Category Archives: EPA

Will The Supreme Court Correct Their Mistake Of Giving The EPA Regulatory Power?

Posted on October 31, 2013 | Leave a comment

The US Supreme Court is going to review whether or not the EPA has the authority to regulate “greenhouse gas” emissions from stationary sources such as power plants and oil refineries.  The Court will hear arguments and will probably provide a ruling by June of next year.  Unfortunately, the Court rejected the request to also review their 2007 Massachusetts v EPA decision that gave the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse emissions from mobile sources, e.g., autos if they found that greenhouse gases were a public health concern.   The Liberals on the Court were joined in 2007,  by Justice Kennedy,  giving the EPA the licenses to regulate by a 5 to 4 vote.

obama-failed-solar-companies

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, cap and trade, carbon tax, CO2, Electricity from Coal, EPA, Government Regulations, IPCC

Skeptical Scientists Effectively Challenge IPCC Climate Change Report

Posted on October 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

The IPCC has issued the 2013 report on global Climate change.  The skeptic community has effectively challenged the IPCC primary positions.   This post will provide a broad selection of those challenges for the reader to examine.   Each of the 18  entries will give you the title, a brief synopsis, and the link to that document.

The IPCC failed on two major issues.  Their failed to explain why global temperatures have not increased in the past 16 years despite a continued growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).   The second issue is that of climate sensitivity.  They did say that in the past, they had overestimated climate sensitivity but did not tell us what they now believe it to be. This posting will also cover climate model performance and should the IPCC be discontinued.

GLOBAL TEMPERATURES

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, ClimateGate, CO2, CO2 positive feedback, Domestic Energy, Energy Development, Environment, EPA, Global Temperatures, Government Regulations, IPCC, Sea Ice, Sea Level, solar cells

Political Class Does Not Care If Climate Science Is Wrong

Posted on September 17, 2013 | 2 comments

If you are a skeptic you may think that you are winning the science battle with the warmers.  You probably have always thought that in the end you would win that battle and that would settle things.  You were half right, you are winning the science battle but you have not yet deterred the politicians.   The science has never mattered much to them.  The warmer’s programs to combat  “global warming” are really the only things that matter to them.  Whether it is Cap & Trade, Carbon tax, or some other scheme, they are for it.  They tell you they are doing this for your own good.  But in fact most of them want greater control of your life and they can do it through taxes and regulations that are at the heart of these schemes.

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, cap and trade, carbon tax, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, EPA, Government Regulations, Government Revenues, IPCC, United Nations

US Congress–Take Back Your Constitutional Rights From President Obama

Posted on August 20, 2013 | 1 comment

The President’s Organizing for Action (OFA) committee has been embarrassed by lack of interest by libs, greens and NGOs in the OFA’s  “Action August” events.   In early August, the OFA had a Virginia kick off meeting touting Obamacare and only one person showed up and at last week’s DC kick off meeting supporting the Obama climate change agenda, no one showed up.

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Posted in AGW, cap and trade, carbon tax, Coal, Domestic Energy, Electricity from Coal, EPA, Government Regulations

Administration’s Agencies And Radical Greens Collude On Policy

Posted on July 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

The EPA has devised a system to write policy that favors the radical green NGOs.  The EPA is able to, in effect, legislate.  This is done by using the courts to issue Consent Decrees outlining policy “agreements.   Once issued, the agreements set out in the Consent Decrees are very difficult to get changed.

Back in the 1960tys, activist groups began what is now called “reform litigation”.  Initially these litigated cases were to pursue the litigant’s idea of needed prison reforms.  But with time, reform litigation spread and it is getting major use by the EPA and radical greens to shape environmental policy.  Here is how it works  according to Bob Beuprez’s posting “How the EPA connives with Greens on Policy”:

How have these overtly political groups obtained such access to policy decisions that have the power to destroy industries and eliminate jobs? The answer lies in the “sue and settle” legal technique.

