Those "devastating" EPA reductions by Paul Driessen

Budget and personnel cuts reflect environmental progress and essential regulatory reforms

The Trump White House wants significant reductions at the Environmental Protection Agency: two dozen or more programs, including a dozen dealing with President Obama’s climate initiatives; a 20% downsizing in EPA’s 15,000-person workforce; and a one-fourth reduction in its $8.1 billion budget.

The plan requires congressional approval, and thus is hardly a “done deal.” Not surprisingly, it is generating howls of outrage. Former U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says the proposal would be “crippling,” and “devastating for the agency's ability to protect public health.”

One employee resigned because the cuts would prevent him from serving “environmental justice” and “vulnerable communities.” A congressman claimed EPA is “already operating at 1989 staffing levels,” and the reductions could mean “cutting the meat and muscle with the fat.”

A deep breath and objective assessment are in order.

1) Since EPA was created in December 1970, America’s environmental progress has been amazing. Our cars now emit less than 2% of the pollutants that came out of tailpipes 47 years ago. Coal-fired power plant particulate, mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions are 10-20 % of their 1970 levels. The white plumes above factory and power plant “smoke stacks” are 90% steam (water vapor) and plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide (which Obama EPA officials disingenuously called “carbon pollution”).

Our lakes, rivers, streams and coastal areas are infinitely cleaner and far safer to drink from or swim in. The notorious lead contamination in Flint, Michigan water occurred under Gina McCarthy’s watch, because her agency didn’t do its job. It was her EPA officials who also triggered the infamous Gold King Mine blowout that contaminated hundreds of miles of river water with arsenic and other toxic metals.

So much for “protecting public health,” ensuring “environmental justice,” and safeguarding our most “vulnerable communities.” It’s as if we’ve come full circle, and now need to be protected from EPA. In truth, that goes all the way back to the agency’s first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, who ignored his own scientists, banned DDT, and sentenced tens of millions of Africans and Asians to death from malaria.

2) EPA became bloated, incompetent and derelict in its fundamental duties largely because it became ideological, politicized and determined to control what it was never intended to regulate. Through mission creep, sue-and-settle lawsuits, and an eight-year quest to help “fundamentally transform” America’s energy and economic system, it attempted to regulate every rivulet, puddle and other “Water of the US,” stuck its nose in numerous local affairs – like the road to a nickel mine in Michigan – and colluded with environmentalists to block Alaska’s Pebble Mine before a permit application had even been submitted.

Most egregious was the agency’s use of alleged “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify its “war on coal,” its “Clean Power Plan,” and its determination to slash fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions by regulating nearly every factory, farm, hospital, mall, drilling project and vehicle in America.

EPA’s other chief climate crusade target was methane, which it called “an extremely powerful climate pollutant” and absurdly claimed is responsible for “a fourth of all global warming to date.” Methane is a tiny 0.00017% of Earth’s atmosphere – equivalent to $1.70 out of $1 million (and compared to 0.04% for CO2) – and U.S. energy operations account for less than a tenth of all annual natural and manmade methane emissions. To control that, EPA wanted industry to spend billions of dollars per year.

It also demanded that cars and light trucks get 54.5 mpg by 2025. To meet that standard, automakers would have to downsize and plasticize vehicles, making them less safe and causing thousands of serious injuries and deaths – a reality that EPA ignored in its cost/benefit and environmental justice analysis.

When states, industries or experts raised questions about EPA’s “CO2 endangerment” decision, its biased and dishonest “social cost of carbon” analysis, or its use of “secret science” and highly suspect computer models to justify “climate chaos” claims – the agency railed about “intimidation” and “interference” with its mandate to “protect public health and welfare.” It’s time to take those questions seriously.

3) EPA obviously has too many anti-energy, anti-development staff, programs and dollars looking for more activities to regulate and terminate, to justify their existence. As these programs are properly and necessarily cut back, EPA budgets and personnel should likewise be reduced.

4) Complying with EPA and other government regulations inflicts staggering costs that reverberate throughout our economy, as businesses and families struggle to read, comprehend and comply with them. The Competitive Enterprise Institute calculated that federal regulations alone cost $1.885 trillion per year – prior to the epic regulatory tsunami of 2016 – with the Obama era alone generating $800 billion to $890 billion in annual regulatory burdens, the American Action Forum estimated.

EPA alone is responsible for well over $353 billion of the cumulative annual federal regulatory bill, CEI’s Wayne Crews estimated, based on 2012 data from the first four years of the Obama presidency. Just as disturbing, the total federal regulatory bill is equal to all individual and corporate tax payments combined.

Even more frightening, embedded in those federal regulations are fines and jail terms for some 5,000 federal crimes and 300,000 less serious criminal offenses. An absence of intent to violate the law, even failure to know and understand millions of pages of laws and regulations, even the mistaken assumption that no agency could possibly implement such an absurd rule, is no excuse. You’re still guilty as charged.

