Ron Arnold: Eco-terror advocate bashes climate 'deniers' on film

Last month a Pew Research Center/USA Today poll confirmed what poll-watchers knew during last year's campaign season: Climate change was the lowest-ranked priority on President Obama's second-term agenda. Last Friday, Big Green's entertainment division churned out yet another attempt to turn that around with a panicky new global-warming documentary. It opened on 51 screens with a weekend gross of $45,000 (that's $882.25 per screen, according to the Internet Movie Database). It was produced at an estimated cost of $1.5 million and comes with a screaming title: "Greedy Lying Bastards."

The illegitimi, of course, are "deniers," a term evocative of those who assert that Adolf Hitler's Holocaust against the Jews never happened. Nothing subtle here.

READ MORE:  http://washingtonexaminer.com/ron-arnold-eco-terror-advocate-bashes-climate-deniers-on-film/article/2524347?custom_click=rss&utm_campaign=Weekly+Standard+Story+Box&utm_source=weeklystandard.com&utm_medium=referral

Obama Will Use Nixon-Era Law to Fight Climate Change

President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways.

The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.

“It’s got us very freaked out,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based group that represents 11,000 companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Southern Co. (SO) The standards, which constitute guidance for agencies and not new regulations, are set to be issued in the coming weeks, according to lawyers briefed by administration officials.

READ MORE:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/obama-will-use-nixon-era-law-to-fight-climate-change.html

The Axis of Ennui

Because I have to generate two columns a week for you, Dear Reader, I spend some time hunting for new ideas on the conference circuit. When you are on that circuit, you are perpetually under the illusion that you are hearing from the exciting, fresh people who are about to change history.

You’re hearing from, say, the brilliant technology entrepreneur Shai Agassi, who is starting a paradigm-shifting electric car company. You’re hearing from some wizard with a new solar-panel technology, or some new social-networking entrepreneur. 

My main impression over the past five years is that the conference circuit capitalists who give fantastic presentations have turned out to be marginal to history while the people who are too boring and unfashionable to get invited to the conferences in the first place have actually changed the world under our noses. 

READ MORE:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/opinion/brooks-the-axis-of-ennui.html?_r=3&

The Price of Green Energy: Is Germany Killing the Environment to Save It?

The German government is carrying out a rapid expansion of renewable energies like wind, solar and biogas, yet the process is taking a toll on nature conservation. The issue is causing a rift in the environmental movement, pitting "green energy" supporters against ecologists.

The Bagpipe, a woody knoll in northern Hesse, can only be recommended to hikers with reservations. This here is lumberjack country. Broad, clear-cut lanes crisscross the area. The tracks of heavy vehicles can be seen in the snow. And there is a vast clearing full of the stumps of recently felled trees.

ANZEIGE

Martin Kaiser, a forest expert with Greenpeace, gets up on a thick stump and points in a circle. "Mighty, old beech trees used to stand all over here," he says. Now the branches of the felled giants lie in large piles on the ground. Here and there, lone bare-branch survivors project into the sky.

READ MORE: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-renewable-energy-policy-takes-toll-on-nature-conservation-a-888094.html

The Clean Air Act as an Obstacle to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Anticipated Attempt to Regulate Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Existing Power Plants

March 11, 2013

William J. Haun For roughly two decades, the bipartisan consensus of the U.S. Congress on the regulation of greenhouse gases from non-mobile sources has been that it's best to let sleeping dogs lie. Critics of any attempted regulation have cited a variety of prudential and legal problems that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act (CAA)--the awkward basis for current greenhouse gas regulation--to regulate emissions standards from "stationary sources" of energy. Nevertheless, President Obama has asserted that the needs in this area are great, that "Americans cannot resist this transition," and the EPA is thus expected to propose such regulations.  Can the CAA, previously limited to existing-source emissions of relatively rare substances, be read to now authorize the regulation of greenhouse gases from non-mobile sources?