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Posted in AGW, Domestic Energy, Environment, EPA, fossil fuels, Fracking/Shale Gas, Government Regulations, IPCC, Oil and Gas Exploration

Joe Bastardi Says Obama’s Energy Policy Based On Easily Disproven Assumptions.

Posted on July 24, 2013 | 3 comments

Joe Bastardi, Chief Forecaster at WeatherBell Analytics LLC says that the EPA has based the Administration’s energy policy on three easily disproven assumptions.  In Bastardi’s posting “Evidence That Demands A Verdict” he list the following:

There are three lines of evidence the EPA uses to back their environmental policies.

  1. Greenhouse Gas Trapping Hot Spot Theory.
  2. The so-called unusual rise in GAST (Globally Averaged Surface Temperatures).
  3. Assumed validity of climate models, used for policy analysis purposes. (See, for example, SOUTHEASTERN LEGAL FOUNDATION, INC., ET AL., Petitioners, v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, ET AL. Nos. 12-1268, 12-1269, 12-1272.)

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, Environment, EPA, fossil fuels, Global Temperatures, IPCC, NASA/GISS

Gasland Part II Reviewed

Posted on July 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

Gasland Part II, a sequel to “Gasland “, was released 28 June (a limited release according to Rotten Tomatoes).  It carries the same theme that fracking is bad. The documentary “stars” are Josh Fox, the director and Dennis Kucinich, former US Representative from Ohio. Can’t imagine that Kucinich is going to bring people into the theater.   The documentary has not yet appeared in the “Box Office” top 50 grossing films.  TheAmericanInterest.com reviewed the documentary with it’s posting “Gasland II: Muddying a Fractured Debate”.   The reviewer tries to play it down the middle saying that the movie and the movies critics tend to go over the top.  But he writes this:

Gasland II is chock-full of errors and falsehoods. Some might be unintentional (Fox readily admits that he’s a “theater guy,” not an engineer or chemist), but at least one seems to be a case of deceit. At one point, Fox throws up a graph purportedly showing the high rate of cement casing failures in fracking wells. Its steeply ascending red bars make for an alarming picture, and as he triumphantly explains, “[gas companies’] own documents showed that cement encasings failed in five percent of wells immediately upon drilling, and that the failure rate increased over time; that over a thirty year period, fifty percent of wells failed.” But the caption to the graph, barely visible in the film explains that it’s showing sustained casing pressure (SCP), a condition that can lead to cement casing failure. Worse, the graph showed the SCP only for offshore wells, explicitly stating, “[t]hese data do not include wells in state waters or land locations,” a fact conveniently left out of the film.

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Alarmism, Coal, Electricity, Electricity from Coal, Environment, EPA, fossil fuels, Fracking/Shale Gas

Environmentalist’s War On Poor People

Posted on June 26, 2013 | 3 comments

The site WUWT has a posting by Willard Eschenbach titled “How Environmental Organizations Are Destroying The Environment”.  Eschenbach relates some of his experiences living on the volcanic island of Vella Lovella in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands where he worked with the islanders to save their natural resources.

He says this:

Let me start with the two most important facts in the discussion about the global environment. First, half the people on the planet live on less than $2 and change per day.   People living on $2 per day don’t have house mortgages—most of them don’t own houses, or much of anything beyond a few rags of clothing.

Second, only developed countries have ever cleaned up their own environment. Only when a country’s inhabitants are adequately fed and clothed and sheltered from the storms can they afford to think about the environment. And far from cleaning up the environment as wealthy countries can afford to do, people in poor countries are very destructive to the environment. Folks in poor countries will burn every tree if they have to, and you would too if your kids were crying. They will eat every monkey and consume the chimpanzees as the final course, and you would too if your family were starving. They will bemoan the necessity, they don’t like doing it any more than you or I would … but they will do it.