These regulatory burdens crush innovation, job creation, economic growth, and business and family wellbeing. They kill jobs, raise the cost of energy, food, products and services, reduce living standards, harm health and shorten lives. They violate any honest concept of “environmental justice.” Poor, minority, working class and other vulnerable families are hardest hit.

5) In fact, environmental justice is little more than a meaningless, malleable, phony concoction whose primary purpose is promoting progressive programs. Whatever EPA seeks to do advances justice and protects the vulnerable. Whatever an industry does or wants is unjust. Whenever anyone criticizes an agency action, it reflects racism or callous disregard for public health.

Only the effects of government regulations, and the actions of government regulators, appear to be exempt from recrimination, intimidation and penalties imposed in the name of environmental justice.

6) Fully 98% of all counties in the United States voted for Donald Trump and his vision for a less regulated, more prosperous nation, with fewer diktats from a Washington, DC that exempts itself from rules it inflicts on others. They did not vote for rolling back real environmental progress – and know full well that President Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt are doing no such thing.

They also know there is ample room – and abundant need – for the proposed EPA reductions. That’s why a CNN/ORC poll after Mr. Trump’s February 28 speech found that 70% of Americans who watched felt more optimistic about the nation’s future, and his policies and priorities were what the country needs now.

7) If President Trump’s program, budget and personnel proposals for EPA are approved, many highly paid agency employees will lose their jobs. That’s always painful, as thousands of coal miners, power plant operators and other employees in communities impacted by heavy-handed EPA regulations can attest – and as the powerful new documentary film “Collateral Damage” demonstrates.

However, downsizing is often essential to the survival of a company – or a country. As President Obama was fond of saying, elections have consequences. Let’s hope Congress and the Trump Administration move forward on EPA restructuring, stand firmly in the face of the predictable forces of professional outrage, and do a good job explaining why these changes are absolutely essential.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on the environment.

Posted at Paul Driessen's request.

Environmentalist Insurance Policies by Paul Driessen

Environmentalist insurance policies

Intellectual ammo for holiday party responses to claims that you need meteorite insurance

Paul Driessen

Many liberals went into denial, outrage and riot mode after November 8. Now they’re having meltdown over President-Elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees with climate and environmental responsibilities:

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry at Energy, Oklahoma AG Scott Pruitt for EPA, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson at State, Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke at Interior. As Department of Agriculture secretary and multiple assistant, deputy assistant and other senior level positions are filled, the meltdown will likely raise sea levels by several feet.

It’s even worse than “white supremacists” and “Russian hackers” rigging and stealing the election. Having these people at the helm will be an “existential threat to the planet,” say meltdowners.

A typical over-the-top reaction came from an aptly named spokesperson for radical pressure groups and five-alarm climate scientists that feed at the trough of taxpayer and tax-exempt foundation funding “This is the wealthiest, most corporate, most climate-denying cabinet in history,” snorted Kiernan Suckling, director of the anti-development Center for Biological Diversity.

After eight years of anti-fossil-fuel, anti-growth, anti-job, anti-blue-collar policies – and the Left’s fervent wish for eight more years under Hillary Clinton – any Trumpian shift is bound to look that way to them.

So we’re likely to get a bellyful of bombast from like-minded (or ill-informed) office and neighborhood partygoers, especially if they’re too much imbued with holiday spirits. At the risk of offending those who do not share an NRA perspective on gun control (stance, grip, sight alignment, trigger control), here’s a little intellectual ammunition that conservatives may find helpful during those “spirited” discussions.

The United States needs to reduce taxes and regulations that have hobbled energy development and job creation – threatening to put federal bureaucrats firmly in control of our states, communities, livelihoods and living standards. However, as I noted recently, these essential, long overdue changes will come with no reduction in air, water or overall environmental quality standards that ensure our health and welfare. They will address rogue agency actions that actually impair our living standards, health and wellbeing.

Indeed, nearly all these autocratic government actions are based on some variation of the infamous “precautionary principle.” This infinitely malleable pseudo-guideline says chemicals and other technologies should be restricted or banned if there is any possibility (or accusation by radical activists) that they could be harmful, even if no cause-effect link can be proven.

Even worse, the bogus principle looks only at often-inflated risks from using chemicals, energy systems or other technologies that activists or regulators dislike – never at the risks of not using them; never at risks that could be reduced or eliminated by using them. Sustainability “guidelines” are very similar.

Just as perversely, if the Powers that Wannabe like a technology, they ignore or actively suppress any harmful impacts. For instance, since wind turbines can supposedly replace fossil fuels, they ignore bird and bat deaths, human health damage from infrasound, and the fact that essential metals are mined and processed under horrendous conditions by men, women and children in African and Asian countries.

Those environmental, health, human rights, and child labor violations are far away (literally not in their backyards), and thus can be conveniently ignored.

So can the poverty, disease, malnutrition and early death perpetrated and perpetuated by extremist groups that campaign tirelessly to shut down industries in developed nation communities – and prevent the poorest nations on Earth from gaining access to modern technologies that improve and save lives.