READ MORE:  http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/the-clean-air-act-as-an-obstacle-to-the-environmental-protection-agencys-anticipated-attempt-to-regulate-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-existing-power-plants

EPA email: Goal was ‘shaming’ states into compliance

Internal EPA emails released Tuesday show an agency hostile to new energy production in the U.S. and an effort at “shaming” states into complying with Obama administration environmental priorities, according to the top Republican on the Senate environment committee.

The emails could end up causing problems for Gina McCarthy, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency who was tapped by President Obama to become overall administrator, succeeding Lisa P. Jackson, who announced her resignation this year.

In a letter to Ms. McCarthy on Tuesday, Sen. David Vitter, Louisiana Republican, and four Republican colleagues asked her to explain her connections to Al Armendariz, who resigned last year as EPA’s Region 6 administrator after saying he wanted to “crucify” oil and gas companies he believed were violating the law.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/12/epa-email-goal-was-shaming-states/#ixzz2OH4f1Vrs

Chief of US Pacific forces calls climate biggest worry

CAMBRIDGE — America’s top military officer in charge of monitoring hostile actions by North Korea, escalating tensions between China and Japan, and a spike in computer attacks traced to China provides an unexpected answer when asked what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region: climate change.

Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, in an interview at a Cambridge hotel Friday after he met with scholars at Harvard and Tufts universities, said significant upheaval related to the warming planet “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’

“People are surprised sometimes,” he added, describing the reaction to his assessment. “You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level. Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”

READ MORE:  http://bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/03/09/admiral-samuel-locklear-commander-pacific-forces-warns-that-climate-change-top-threat/BHdPVCLrWEMxRe9IXJZcHL/story.html

David Deming: What the Oil Business Could Learn From the NRA

Watching the political and scientific debates concerning energy and the environment for the past 20 years has led me to one conclusion: The fossil-fuel industry—which could be the most powerful lobby in Washington—is hopelessly ineffective and self-defeating.

I once attended a lecture by the CEO of a major oil company. The gentleman explained that global warming was "real," that the science behind it was sound, and that his company was doing everything possible to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

He then complained that the U.S. government would not grant his company leases to drill for petroleum on the continental shelves.

READ MORE:   http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323478304578330050167945348.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion&mg=reno64-wsj

Energy policy shifting as abundance replaces scarcity: Obama adviser

(Reuters) - As U.S. oil and natural gas production booms, the Obama administration's energy policy has been "fluid" by necessity to adapt to the huge economic opportunities and climate challenges posed by growth, the top White House energy and climate adviser said on Wednesday.

In a speech to a room packed with energy analysts and lobbyists, Obama adviser Heather Zichal acknowledged that U.S. energy policy "might not look perfectly pretty from the outside" as it evolves to shifting supply-and-demand scenarios.

"It is a little bit fluid, but the landscape is changing," Zichal said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank.

The White House wants to ensure oil and gas production is done as safety as possible, while investing in research and development of renewable forms of energy and addressing climate change, she said.

READ MORE:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/us-obama-energy-idUSBRE91R06H20130228

Healthcare Costs for Families- A Looming Financial Disaster

The Affordable Care Act was passed with the intent of insuring 700,000 uninsured and functionally cost-prohibitively uninsurable patients because of pre-existing conditions. By the end of 2012, 78,000 were insured. The AP reported last week over 100,000 were insured via the program at the end of February, a highly unlikely number. In any case, a majority of targeted patients remain uninsured, perhaps more.

         

The ACA allocated $5 billion for the program to cover uninsurable patients and about half of that has already been spent, so the program is being canceled as of this week. Of those patients for whom insurance was purchased prior to 2011, the average expenditure on their healthcare was $4.6 million per patient by the end of 2011. The net cost to the population of insured patients is in the $300-$400 billion range. That cost paid by the insurance companies for healthcare services will be distributed to future purchasers of healthcare insurance. The one-time cost to the government to purchase the insurance was $2.5 billion. The bulk of the money represents a cost shift to the private sector, not yet factored in to the next round of rates, which have already increased in cost.

