Posted on 01/24/2015 6:27:20 AM PST by Kaslin
First they came for the coal mining and power plant industry, and most people did not speak out because they didn’t rely on coal, accepted Environmental Protection Agency justifications at face value, or thought EPA’s war on coal would benefit them.
In fact, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon gave the Sierra Club $26 million, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the Club $50 million, to help it wage a Beyond Coal campaign. The Sierra Club later claimed its efforts forced 142 U.S. coal-fired power plants to close, raising electricity rates, threatening grid reliability, and costing thousands of jobs in dozens of states.
Mr. McClendon apparently figured eliminating coal from America’s energy mix would improve his natural gas business. The mayor likes renewable energy and detests fossil fuels, which he blames for climate change that he tried to finger for the damages “Superstorm” Sandy inflicted on his city.
Now the Obama EPA is coming after the natural gas industry. Hopefully many will speak out this time, before more costly rules kill more jobs and damage the health and welfare of more middle class Americans. The war on coal, after all, is really a war on fossil fuels and affordable energy, and an integral component of President Obama’s determination to “fundamentally transform” the United States.
Proposed EPA regulations would compel drilling and fracking companies to reduce methane (natural gas or CH4) emissions by 40-45% by 2025, compared to 2012. Companies would have to install technologies that monitor operations and prevent inadvertent leaks. The rules would apply only to new or modified sites, not existing operations. However, Big Green activist groups are already campaigning to have EPA expand the rule to cover existing gas wells, fracking operations, gas processing facilities and pipelines.
But companies already control their emissions, to avoid polluting the air, and because natural gas is a valuable resource that they would much rather sell than waste. That’s why EPA data show methane emissions falling 17% even as gas production increased by 37% between 1990 and 2014, and why natural gas operations employing hydraulic fracturing reduced their methane emissions by 73% from 2011 to 2013. The rules are costly and unnecessary, and would bring few benefits.
The Obama Administration thus justifies them by claiming they will help prevent “dangerous manmade climate change.” Methane, EPA says, has a warming effect 50 times greater than carbon dioxide. This assertion is wildly inflated, by as much as a factor of 100, Dr. Fred Singer says. Atmospheric water vapor already absorbs nearly all the infrared radiation (heat) that methane could, and the same radiation cannot be absorbed twice. The physics of Earth’s surface infrared emission spectrum are also important.
More importantly, to borrow a favorite Obama phrase, let me make one thing perfectly clear. There is no dangerous manmade climate change, now or on the horizon. There is no evidence that methane or carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the complex, powerful, interconnected natural forces that have driven warming, cooling, climate and weather fluctuations throughout Earth and human history. There is no evidence that recent extreme weather events are more frequent or severe than over the previous 100 years.
Indeed, planetary temperatures have not budged for more than 18 years, and we are amid the longest stretch since at least 1900 (more than nine years) without a Category 3-5 hurricane hitting the United States. If CO2 and CH4 are to be blamed for every temperature change or extreme weather event, then shouldn’t they also be credited for this lack of warming and deadly storms? But climate hype continues.
We are repeatedly told, “Climate change is real, and humans are partly to blame.” The statement is utterly meaningless. Earth’s climate fluctuates frequently, and human activities undoubtedly have some influences, at least on local (especially urban) temperatures. The question is, How much of an effect? Are the temperature and other effects harmful or beneficial, especially when carbon dioxide’s enormous role in improved plant growth is factored in? Would slashing U.S. CO2 and CH4 emissions mean one iota of difference, when China, India and other countries are doing nothing to reduce their emissions?
Nevertheless, the latest NASA press release asserts that 2014 was “the hottest since the modern instrumental record began,” and again blames mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions. This deliberately deceptive, fear-inducing claim was quickly retracted, but not before it got extensive front-page coverage.
Let me make another point perfectly clear. The alleged global temperature increase was 0.02 degrees C (0.04 degrees F). It is not even measurable by our most sensitive instruments. It is one-fifth the margin of error in these measurements. It ignores satellite data and is based on ground-level instruments that are contaminated by urban heat and cover less than 15% of Earth’s surface. Even NASA admitted it was only 38% confident of being correct – and 62% certain that it was wrong. Analyses by Dr. Tim Ball, Marc Morano, Anthony Watts and other experts provide more details eviscerating this bogus claim.
In the end, though, all these real-world facts are irrelevant. We are dealing with a catechism of climate cataclysm: near-religious zealotry by a scientific-industrial-government- activist alliance that has built a financial, political and regulatory empire. They are not about to renounce any claims of climate catastrophe, no matter how much actual evidence debunks their far-fetched computer model scenarios.
Their EPA-IPCC “science” is actively supported by most of the “mainstream media” and by the World Bank, universities, renewable energy companies and even some churches. They will never willingly surrender the billions of dollars and political influence that CAGW claims bring them. They won’t even admit that wind and solar facilities butcher birds and bats by the millions, scar landscapes, impair human health, cannot exist without coal and natural gas, and are probably our least sustainable energy option. They want gas prices to rise again, so that heavily subsidized renewable energy is competitive once more.