Eco-extremists claim they can save lives by preventing higher temperatures, rising seas, and more storms, droughts and crop failures due to “dangerous manmade climate change” decades from now. So they block fossil fuel power plants that provide reliable, affordable energy for modern homes, hospitals, schools and factories that improve health and living standards – and end up killing millions right now, year after year.

Climate change has been real throughout history. Sometimes beneficial (moderately warm, with ample rainfall), sometimes destructive (decades-long droughts or cold spells, glacial epochs with mile-thick ice sheets crushing entire continents), it is driven by solar, cosmic ray, oceanic and other powerful natural forces that humans cannot control. Carbon dioxide may play a role, but only a minor one, and rising atmospheric CO2 levels make crops, grasslands and forests grow faster and better.

The “unprecedented” manmade climate cataclysms that Al Gore and Barack Obama promised are not happening. For example, we were supposed to get more frequent, powerful and destructive storms; instead, a record 11 years have passed without one category 3-5 hurricane making landfall in the USA. 

To attack fracking and natural gas use, bureaucrats claim methane is 86 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas – but won’t admit that it is 1/235th as prevalent in Earth’s atmosphere (0.00017%), and at least 1/600,000th as prevalent as water vapor (1-4%), the most important GHG.

Their “social cost of carbon” schemes assign ever-higher monetary impacts to every climate and weather problem they can possibly attribute to using carbon-based fuels – but totally ignore the enormous and undeniable benefits of utilizing oil, natural gas and coal that still provide 82% of US and global energy.

They’re convinced their anti-energy diktats will “save the planet,” by shutting down US power plants and factories, despite vastly greater emissions from China, India and a hundred other nations that are rapidly expanding their fossil fuel use, to lift billions more people out of abject poverty, disease and malnutrition.

The same anti-technology activists and bureaucrats also detest biotechnology and genetically modified crops that require less water and can battle insect predators with a tiny fraction of the insecticides required for conventional grains and vegetables. They equally despise another GM marvel, Golden Rice, which prevents Vitamin A Deficiency that blinds and kills hundreds of thousands of children every year.

Instead of applauding the reduced blindness, malnutrition, starvation and death these crops can bring, precautionary and sustainability extremists obsess about imaginary risks of eating them, allowing more millions to die unnecessarily, year after year. It’s not their kids, after all. Why should they be concerned?

The same callous, phony ethics prevail on the disease front. Eco-activists support bed nets – but not insecticide spraying to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and certainly not DDT, the most powerful, longest-lasting mosquito repellant ever invented. Sprayed once every six months on the walls of mud or cinderblock houses, DDT keeps 80% of mosquitoes from entering, irritates those that do come in, so they don’t bite, and kills any that land. 

But radical ideologues focus on trivial, irrelevant side effects that “some researchers say could be linked” to DDT use – and let 600,000 parents and children die excruciating deaths every year from malaria.

Every one of these anti-technology, “precautionary” attitudes is the environmentalist equivalent of protecting American kids from powerful chemicals, fatigue, nausea, hair loss, and increased risk of illness and infection – by banning chemotherapy drugs, and just letting the little cancer patients die.

They are the equivalent of requiring you to carry a $10,000-a-year insurance policy that covers you only if you are killed by a meteorite – or by a raptor or tyrannosaur. At least meteorite risks are real, if extremely remote.

Raptors and T rexes exist only in our imaginations, special effects computers and movie theaters – much like the manmade climate chaos and other precautionary extremism that come from computer models and PR hype, and drive too many of our policies, laws and regulations.

Have fun at your holiday parties. This season promises to be even more animated than most.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on the environment.

Coal-Fired Power Plants Produce Insignificant Mercury

Back in December, I wrote about the absurdity of the EPA claim that coal-fired power plants produced significant mercury which necessitated drastic reductions at any cost.  I was then puzzled that the EPA did not produce maps of the mercury concentrations that would show the mercury was found in higher concentrations downwind of coal-fired power plants.  It turns out that maps of the concentrations of mercury do exist and can be examined.  The National Atmospheric Deposition Program produces annual maps of the mercury concentrations across the USA here.  Note that the mercury high concentration areas changed somewhat between 2009 and 2010, but coal-fired power plants do not have giant chicken legs to rise up and walk to a new location.  But, the highest mercury concentrations are in the Southern Rocky Mountains and in the plains states just to the west of those southern Rocky Mountains.

The hottest areas for mercury are the states of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and other states near them.  Florida is a bit warm also.  So one would conclude that most of our coal-fired power plants are in southern California and the Southwest in general.  I do not know how one would explain the high concentrations in Florida.  But let us look at where the coal-fired power plants are then.

