Free Republic

In their quest to green up America, the Obama administration has given wind farm owners dispensation to kill Bald and Golden Eagles who fly into their turbines and are chopped to pieces. “Preferred energy policy favoring wind produces double standards. Think of the rancor if oil and gas companies were allowed such a government dispensation,” said Mr. Sandoval. “Thirty years represents not only the theoretical life cycle of the turbines themselves, but an eternity in public policy. No other industry is allowed ‘takings’ permits that last an entire generation.” If a fossile fuel company were to receive a waiver that...

The Obama administration is surging forward with a first-of-its-kind EPA rule for new power plants, in what Republicans and industry groups say will inflate electricity prices and possibly kill off coal, the preeminent U.S. energy source. The EPA announced the rule Tuesday, with a goal to curb carbon dioxide emissions by imposing strict regulations on new coal-fired plants, including a limit that caps plant emissions to not more than 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of energy generated. "Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put...

The earth will warm about 2.4 degrees C (4.3 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels even under extremely conservative greenhouse-gas emission scenarios and under the assumption that efforts to clean up particulate pollution continue to be successful, according to a new analysis by a pair of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. That amount of warming falls within what the world's leading climate change authority recently set as the threshold range of temperature increase that would lead to widespread loss of biodiversity, deglaciation and other adverse consequences in nature. The researchers, writing in the online edition of...