Meanwhile, polls reveal that regular, hard-working, middle-income Americans care most about terrorism, the economy, jobs, healthcare costs, education and job opportunities after graduation; climate change is always dead last on any list. Regular Europeans want to end the “energy poverty” that has killed countless jobs, and each winter kills thousands of elderly people who can no longer afford to eat their homes properly. The world’s poorest citizens want affordable electricity, higher living standards, and an end to the lung infections, severe diarrhea, malaria and other diseases of poverty that kill millions of children and parents year after year – largely because alarmists oppose nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants.
But federal regulators, climate chaos “ethicists” and “progressives” who loudly profess they care deeply about the poor and middle classes – all ignore these realities. They focus on methane, because they view it as a clever way to inject federal oversight and control into an energy sector that had been largely free of such interference, because the fracking revolution has thus far taken place mostly on state and private lands governed effectively by state and local regulators. (Federal lands are mostly off limits.)
The proposed methane rules would generate more delays, paperwork, costs and job losses, to comply with more federal regulations that will bring no detectable benefits – and much harm, at a time when plunging oil and gas prices are forcing drillers to reduce operations and lay people off.
President Obama devoted 15 lines of his 2015 State of the Union speech to climate fables and propaganda. His goal is steadily greater control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties, with little or no transparency or accountability for regulators, pseudo-scientists or activists.
It won’t be long before EPA and Big Green come for farmers and ranchers – to curtail “climate-wrecking” methane emissions from cattle, pig and sheep flatulence and dung, and exert greater control over agricultural water, dust and carbon dioxide. By then, there may be no one left to speak out.
They want to relegate us to pastures chewing our cuds like the contented food stamp/welfare cows. But not eating the cows.
ping
The Left’s energy plan has always been no energy. I told Mrs Redangus this years ago that first they shut down nuclear development, then they would come after coal, while pushing NG, then once coal was gone they would come after NG. I expect a big push on hydro soon. And they’ve already attacked some large solar farms for hurting poor little desert creatures.
and some current developments:
Coalbed methane (CBM) – also known in Australia as coal seam gas (CSG) -- natural gas that is stored (‘adsorbed”) in deeply buried coal seams. CBM is pipeline-quality gas that requires no or minimal processing prior to sale. 
What the picture doesn’t show is the thousands of methane vents coming from those deposits and naturally occurring methane from decomposition in the earth and at the surface. What the article misses is we in the oil and gas business vent very little methane, to vent means losing money and we don’t like doing that. The gas produced goes directly into pipelines.
How much natural gas is lost from the antique, yes OVER 100 year old pipes?
Most old cities are infested with antique pipes, and they leak.
Typical service life for pipe above ground is 60 years;below grade , soil conditions, cast iron, wrought iron, yoloy...can be short.
Replacement cost go from ONE MILLION to TEN MILLION DOLLARS per mile! Depending on the local build up.
The old gas mains have been shovel ready for over fifty years!
Methane gas has increased 150% in the atmosphere since the mid 1700’s. (During the same time period, carbon dioxide has increased only 30 %.) A gram of methane gas has more than 25 times as much greenhouse gas impact as a gram carbon dioxide. As many know, flatulence, “farts,” are composed almost entirely of methane gas.
Therefore, Al Gore has developed a new program to combat this obviously increasing peril to our planet, and make a little money for himself at the same time.
It is called Fat Al’s Recycle Technology (F. A. R. T.).
Everyone will be required to wear a “F.A.R.T. meter,” (Cost $75, available only from Al Gore) which will record and automatically transmit to a new government agency (the Federal Automatic Recording Technology Department, The FART Dept.) the occasion of each fart and the volume thereof.
For an additional fee of $4,500, interested parties can purchase a fart capture device (available only from Al Gore). This 25 pound device can be conveniently worn under the special clothing available also from Al Gore in attractive shades of brown.
When full, the interested consumer can present his fart capture device to Al Gore’s recycling center, where for a fee of $0.10 per fart, the captured farts will be recycled into the US natural gas distribution system. Al Gore also will receive a modest fee of only $0.015 per fart for the energy content of the gas.
The interested consumer will also receive “fart credits” for the number of farts he recycles. These “fart credits” can be traded to other consumers, who elected not to purchase a fart capture device, through Al Gore’s Fart Trading Exchange. Al Gore will extract only a small commission of $0.01 per fart for each trade.
All Consumers will be required to be “fart neutral” by a “Cap and Trade” regulation, administered by the new FART Department.
Legislation is being developed as we speak, by the concerned former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and her erstwhile compatriot in the Senate, Harry Reid.
Get ahead of the mandated stampede to control this growing threat to our planet. Get you fart capture device now.
METHANE on MARS!
I was shocked to hear this.
Who f*rted on Mars?
Even if we try to get rid of it, will methane gas be the last gas standing?