Of course, as you already knew, most of them are in the eastern half of the United States.  There are only a few dinky coal-fired power plants in southern California and most of those in Arizona are in northeastern Arizona.  There is a large concentration of coal-fired power plants in the Ohio River Valley and no lack of them in Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.  Despite this huge concentration of coal-fired power plants, the East Coast Mid-Atlantic states are relatively green, which means they have lower mercury concentrations than the western part of the USA.  Being downwind of a coal-fired power plant does not appear to be anything like as important a factor as natural geographic sources of mercury are.  The mercury concentration maps give no hint of a mercury plume to the east of a power plant or even to the east of a concentration of large coal-fired power plants.  We should see such a plume due to the prevailing wind direction.

Update: I noted in my earlier post referred to above that coal-fired power plants produce about 41 to 48 tons of mercury a year. That post observed that forest fires in the US were estimated to release about 48 tons of mercury a year. Most of the big forest fires occur in the West, especially in many areas consistent with high concentrations in this map due to dry climates and low population densities drawing fewer fire-fighters. If these were the only sources of mercury, then the distribution of mercury across the US would still not differ much East to West since the forest fires of the West would be balanced by the higher concentration of coal-fired power plants in the East.

So what is the likely cause of the high mercury concentrations that are observed in the Southern Rockies and in the plains states to the west, especially the northwest, of them?  In comparison to these puny sources of mercury, volcanoes, subsea vents, and geysers are thought to produce 9 to 10K tons of mercury a year. The areas of high mercury concentrations do not correlate very well with the newer and more active volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest in the US, however. But, it turns out that they correlate well with the old volcanoes of the Rocky Mountains shown in white in the map here and shown below:

It is well-known to geologists that the southern Rocky Mountains are much richer in minerals and precious metals than the northern Rockies because volcanoes and rising magma played a much greater role in their formation.  I expect the high mercury concentration areas are due to the erosion of mercury mineral deposits, commonly cinnabar, in these old volcanoes and from their environs. The mercury released by forest fires is clear evidence that there is substantial mercury in the ground in the West already distributed about. The Rockies have been eroding for a very long time now and mercury is distributed over long distances from these old volcanoes by winds and eastward flowing rivers. The rivers flow into the Mississippi, so none of the mercury they transport goes east of the Mississippi River.  This is my best guess about the source in any case. Update End.

Once again we see that the EPA does not use rational science to govern its actions, even when those actions will have drastic negative consequences for the economy and put many people out of jobs.  Hauling coal by train to power plants, operating the power plants, and extracting coal from the ground all provide many hard-working Americans with jobs.  We also have huge coal reserves, which it makes more sense to burn to create electricity than it does to use natural gas which is better for making plastics and other products.  Of course, now natural gas is inexpensive and it is being used to generate electricity.  I am happy to leave how it will be used to the free market, but I do not want the EPA under the guidance of the ever-foolish Obama pushing and shoving the free market to influence such decisions.

EPA: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

The EPA is about to issue new standards on lead contamination in commercial buildings.  Recent testing in its Ariel Rios headquarters building showed that dust samples in the building were often much higher in toxic lead content than those allowed in commercial buildings by the new regulations about to be applied.  In one case, a dust sample was 92,500 % higher (925 times higher) than the new standard would allow.  This dust sample was taken from the floor of the new state-of-the-art control center for responding to outbreaks of toxic substances.

The EPA says air samples were not as bad and its employees are safe.  The GSA owns and operates the building and is in charge of cleaning up the contamination.  Claims were made that the contamination was because a Secret Service shooting range is nearby.

This was reported by the Daily Caller and briefly on Fox News.

Can you imagine the fines that the EPA will put on any company with a commercial building with lead limits above the new requirements?  Can you imagine the orders that any company remove its employees and shut down its building if lead levels above the new limits are found?  Can you imagine the many lawsuits that will be aimed at any such company by employees concerned about their future health based upon the new limits to soon be put in place by the EPA?  Yet, the EPA has not sent its people home, because it says they are safe.  But, if they are safe at the EPA with lead levels well above their new limits, then doesn't this imply they will in many cases be safe in commercial buildings with lead contamination levels above the new limits?  Ah, what is good for the goose is not good for the gander.

Doesn't this remind us of the IRS and Treasury secretary Tim Geithner who will not do his tax returns according to IRS rules.  Geithner paid his back taxes from 2001 up through the time of his nomination to become Treasury Secretary, under which the IRS is managed.  But, he only paid the taxes and interest.  He did not pay any penalties, which are the usual killer.  Penalties for late payments are usually many times greater than the interest for the late payment.  Apparently, Geithner and the EPA are ganders and the rest of us are treated like gooses.

Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, will probably earn a large bonus this year.  The citation justifying the bonus will probably say it is because of her excellent work in putting the new, tougher lead restrictions in place and for banning CO2 gas as a pollutant.  Do as I say, not as I do.  I want to see Lisa Jackson walking about with a rebreather attached to her back so she does not emit any CO2 pollutants!  I want to see her that committed to acting as a role model for the things she says she believes in before she forces us to comply to her demands.

