CFACT testified today at EPA’s hearing on proposed emissions regulations for new power plants. These regulations will make it nearly impossible to create a new coal-fired electricity plant in the United States at a time when China, India and even Germany are expanding their use of coal.
CFACT senior policy analyst Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. presented CFACT’s testimony today at the Clinton Building in Washington D.C.
_________________
Comments on
Proposed Carbon Pollution Standards for New Power Plants
Submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D.
On Behalf of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
February 6, 2014
My name is Bonner Cohen and I am taking this opportunity to comment on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed carbon-pollution standards for new power plants. .
There are two reasons why the agency’s proposal is ill-advised. One is scientific; the other is regulatory. EPA’s primary target is carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from new coal-fired power plants. Current concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are 400 parts per million (ppm). Human activities in all their forms account for 4 percent of that total. The United States is responsible for 3 percent of that 4 percent. All the rest of the CO2 in the atmosphere (96 percent of the total) comes from purely natural causes, such as volcanos, undersea venting, animal fluctuation, etc. The total U.S. contribution to atmospheric CO2 is one-tenth of one percent, or 0.01 percent.
This 0.01 percent includes the CO2 that is emitted every time one of the approximately 315 million Americans opens his or her mouth to speak, cry, or engage in any other verbal activity. The contribution of coal-fired power plants to the U.S., much less global CO2 emissions, is so miniscule that it cannot be measured with any degree of accuracy. And the contribution of those entities targeted by EPA to the Earth’s climate also cannot be measured. Thus, EPA has absolutely no way of saying how its proposed regulations will affect the climate.
Furthermore, in justifying its regulatory action, EPA accepts the theory of anthropogenic (human-induced) global warming driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The theory, however, provides NO explanation for the extended periods of warming and cooling that predated the widespread use of fossil fuels to produce energy. Nor can it explain the confirmed lack of any warming over the past 15 years, a time when fossil-fuel use throughout the world has increased.
In keeping with political fashion, EPA constantly refers to “climate change,” as opposed to “global warming.” This is a tacit admission on the part of the agency that the “global warming,’ so confidently predicted by the climate models on which EPA relies, has failed to take place. Indeed, even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest report had to acknowledge that global temperatures have shown no warming since 1998. I would remind the agency that science is based on observation and not on “consensus,” much less on mathematical models that can be, and are, easily constructed to produce the desired result. And the climatological observations provide NO justification for what EPA is proposing to do.
The proposal also makes no regulatory sense. China has already surpassed the U.S. as the world’s greatest emitter of greenhouse gases, and India will shortly do so. The governments of those two countries have said repeatedly over the past 20 years that they will not be a part of any scheme aimed at reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases. They have no intention of denying their citizens and businesses the affordable energy that fossil fuels provide.
For EPA to impose carbon-pollution standards that by design will make the introduction of new coal-fired power plants all but impossible is to adopt a policy that by design will drive up the cost of electricity by limiting America’s sources of power. This will be done under the justification that it will have a positive effect on the climate (whatever that is). In doing so, EPA is engaging in a complete fabrication, one that will put an end to an industry that supplies the U.S. with 37 percent of its electricity. This, of course, is exactly what the proposed regulations are meant to do. It is nothing less than industrial sabotage by regulatory means.
Bonner R. Cohen, Senior Policy Analyst
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
Arlington, Virginia
Now which industry stands to gain by killing off coal competition? And which elites are supporting it? it’s not rocket science – let’s find out and splash their names all over the media, including the politicians in their pockets.
I am thinking it is investors of industry in china and india, where labor is cheap the enviormental groups do not exist or have any power if they do. they want us to be forced to buy their stuff since this country will be unable to make it themselves, they want to force us to reduce our standard of living so we have more money to spend giving it to them for their goods and services sold at monopoly prices. the top tier of the investors are the movers and shakers who have delusions of grandeur who actually use their wealth and power to remake society and man to their vision of how it should be, of course they won’t come out and say it, they have to use tools, like investors and upper tier of workers and adminstrators of corp and gov to remake society by regulating things and taxing or giving tax breaks to corp and investors who comply with their wishes, a form of traffic control like lights, one way streets toll roads vs non toll roads, they are nudging very strongly the upper classes to their wishes of a wealthy class and slave class (their view of utopia)which is a very selfish vision. they want it all for themselves and they want to be served by mankind and this planet and resources not do the serving of mankind to benefit all mankind. they want to be gods basically, something satan has inspired them to want (check bible history you will see how rulers are incited to rise up and plunder others using war like the Babylonian king for example, who do you think inspires them to do so? satan. he has to trick and bribe people to do his will so he uses power and wealth and prominence and selfishness of people against them to do so.
I think it’s all motivated more by the religious arrogance of many whose sense of worth depends requires a disdain for reality — which requires control of their more rational fellow citizens , no matter what the obvious cost to both their living fellow humans , or even to the green , anabolic , side of life CO2 feeds .
Can we shoot ’em
You mean that wacko in the EPA head??? Or just all of them????
Personally, let’s don’t discriminate……………..!!
Before any discussion on emissions can take place, a very simple and purely mathematical discussion must lead the way. It’s the fundamental physics and math principle of MEASUREMENT.
