Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

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"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

04 August 2010

Pig-Headed EPA Proceeds with Power Grab

Last Thursday, the evil EPA rejected the petitions of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and nine other petitioners and announced that it intends to proceed with the development of regulations to control CO2 emissions based on claims by the UN IPCC that they are dangerous to the public health and the environment.  As regular readers of this blog know, this is a perfectly unproven claim and even a known false claim.

The court order that the EPA was following to produce an evaluation of whether man's CO2 emissions were a "public endangerment" under the Clean Air Act required it to examine the science on the issue of catastrophic man-made global warming and make a determination on public endangerment.  Instead, the EPA turned to the now discredited UN IPCC reports and used them as its authority on the science.  The UN IPCC, however, is a political body of nation states and not a scientific institution.  It is not qualified to make such a determination.  The EPA also claimed the scientific backing of the National Academy of Sciences, but that organization has never made any comprehensive assessment of the causes of global climate change, though it has made pronouncements on the issue.  The EPA thus failed to accomplish its court-chartered task.

The legislative Cap and Trade approach to taxing energy and mandating energy use reductions, has run into a roadblock due to the upcoming elections and its lack of support from the People in these difficult recessionary times.  The EPA will now proceed with draconian regulations on CO2 emissions which will not in fact be compatible with the Clean Air Act.  If the courts refuse to recognize the violation of the Clean Air Act and the implied usurpation of power from Congress by the EPA, then the 2011 Congress will have to defund the EPA so it is unable to enforce whatever regulations on CO2 emissions it produces.  Obama and a Democrat Senate will not be able to prevent this defunding of the EPA.  If this is not done, the EPA regulations will greatly extend the recession.  In fact, coupled with the end of the Bush tax cuts, the moratorium on deep water drilling, and ObamaCare costs, these anti-CO2 emissions regulations may convert the recession into a depression.  Even before the regulations are in hand, the uncertainty of their effects will slow down any possible recovery and any hiring.

Uncertainty is the chief enemy of business.  Uncertainty is a form of lawlessness in and of itself.  It was never just the destruction that Attila the Hun did when he swept through a village, but it was the uncertainty caused by the fact that he might do so, which made life nasty and brutish in Eastern Europe during his time.  Obama and his Democrat followers, socialists all, are the Hun hordes of our day.

My apologies to pigs.  It is the nature of pigs, who are rather intelligent animals, to be pig-headed.  It is supposed to be the nature of man to use his superior rational faculty.  The EPA's failure to do so, should not cast aspersions upon useful pigs.  I love that kind of pork, even as I loathe Congressional pork.  A useful animal should be given a measure of respect, even as a wrongheaded, and destructive, EPA gains only our disdain.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"it intends to proceed with the development of regulations to control CO2 emissions based on claims by the UN IPCC that they are dangerous to the public health and the environment."

I hate how everything is done in the name of the "common good." Collectivism never works. Collectivism = feudalism.

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

There is certainly a parallel with feudalism. Today's elite was yesterday's aristocracy. The People today were yesterday's peasants, serfs, and souls. The elite will not listen to the People, just as the aristocrats did not listen to the peasants. The elite now and the aristocracy then claimed to have the best interests of the peasants at heart, though the peasants gave this little credence in time.

Scottar said...

There may be a big kink in the EPA's claims. A new study by Professor Ross McKitrick (see http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/) shows that the temperature data upon which the EPA relied in its 'Endangerment Finding' has significant flaws and uncertainties that undermine that finding.

Prof. McKitrick reviews how both land and sea surface temp records were created for the 20th century. He finds that methodology used and the geographic regions covered have changed substantially over the years. It appears the hockey stick mythology was used to splice different records together to create a single, continuous global record.

Based on the McKitrick study, Peabody Energy Company has today filed a petition (see http://icecap.us/images/uploads/IQAPetition.pdf) with EPA under the Information Quality Act (IQA) in which it asks EPA to correct the temperature records on which the Endangerment Finding is based and to reconsider its GHG regulations. The IQA requires validity of information sourced. (I guess it depends if Obomber got to that organization with cronys).

Further reading of Dr. Time Ball's post "Global Temperature And Data Distortions Continue"- http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25940, shows why the data is so flawed. Instead of satellite and balloon radiosonide data the EPA refers to the badly distorted GISS data that the IPCC has referenced to.

Given all the peer review bloopers the IPCC has come up with the whole organization needs a peer review wheel bearing alinement, it appears that organization has lost some bearings and has gone wobbly. It also is very out of balance. What ever is steering that organization just can't keep to the science road and makes these strange detours. For one- they made a wrong turn at Mann's town.

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

I apologize Scottar. I apparently missed your comment in my e-mail flurry and have only now reviewed it and posted it.