cause is global warming and that dramatic loss of Arctic ice will impact the weather in the U.S.,” she said

She quoted Mark Serreze, from NSIDC, warning of the decline in ice cover. “If we compare the rate of loss of Arctic sea ice that we see now with what our computer simulations were telling us, we're probably 20 to 30 years ahead of schedule,” he explained.

Thompson added that more ice loss was coming. “This is what happened last year. Satellite images show the record melt with big patches of open water where ice should be. This year the ice loss is already the size of California, and there are roughly two more months left in the melting season.”

This fits an ongoing pattern of media hype about climate change where networks no longer report the issue with any sense of objectivity. A study published by the Business & Media Institute earlier this year showed how rarely dissenting voices were included in the climate debate. The study found that global warming proponents overwhelmingly outnumbered those with dissenting opinions. On average for every skeptic there were nearly 13 proponents featured. ABC did a slightly better job with a 7-to-1 ratio, while CBS’s ratio was abysmal at nearly 38-to-1."

This “Greenhouse Gas Initiative” calls for the reduction or removal of petroleum and coal as sources of stored energy to power our civilization. Sorry, can’t do it in ten years. Or twenty. Or a century.

Petroleum is a very compact and easily transformed energy storage medium. We have built most of the infrastructure over the past century on the easy access to coal, petroleum and their derivatives, and to claim now that there is no way we can continue to use that really very plentiful and reliable source, is to say that we should retreat to the caves and trees, decimating our numbers in an endless struggle for declining access to the means to sustain ourselves.

We are not all self-abnegating ascetics and austerity freaks. Some of like to enjoy life just a little, and for an entirely different reason, pick up our messes after ourselves without endless nagging by self-appointed “morality” police. And really ignorant ones at that.

Know this and know it for a certainty: Carbon dioxide is plant food. Without it, plants wither and die. It is our OBLIGATION to increase carbon dioxide to the degree we are able, to aid our plant life on this planet to grow and extend to its maximum limit.

There is no climate “cure”, because there is no climate “disease”. We rely on carbon-based fuel, and the excess carbon dioxide merely goes into accelerated and extended plant growth. So long as we encourage plant growth at every juncture, by cultivation and land management, the content of carbon dioxide shall never rise above about 0.05% concentration in the atmosphere.

Plants require carbon dioxide to conduct photosynthesis, and greenhouses may enrich their atmospheres with additional CO2 to boost plant growth, since its low present-day atmosphere concentration is just above the “suffocation” level for green plants. A photosynthesis-related drop in carbon dioxide concentration in a greenhouse compartment can kill green plants.

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Carbon Scam/POGW