U.S. Air Quality Improving

The EPA monitors six principal air pollutants for which there are national standards.  The amount of pollution from these air pollutants has dropped significantly in recent decades.  Not that one hears much about this in the mainstream media.  These pollutants include SO2 (sulfur dioxide), NOx (nitrogen oxides), particulate matter, CO (carbon monoxide), ozone, and lead.  Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are also closely watched.

From 1970 to 2004, emissions of these pollutants declined greatly, especially lead, which dropped by 99%.  Back on 22 September 2004, the EPA announced that emissions of air pollutants had been cut in half since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970.  Particulate matter was down 81%, VOCs were down 54%, CO was down 53%, SO2 was down 49%, and NOx was down 24%, despite the economy growing 176% during that period.

The declines continue.  SO2 emissions from US power plants fell another 24% for the first half of 2009 compared to the first half of 2008.  NOx emissions were down 5% in May and 11% in June compared to a year earlier.  The EPAs models predict a 70% emissions reduction for cars and trucks over the next 20 years according to the October 2009 issue of Environment & Climate News.

Presidential Emergency Powers in Cap and Trade Bills

Both the Waxman-Markey House of Socialist Representatives carbon cap and trade bill and the Boxer Senate Environment and Public Works Committee carbon cap and trade bill have a common provision to give the President strongman emergency powers.  These powers kick in automatically when all greenhouse gases other than water vapor reach an equivalent CO2 atmospheric concentration of 450 ppm.  CO2 is presently 399 ppm, but other greenhouse gases are much more potent, such as methane and N2O.  They therefore count as large multiples of their ppm concentrations in equivalent CO2 concentrations.  The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory says that the 450 ppm CO2 equivalent will be reached in a few months.

The emergency power provision requires the President to use all statutory powers of federal agencies to reduce the greenhouse gas concentrations.  Given that the EPA is about to gain the power to make draconian cuts in these so-called pollutants under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts by reinterpreting them as invited to do by the courts, the strongman Presidential emergency power will be huge.  Obama will be able to give Hugo Chavez a dance for complete and arbitrary power as he decrees which friends of socialism get to continue using power and which have to stop dead in their tracks.  Obama will have the power to shut down industries and stop traffic.  This power will give him total control of the private sector.

The ensuing unrest may be great.  It is for this reason that he wanted a paramilitary service organization of fanatical young Americans straight out of the Socialist Production Factories, our colleges and universities.  Remember, he wants them to be as well-funded as the military is now.  He will have to operate quickly to set them up, but then quick usurpation of power is his and Pelosi's specialty.

There are heavy consequences to be paid for Americans refusal to take the Constitution seriously.  We have lost the principle that that government is good and legitimate only to the degree that it preserves, defends, and protects the sovereign right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The only way to keep government from usurping power is for the American People to strongly and tirelessly insist that their government operate constitutionally.  We have failed to do that and we have never failed so badly as we did in the 2008 elections, with the possible exception of the 1932 elections.

The Effectiveness of Government Management

I have grown a bit weary of constantly pointing out the nonsensical, idiotic, wrongheaded, uneconomic, unconstitutional, thieving, and brutal aspects of what the Democrats want to do to change our health care system.  I have pointed out that the things they are already doing in medicine are largely unwise.

I have noted that the U.S. government mismanages these functions very badly already:

• Health care as in Medicaid and Medicare
• The U.S. Postal Service
• Amtrak
• Ethanol production as alternative fuel
• Subsidies and mandates for wind and photovoltaic electricity generation
• Crop subsidies
• The identification of pollutants and toxic substances
• The forests and wildlands
• Permitting for oil and gas exploration and field development
• Gas mileage requirements for vehicles
• Medical device testing and quality assurance
• Scientific research and development
• Energy research and development
• Climate research
• Home mortgage lending
• Monopoly identifications
• Business accounting rules
• Business and medical liability torts
• Education (see my next post)
• Defense (largely due to too unfocused attention given diffused meddling in everything)
• Foreign policy
• Constitutional law
• Flight safety and route controls
• Interstate bridge safety and maintenance
• Airwaves licensing
• Drug testing and evaluation
• Anti-discrimination (turning it into discrimination)
• Business destruction by encouraging labor unions
• Immigration and border control
• Taxation and government revenue
  
• Economic growth
• Job creation
• Interstate commerce
• International trade
• Government property
• Government purchasing and acquisitions
• Eminent domain
• Drug use prohibitions
• Wage controls
• Price controls
• Patent controls
• Alcohol controls

It sure is a strange thing that so many Americans are on a constant search to find some other aspect of our lives to turn over to the federal government.

Carbon Cap and Trade Promotional Techniques

Edward Felker and Stephen Dinan of The Washington Times reported in the 19-20 June 2009 print edition that the Democratic think tank Third Way recommended that the plan for carbon cap and trade that House Democrats agreed on can not be sold to the taxpayers using the terms "green" jobs and "global warming." Apparently, too many voters have the old fashioned kind of jobs that depend upon energy being affordable and available and many have begun to notice that the temperatures are far from becoming unbearable. Perhaps some have even noticed that they have failed to increase for about a decade now, despite the predictions of the computer models having been quite unanimous that they were going to rise as the CO2 atmospheric concentrations increased. Well the CO2 increased, but the temperatures failed to follow that increase.