We asked for this when we invested in government the power to regulate instead of holding our judges and representatives accountable. We asked for this when we demanded collective and coercive powers over private property. We created the demand when we did not realize that failure to pay our brethren for the environmental services we were demanding is what led them to race to the bottom. We did this to ourselves when we did not seek means to verify the truth, instead of allowing the media to herd us around like frightened lemmings. We did this to ourselves when we bought into the idea of compulsory government education. We did this to ourselves when we instituted an income tax that violated once almost-sacred standards of individual privacy. We did this to ourselves when we instituted regulatory power. We did this to ourselves when we instituted the legislative power to define tax-exemption in a system of laws supposedly delivering "equal protection." We did this to ourselves when we forced insurers to charge the same price for coverage without regard to customer behavior.
In short, this problem started when we began hiring bureaucrats and police to force others to do our collective will, instead of forcing our representatives to abide by the principles to which we supposedly ascribe: limited government, unalienable rights, private property, and free enterprise, all operating under a system of simple laws adjudicated by courts with fully empowered and competent juries. It is only when we stop meddling with families and take the reins of our government while simultaneously respecting its limits that this mess will truly begin to change. It starts in the individual heart, hearing the limits we were given on Mount Sinai, and learning to see them in the faces of our brothers and sisters. It is only then that we can stop wasting the vast bulk of our work in trying to control each other. It starts in the heart, which hears from the mind. So if this message has meant anything to you, I ask that you teach it.
And maybe I ought to have written "could have taught it," because I'm pretty sure we are beyond the point of solving any of our problems pedagogically.
Not a bit. It was the people who elected the representatives of whom they demanded unconstitutional services who enabled this mess.
How much of that "we did this to ourselves" was in actually foisted upon us by something akin to the Dephi Technique?
Every bit of what was foisted was foisted on me too.
And who amongst us knows what countermeasures work against such subterfuge and can teach it? I don't know of anyone; do you?
Thanks a bunch.
And maybe I ought to have written "could have taught it," because I'm pretty sure we are beyond the point of solving any of our problems pedagogically.
I just had a minor bureaucrat visit our place a couple of days ago. He got it, including the racketeering aspects of this mess. People know they're getting screwed. Just that "Energy Racketeering" article has received over 1,100 loads this month. My articles have almost 5,000 readers a month. My new book, about which I haven't even posted notice, has had 250 chapter readers this month. There are a couple thousand who read Shemitta pages.
All told, it's about 12,000 articles and chapters a month, and as you know, NONE of these people would be lightweights. My goal is to build the material with which to teach leaders. I can't bring them to water, but there is a lot there to drink, and soon there will be much more.
I was first subjected to a Delphi treatment back in 1994 and spoke about it at a Freedom 21 Conference hosted by Henry Lamb.
My being an often irascible and stand-alone individual, even had I known of such countermeasures and practiced them, it might not have worked even with prearranged and practiced allies.
Apparently something similar to my failures have been true for many others as well, because the Progs have advanced far too well despite this knowledge. So? How often has it worked? Seeing the power of the GOPe and the weakness of conservative pubbies, I'm surmising: not yet enough.
The Collectivists work well because they are NOT individualists first. They want power, individuals mostly want to be left alone, tending only get involved when push comes to shove. I always wished I knew what path worked to get more of us to take a long view so as to necessitate involvement. I regret I gave into despair after many failures. I am to blame for those failures. They were mostly due to my inability to build such needed blocs before confrontations with the enemy.
And now, I'm old and tired. I wish it were not so, but even when young I tended to write with a Jeremiad tone. My failings need not be those of the next generation, and I hope it learns from errors such as mine. I surely wish you better success.
I sincerely hope you can convince younger people to do what I could not persevere at.
One more thing though. This discussion of counter tactics was devised before the Left started to deploy more fascistic types. In this day of shameless lying, the "knock-out" game and jihadi-like masked thugs, all but feigned niceties have been pretty much disappeared. Any countering group need to have strong security even as it attempts to appear unconnected to each other, else they are apt to be targets as individuals going out the door (and maybe even on a meeting floor).
We have arrived at trying times.
I think I was exposed to it at about the same time. Do you remember the Concord Coalition meetings held around the country? The one I attended was staged at Occidental College. That ring a bell? :(
I was NOT deriding your tireless work, which is far in excess to my own. I was bemoaning knowing of a tactical training program where more people could do the kind of things needed to derail the Progs tactic in advancing their agenda. Being filled with facts and knowledge and eloquence clearly is not enough.
And I surely hope you continue to make gains. The truth does matter.
The thing is, those newly informed minor bureaucrats have to be able to keep their jobs. They WILL run into apparatchiks who will softly say things like "you're smart enough to know which side is the right one."
And should they fail to respond "well" to such suggestions, they will hear something like "I thought you were smart" at their exit interview.
The CAGW climate scam is more reliant on their Soviet-Style media (SSM) than on the actual number of climate scientist who are listed in the "consensus." But that doesn't mean that climate scientists can be assured they'll get their next research grant if they don't bow in the right direction when called on to do so. Same with Forestry Service and Interior bureaucrats. It's one thing for them to have their eyes opened by you, entirely another to buck the nefarious system that seeks to grows the department they work in (with them or without them).
We live in much nastier times.
OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a ball of fire that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the sun’s planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?
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