            As a consequence, the IRS, responsible for enforcement of the health reform act has informed the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that the average family in the US will today will owe $20,000 annually for healthcare insurance. That is for the lowest coverage available that is authorized by government, the Bronze plan.

Gold and Platinum plans may be available, but they may be unaffordable unless you are among the wealthier "1%" of Americans.

 

What are we to make of this?

 

            Firstly, less than 14% of the people intended to benefit from this healthcare reform plan have actually benefited.

            Secondly, over one third of the total money , one trillion dollars allocated by the health reform act for the decade of coverage has already been spent on that small number of patients.          Thirdly, the cost burden transferred to the insurance industry and passed on to the insured population will make private health insurance cease to exist.

 

While the extinction of the health insurance industry which is based upon demographic cost sharing and risk assessment is the goal for so-called "progressives", the government will end up as the sole third party payor for healthcare services.

            Given the inherent inefficiencies of government and the lack of competition, it is highly likely the abject failure of the initial implementation efforts of the Federal healthcare reform legislation will accelerate in the absence of competition. This is a fool’s game which will result in the centralization of decision-making and loss of freedom for individuals, communities, and States.

 

Chris Casscells, M.D.

Director, Center for Healthcare Policy

 Caesar Rodney Institute

Public weighs in on adapting to rising seas

As Chris Bennett sees it, there’s really no doubt that seas are rising around the Delaware coast.
Bennett, a resident of Milford, attended the last in a February series of public meetings on ways of adapting to sea-level rise, and found that the options presented, as well as the reality of the phenomenon, matched his own informal observations.

Bennett, 49, said he has been watching the seas encroach on areas such as Fowler Beach and Prime Hook Beach over the years, and notices more dead trees in the marshes every time he drives over the Route 1 bridge and looks to the west.

“There is no doubt that in these areas, the water is rising because of sea-level rise,” he told WDDE.
Bennett, who works for the Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation but was attending the meeting as a private citizen, was one of about 40 people who attended the Feb. 25 meeting held by the state’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control as the latest part of a multi-year effort to assess and plan for the long-term threat of sea-level rise.

READ MORE:  http://www.wdde.org/40062-public-meeting-sea-level-rise

EPA insider tapped to lead agency faces resistance over coal regs

WASHINGTON –  President Obama's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency is already running into resistance from the fossil fuel industry over concerns that she would escalate a "war" on oil, coal and natural gas.

EPA veteran Gina McCarthy was one of three nominees Obama announced at the White House late Monday morning. He also tapped MIT scientist Ernest Moniz to head the Energy Department and Walmart's Sylvia Mathews Burwell as his next budget chief.

All will have to undergo Senate confirmation. And McCarthy -- given her background and the controversial nature of the agency she wants to lead -- could face the toughest screening.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/04/obama-to-announce-energy-epa-leaders-ap-source-says/#ixzz2NWJupGD1

Global Temperature Standstill Gains IPCC Support

London, 22 February: The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) welcomes that Dr Rajenda Pachauri, the chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has acknowledged the reality of the post-1997 standstill in global average temperatures.

The GWPF has been highlighting the global warming standstill for many years against fervent denial by climate activists. Recently, Nasa’s James Hansen also recognised that global temperatures have not risen for more than a decade.

“Even though the scientific case for the standstill is secure, and well represented in peer-reviewed scientific literature, it will surely help the climate debate now that the IPCC chairman has confirmed its existence,” said Dr David Whitehouse, the GWPF’s science editor.

The post-1997 global annual average temperature standstill is one of the most important aspects of current climate science. Its recognition by the chair of the IPCC means there is now growing pressure that this empirical fact will receive full analysis in the forthcoming AR5 report.