Congressman Peterson (D - Minnesota, Agriculture Committee Chairman) has been dickering with Congressmen Waxman (D - California, Energy and Commerce Committe Chairman) and Markey (D - Massachusetts) to change the bill's treatment of farmers and rural cooperative electricity utilities. The Democrats are about ready to push a compromise bill through the House.

So what is Third Way telling the Democrats to do to sell this bill to the people? They say it should be sold as a clean energy bill. This is nonsense in terms of what it is, so hopefully the American people will come to realize this. This bill is designed to reduce CO2 emissions, which it is most likely not going to do in any significant way. This at least is the rationale for the bill. Really, it is more about stealing money from some industries and private individuals and redistributing it to special interests, including many large companies playing the alternative energy game. Third Way says the people want clean energy. But, what on earth does CO2 have to do with dirt? Absolutely nothing, except that plants thrive in it, just as they do in good rich soil. There is no dirt in CO2.

Now, CO2 has been ridiculously called a pollutant by the EPA because there are completely false claims that a doubling of the CO2 in the next 100 years will lead to a catastrophe for the earth. In fact, the warming effect of increasing CO2 is minimal by the time its concentration exceeds 100 ppm in the atmosphere. At the start of the Industrial Age, it was about 280 ppm and it is now about 380 ppm. The temperature effect due to the 100 ppm increase of CO2 in the atmosphere has been minimal. If we were to double it from 380 to 760 ppm, the increase in temperature is less than 0.5 degree C! See Fig. 17 of David Archibald's report The Past and Future of Climate read the succinct and sweet Letter to the Oil & Gas Journal (11 August 2008) by him called Warming or cooling? This is no catastrophe. The earth has gone through innumerable temperature swings many times this, with only those in colder directions bringing on a catastrophe for man.

But, this so-called pollutant, which causes no problems for human health, does greatly benefit plant growth, which with a growing world human population will be very helpful in feeding us all. Perhaps the catastrophe for man is that we will have to cut our grass more often! Is that supposed to be why we call CO2 a pollutant, and by implication, it is therefore dirty? This is an incredibly weak reed! On this basis we are going to sell huge increases in their energy bills to homeowners and businessmen who have not been bought off with free coupons? I do not think so.

Massive Socialist Government Gang Extortion

The gang of brutal socialists who have taken over control of the Presidency and Congress have escalated their extortion racket to much the worst levels ever. Have you ever wondered why many very wealthy businessmen and companies have for years donated more money to the Democrats who dislike business from an ideological perspective than they give to Republicans who are commonly thought to be the champions of the fat cats? Heck, have you ever wondered by the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are always wealthier than those to the Republican National Convention?

The answer is in two parts. First, many of these businessmen give more to the Democrats because they are trying to buy them off to keep them from doing as much harm to the businessmen. This is like Chamberlain buying Hitler off by giving him Czechoslovakia. Appeasement is always a popular strategy when the cowardly are faced with an especially vicious bully. The second part of the answer is that by allying themselves with the socialists they actually get a payment from those in power with legislation favoring them in a variety of ways. For instance, complex and intrusive laws will always create great opportunities for trial lawyers, who are massive donors to the major socialist party, the Democrats. Regulations such as the bureaucratically massive requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley bookkeeping procedures will hold back small and smaller mid-sized companies more than really big companies, so the big companies are protected from competition.

Cumbersome Federal contracting laws make it hard for small companies to go after Federal contracts, with their 10 pages of fine print references to many laws imposing obligations and mandates on the company taking the Federal contract or simply bidding for it. Generally regulations putting insurance, pollution, recycling, safety, family leave time, anti-discrimination, the display of tens of posters to employees, and many other mandates fall more heavily upon small and the smaller mid-sized companies than the large companies. The result is that it is common for the largest companies and the wealthiest investors to ally themselves with the Democrat mob than with the Republicans who pretend to stand up for small business interests. Yes, this is more pretense than substance on the part of the Republicans, but they really are a bit less active in doing harm to small businesses.

So, what is our small-time community rabble-rouser up to now that he has his hands on the big-time power of the Presidency? Well, he is unabashedly putting the extortion techniques the socialist Democrat Party has spent a long time perfecting to work. Let us examine how he is doing this.

According to a 9 April report by Eric Dash in the New York Times called "Banks Holding Up in Tests, but May Still Need Help," the 19 largest American banks are being given stress tests led by the Federal Reserve. Testers say there is a wide range of results on the tested banks. Those that fall short will have six months to raise capital from private investors, but if they cannot do this, the Treasury Dept. will make them take taxpayer money. Timothy Geithner says he will take a tough stance. He claims that many banks believe the value of investments and loans on their books is higher than the government does. He says the government will make some banks sell off the assets the government thinks are overvalued on their books at whatever private investors are willing to pay. What an extortion tool? If the bank does not give enough to socialist politicians campaign funds, the government in control of the socialists, declares that some of the banks assets are worth less than the bank thinks they are worth and forces the bank to sell them in a fire sale. Meanwhile, we can be sure that generous Democrat campaign contributors are likely standing in the wings willing to buy up assets at bargain prices offered at the coming fire sales.