Here’s the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic:

borderdominicanrepublichaiti-and-dr

Figure 1. Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Guess which country contains eco-criminals that can afford to use fossil fuels, and which country contains nature-lovers who are dependent on natural renewable organic biomass for energy …

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Environment, EPA, etc, Famine, NGO's eg Greenpeace/WWF

May 2013 EV Sales Update and Price-Cutting Is The New Normal

Posted on June 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

Yes, I am really late in posting this info.  None-the-less, here is the data.

Nissan Leaf had a big May selling 2,138 vehicles. Their second best month all time behind March’s 2,236 Leafs sold.  Year to date sales are 7,614.

Volt May sales were 1,607 with year to date sales of 7,157 putting Volt in second place behind the Leaf.

It is reported that Chevy dealers have more than 9,000 Volts in inventory.  With the 2014 soon to be in the show rooms, the dealers need to sell the 2013 model inventory.

Price-cutting going on across the board

Fewer sales than needed and California’s requirement that all major makers must offer a minimum number of “zero emission vehicles” are pushing the manufacturers to cut prices.

Nissan reduced the price of the Leaf by 18%, or $6,000, when it launched a new, stripped-down model at the beginning of the year.

The Detroit Bureau.com says:

A California buyer can now purchase a Chevrolet Volt for as little as $28,495.  The base price for the plug-in is $39,995 but all buyers qualify for $4,000 off on a 2013 model and $5,000 off for a 2012 Volt. They also can get an extra $1,000 if they are currently leasing a non-GM vehicle. Meanwhile, the federal government provides a $7,500 tax credit while the state kicks in another $1,500.

Chevrolet also is now reducing lease pricing for the Volt to $269 a month for 36 months, with a $2,399 downpayment. 

Recently, a posting maintained that GM had to sell the Volt for about $75,000 to break even.  How long can they keep the Volt line going at this rate?

Detroit Bureau also reports that the Honda Fit EV’s will reduce the lease pricing from $389 to $259 a month, and customers will no longer face mileage limitations.

Clearly the price-cutting reflects the lack of enthusiasm by the US population for these vehicles.   The manufacturers of the vehicles are likely to be operating at a loss on each car.  The government (and thus the average tax payer) is spending a lot of money on an idea that is not showing signs of capturing the public’s imagination.

cbdakota

 

 

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Posted in Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Environment, EPA, fossil fuels, Government Regulations, Personal Automobiles, US Auto Manufacturers, US Manufacturing Companies

More Scandals–EPA This Time

Posted on June 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

Posting from Hotair.com titled  “Psst: There are four separate scandals going on at EPA right now” is an interesting read.  The four do not include the EPA “study” as directed by the Supreme Court to determine if CO2 were a threat to the nation.  Of course the EPA found that it was a serious, immediate threat and was then granted the right to write regulations to control CO2.   The biggest fool was of course the Supreme Court that turned that question over to the EPA assuming the Court actually expected a reasoned decision.  The EPA really never did a study, just took the IPCC report, which meant that the question was answered in the affirmative.  All they had to do was to silence their own people that had a different opinion, which they did, and ignore any of the written comments which were not consistent with their already formulated decision. Got that off my chest, at least for a while.  On to the Hotair posting.

They are:

1)   The EPA gave an ethics award to fake employee, “Richard Windsor,” who was already just an unethically created e-mail alias for the agency’s former head, Lisa P. Jackson.

2)   The EPA makes conservatives pay a fortune for FOIAs to be granted while waiving fees for liberal groups.

3)   EPA contractors are basically Gym, Tan, and Laundrying in new, swanky rec rooms thanks to your tax money.

4)   The EPA leaked confidential information on farmers and cattle facilities to environmental groups. No bigs.

My guess is that the first one could be the big one if they can get Lisa P Jackson’s emails that she created using the name of Richard Windsor.

The details for each of the four scandals are covered in the posting which can be accessed by clicking here. I hope that Congress looks into these.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, cap and trade, carbon tax, CO2, Environment, EPA, Global Temperatures, Government Regulations, Green Jobs