READ MORE: http://www.thegwpf.org/global-temperature-standstill-gains-ipcc-support/

Blackout Britain: EU environmental directive puts millions at risk of power cuts

ONE million homes narrowly escaped a power cut last month as bitterly cold weather placed a massive strain on Britain’s creaking electricity network.

 

Shutdown was only avoided because a gas-fired station due to close by next winter came to the rescue. Last night experts warned that life-threatening blackouts are increasingly likely as “we head downhill – fast”.

Alistair Buchanan, the outgoing head of energy regulator Ofgem said: “On Wednesday, January 16, due to unplanned outages and cold weather, National Grid had to find power to supply roughly a million homes to keep the lights on.

“Fawley, an oil-fired plant in Hampshire, was one of the power stations that responded. Next winter Fawley will not be there.”

And as a spell of bitter cold once more hits the UK, the near switch-off which came so perilously close on that freezing afternoon, underscores the magnitude of the energy crisis.

READ MORE:  http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/379845/Blackout-Britain-EU-environmental-directive-puts-millions-at-risk-of-power-cuts

 

CO: Secret energy lab spawns million dollar govt employee

GOLDEN, Colo. – The federal government’s dream of a renewable energy empire hinges on a scrubby outpost here, where scientists and executives doggedly explore a National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus new frontier.

If you live outside Colorado, you probably haven’t heard of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory – NREL for short. It’s the place where solar panels, windmills and corn are deemed the energy source of the future and companies who support such endeavors are courted.

It’s also the place where highly paid staff decide how to spend hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.

READ MORE:  http://watchdog.org/62420/co-secret-energy-lab-spawns-million-dollar-govt-employee/

The Electric Car Is an Abomination

Electric cars never really made any sense. They are cloaked in the sanctimony of the green movement, because they don't use nasty fossil fuels like gasoline. Instead, they use electricity, which is sent out through power lines from big power plants, which generate this electricity—how? Oh yes, by burning fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas. This is known as the "long tailpipe," which goes from the car charging up in your garage all the way back to the smokestack of a coal-fired power plant. And don't forget, electric cars also have giant batteries made from nasty toxic metals like lithium and cobalt, the manufacture of which frontloads carbon dioxide emissions.

So the electric car was always more an exercise in green paternalism—it is the future, as selected for us by our betters—than a serious attempt to solve any real or imagined problem.

A new controversy over the Tesla electric luxury sedan reveals that the electric car fails an even more basic technological standard.

READ MORE:  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/02/22/the_electric_car_is_an_abomination_117114.html

CO: Secret energy lab spawns million dollar govt employee

GOLDEN, Colo. – The federal government’s dream of a renewable energy empire hinges on a scrubby outpost here, where scientists and executives doggedly explore a new frontier.

If you live outside Colorado, you probably haven’t heard of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory – NREL for short. It’s the place where solar panels, windmills and corn are deemed the energy source of the future and companies who support such endeavors are courted.

It’s also the place where highly paid staff decide how to spend hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.

READ MORE:  http://watchdog.org/62420/co-secret-energy-lab-spawns-million-dollar-govt-employee/

Welcome to the coldest village on Earth where the temperature can hit -71.2C, mobiles don't work... but homes still have outside toilets

Russian village of Oymyakon has lowest recorded temperature for any permanently inhabited location

Nothing grows so locals live off diet of reindeer meat and horse meat but never suffer malnourishment

Locals keep their cars running all day for fear of them not starting again if turned off

Digging graves for a funeral can take up to three days as ground has to be thawed with hot coal

If you thought it was cold where you are at the moment then a visit to the Russian village of Oymyakon might just change your mind.

With the average temperature for January standing at -50C, it is no wonder the village is the coldest permanently inhabited settlement in the world.

Known as the 'Pole of Cold', the coldest ever temperature recorded in Oymyakon was -71.2C.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266374/Oymyakon-coldest-village-earth-Temperatures-drop-71-2C-locals-wear-glasses-freeze-faces-school-shuts-falls-52C.html#ixzz2MaBqXcxN