On another front, the socialists are launching still another attack on start-up companies in Silicon Valley. They want to regulate venture capital firms to prevent systemic risks. Geithner wants to force these VCs to register with SEC and file reports with them on their investors and their investments, so that investors will be protected from schemes such as Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. This is odd. The SEC did not save anyone from Madoff though his firm was long registered with the SEC as an investment advisor and for decades as a broker-dealer. Very odd, indeed, it is. The Wall Street Journal Opinion piece by James Freeman linked to explains:

The entire venture capital industry is smaller than the Madoff fraud. VCs invest a total of $30 billion each year, far less than one-tenth of 1% of U.S. financial transactions. Venture investors -- affluent individuals and institutions -- are putting up equity and know that they can lose it all. SEC regulation could have the same negative impact on them that it had on Madoff's investors: creating an illusion of safety in what is an inherently risky endeavor. Or the regulation could become so severe that it actually does eliminate risk from venture investing, killing the innovative ideas that can only be funded by risk-takers.

The VCs use very little debt. The banks dealing with them are well-secured by the assets of the companies for the small amounts they loan to them. There is no reason for Washington to poke its nosey nose into the VC business. There is a strong downside.

Attempts to limit risk pose a systemic threat to American technology. Venture capitalists, mainly veterans of the tech industry, are deeply involved in the companies they back, often helping to recruit each of the key employees at a start-up. This hands-on feature of venture investing means that innovative companies and their backers tend to cluster in areas like Silicon Valley. If the VCs move offshore, that's probably where the next generation of companies will be born.

Cypress Semiconductor CEO T. J. Rodgers points out that the Democrats have already heavily burdened America's technology industry. Sarbanes-Oxley has imposed multimillion-dollar compliance costs since 2002. The SEC then forced companies to count stock options twice, once as dilution of stock and then as an expense. The result is already a disaster. Only one Silicon Valley company had an initial public offering of stock in all of 2008! Are the socialists purposely destroying the growth of Silicon Valley firms because Silicon Valley has had something of a reputation for being somewhat libertarian? I believe that this is a big factor in this attack on these rather independent-minded and innovative businessmen. The socialists hate business and they hate independence, rationality, and innovation even more.

Of course, we have already observed the socialists taking control of the banking and financial industries and not wanting to let go. We have seen them dictate who will manage GM and seen them micromanage which vehicles will be produced by American automakers, while dictating minimal changes for the United Auto Workers Union. They continue to encourage high risk home and auto loans for new purchases, while using the risk of defaults on prior risky loans as a club to gain control of banks and other financial institutions.

The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, sets grounds for anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit." The term "harm" is broadly defined as "any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring." [See the Washington Times, 10-11 April 2009 edition.] Thus, any environmentalist person, imagining that he may one day suffer harm from global warming, will be able to sue the U.S. government to take drastic action to prevent global warming. If they find a sympathetic court, the U.S. may be held responsible for the harm of what may well be results caused by natural forces, and forced to take drastic action against fossil fuel users whether they have in fact caused harm or not. It also rewards the massive contributors to socialism among the trial lawyers, once again.

The mandated extent of the replacement of dependable coal-fired electric power plant capacity with undependable wind and solar alternative energy sources will be certain to result in widespread electric blackouts. The governments will undoubtedly then play a role in further rationing energy, giving more to favored users and less to the politically unfavored. No doubt, unionized industries will be allowed more access to energy than will un-unionized businesses. Large companies with sufficient political pull (givers of large campaign contributions) will get energy, while small businesses will not get it.

The tax system is also to be skewed to give the socialists much more power. They tried to take the influence of wealthy people over charities away by greatly reducing the tax deduction for charitable giving by the wealthy. This was checked, for now. They use taxes as never before to put the wealthy under the feet of the mass of less wealthy voters. They are using the tax system to bind college graduates to their cause, which reinforces the tendency of young college graduates to spout the propaganda of socialism which they were infected with while in public high school and college. They will then be enrolled in government service agencies, which will complete their indoctrination. The tax system also favors selected industries such as the alternative energy industry, so that they become dependent clients of the socialists.

Rules favoring the easy unionization of small businesses will also favor the socialist-oriented unions and hurt an enemy of the socialist cause. The broadening of the Clean Air Act to cover carbon dioxide emissions will give government another tool to control our lives, which they will also use to pick winners and losers based on political pull. Tariffs, created under the guise of discriminating against polluters, low-paid workers, and non-union labor users abroad, will give the socialists still another tool to use to pick winners and losers in American industry.

Make no mistake, the Obama socialist gang wants control of every aspect of your life. It is a massive extortion ring. They are seizing power rapidly and with a breadth of attack which is mind-boggling. This assault on the rights of the individual has been long dreamed of and long planned. The worst thing is that it was very clear that Obama was the Messianic leader of just such a gang during the election process, but most Americans refused to see what was almost immediately before their eyes. He still has most Americans hypnotized even as most are now beginning to criticize his various programs.

Using the Clean Air Act to Destroy the Economy

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has been doing some good work in exposing the problems of irrational environmentalism and the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming fraud. I would like to point your attention to an interesting article on how the environmentalists are opposing all new energy projects, including alternative energy projects being pushed at great expense by Obama and the Democrat Congress. It also goes on to describe some of the consequences to be expected after the EPA rules that CO2 is a pollutant and is therefore going to require heavy regulation.

Obama's Carbon Tax is Fading

Donald Lambro believes that Obama's anti-fossil fuel carbon cap-and-trade tax on all Americans will not pass Congress. Democratic Congressmen from the Midwest, which has many coal-fired power plants and factories, are turning against the idea as they realize that their constituents are not as interested in the environment as they are in economic growth. Gallup Poll asked Americans last week if given the choice between economic growth and environmental protection, 51% of Americans would now give growth priority even if the environment suffers somewhat.

Obama had been counting on the cap-and-trade tax to pay for his middle-class tax cuts after 2010 and for funding alternative energy research and development projects. He may lose the means to fund his cockamamie alternative energy dreams, but from the start of his administration he has consistently taken actions to hurt the oil and coal industries and everyone who uses oil and coal. He has increased regulations and taxes on these industries already. His $4 trillion budget is full of anti-fossil fuel provisions designed to increase energy costs, kill jobs in the oil, gas, and coal industries, and to make us more dependent upon foreign oil. Obama has shut down all efforts to increase oil and gas exploration, development, and production. He has denied permits to drill for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and shut down hopes of doing so in ANWR. He is adding a 25% tax on all oil production and a 15% tax on all natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico as part of his budget. This will kill jobs in the Gulf states, not to mention the effect it will have on everyone in higher fuel costs.

The House had been committed to making its offices carbon neutral. But last month, they dropped this plan. Meanwhile, the Capitol Power Plant, a few blocks from the Capitol, burns coal for 35% of the power it produces. It is the leading source of air pollution in the District of Columbia. The Democrat Congress will not apply the same rules to itself which it has wanted to impose on the American people.

Reducing Air Pollution Increases Temperatures

According to a study performed at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, clearer skies due to lowered man-made pollution cause the temperature to rise. This would be a case in which man's activities affect the climate of at least densely populated areas or those generating much pollution. As Europe and the United States and Canada have generally cleaned their skies of much of the air pollution common a few decades ago, countries such as Russia, China, and India have increased their air pollution. I do not know the net effect upon the global climate, but there is probably some effect caused by man. In the longer view, the cooling effect of air pollution in the earlier stages of the industrialization of Europe and the United States was a man-made effect which has now been largely undone. Later developing industrial nations such as Russia, China, and India are now the main polluters and coolers, but will likely do more to clean up their air pollution as they develop further.

The Dutch study collected data from 342 weather stations at airports across Europe measuring the fog, mist, and haze back to 1976. The report in the journal Nature Geoscience says that the number of days with visibility of less than 2 kilometers have fallen from 20 days per year to 10 days per year in the last 30 years. As a result, less sunlight is reflected back into space from the top of such fog, mist, and haze layers and more reaches the ground, to provide more warming at the surface of the earth.

The heat island effect of major cities is very well-known and is in fact a problem for accurate earth surface land temperature histories, which many say is not adequately corrected for in the measurements of the general warming trend since the end of the Little Ice Age and the advent of industrialization with the burgeoning growth of population centers that resulted. Man clearly does have some effect on at least the local climate in these high population centers. Indeed, even small towns appear to have small local effects.

It is also clear that such activities as plowing fields for farming and cutting down forests have an effect upon the climate. Of course, man has been doing these things for a very long time, so they have little effect on the climate any more in terms of changing it, except when the level of such activities changes greatly in a given locale. But compared to an earth with no human activity, the climate has been somewhat changed by the presence of man. I have no yearning to remove man and his effects in order to return the planet to its natural, no-human climate condition. There is no reason to value this at all and every reason to value an earth which supports the flourishing of man, thanks to man's use of his ability to reason for the purpose of improving his environment for his benefit.

But, while I deny that the effects of man's activities are more important than natural forces affecting the climate and I deny that his activities are causing a climate catastrophe, I do not deny that man has some effect upon the earth's climate. If man does cause some warming, I have no problem with that. In fact, wise men will generally acknowledge that some warming is a generally good thing. There is good reason upon examining the historical record of man to conclude that man tended to flourish better in warmer periods and to suffer more in cooler periods. More power to man if his activities are actually causing a bit of warming, which makes man a bit more comfortable.