EPA and other climate predictors, have failed to use proper MEASUREMENT criteria in their determinations regarding the climate. Global and regional temperatures over the past 200 years simply aren’t reliable based on the length of sampling; i.e. 200 years out of billions of years (life span of the earth).
Predicting climate evolution using a 200 year span of time is unscientific.The MEASUREMENT span is way too short to predict anything other than “blips” in the earth’s temperature and climate cycles. The real problem in gathering data (?) from 200 years ago lies in reliability. Besides the short span of time, the data recorded 200 years ago leaves many questions to be answered.
As a failed example of reliability or predictability, just how do these “climate experts” explain away the glaciers; long ago melted before mankind started to burn anything.
On top of that, how do these same “experts” explain away our currently pure air after the poisonous atmosphere that occurred during the Volcanism period when volcanos ruled the world. Not a single human existed then nor any EPA.
When will these EPA experts be willing to discuss “their” climate models in respect to the concepts of MEASUREMENT and history, I assume when Hell freezes over.
All true. But even using the EPA’s (IPCC’s) own unprovable numbers, the coal regulations will have “no measurable effect on global temperature.” Admitted by Gina McCarthy before a Senate hearing on climate change. Then she goes back to her office and sends out the regulations anyway. This government has gone mad.
As one woman who was testifying about the IRS targeting of the nonprofit 501C4 groups, the govt has become a punitive/thug group toward those who do not agree with oblamo.
Beware this govt, they do NOT like us peons uncontrolled.
Dr. Richard Lindzen addressed a British Parliamentary committee last fall and told them, “Even if the global warming hypothesis were true, your climate policies will not be measureable in stopping global warming. However, I can assure you your climate change policies will severely damage your economy.”
The same statement can be made about EPA’s policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from U. S. power plants.
James H. Rust, Professor of nuclear engineering.
CO2 does not cause global warming. Any gases and dust in the atmosphere cool our planet. The AGW clowns must have never made any mass and energy balances around anything. For the earth they just consider the energy leaving the earth and don’t consider the energy source for the earth – Our Sun! The same atmosphere reflects energy back to space from the Sun. The energy from the Sun is much greater than the energy leaving the earth. So duh, the overall affect is cooling. Maybe they did this on purpose; to make money on non-green energy sources like wind turbines, solar and hydroelectric. It seems our government doesn’t tell the truth about anything anymore.
you know what is funny, I have been reading these books on dinosaurs and they went through in this Smithsonian book on the earth and it indicates the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels In each epoch period and I noticed when the co2 was high the temp were below present levels, when the co2 was lower the temp were higher, and when the oxygen was high the temp were higher and when the o2 was down to more our level or lower it was cooler. weird. of course I am not saying higher oxygen levels = higher temps, just a conflicting observation, so my guess the whole deal is the temps were mostly controlled by the sun. and all this this gas or that gas being a blanket or not a blanket is all hype.
“Furthermore, in justifying its regulatory action, EPA accepts the theory
of anthropogenic (human-induced) global warming driven by the burning
of fossil fuels.”
It’s not a theory, but a falsified hypothesis. Don’t give them any more credibility than they deserve; which is none.
I’ll take issue with one point . I have yet to see a mathematical model of our temperature building from the fundamental in the manner I would expect in any other branch of applied physics . I’m only aware of several score incomprehensibly complex and bloated models aimed at predicting climate, all of which are known to be wrong .
What I don’t see is any well factored model showing the calculation of planetary temperature in the tradition of quantitative physics starting from the simplest abstraction , eg , a uniform gray ball , and adding nuances to arrive step by testable step at a more realistic model .
It is clear from the blog battles few understand even how to calculate the temperature of a radiantly heated uniformly colored ball , much less a varicolored ball with a translucent layer of paint like our earth
If you can’t show me how to do at least that in the clear and complete manner I would expect in any undergraduate physics text in any other field , then it becomes easy to understand how you can promulgate dozens of million line models all of which are wrong .
Actual analytical quantitative science , ie , physics , will , in the end , break the EPA’s anti-science anti-human anti-green anti-freedom mafia .
The EPA should be dismantled and shutdown before the do any further damage to job and our economy. Where is congress these people have no right to operate with zero oversight!!!!!
A century ago We The People cleaned up an environmental contaminant that John D. Rockefeller dumped on the ground because he had no use for it. Its called Gasolene. We with the help of Nikolai Tesla and Henry Ford cleaned this up by burning it in an engine with a Spark plug in a Automobile.
At the turn of last century when that Gasoline was poured out on the ground at all of Rockefeller Refineries. Mrs. Deland and her son had started the Citrus fruit industry that reached into South Georgia and Jacksonville and across the Florida Panhandle as the climate was warm enough to do so then in 1900. Now Frostproof Florida is no longer frost Proof. And the Citrus industry continually moves South. This Fossil Fuel of the industrial revolution was burned after 1901 and now its colder. Clearly we had nothing to do with Global Warming or Climate Change. Fruit trees don’t lie like Global Warmers do. Fruit trees are incapable of lying. When people lie like this you can bet that the human race old enemy Communism is around the corner to dominate us back into the stone age of slavery.
Volcanic activity before the 1918 cold spell was influenced by Sulfur Dioxide from Greenland’s volcanoes Identically the way it has now. We have 35 active Volcanoes in the world now. Does Anyone know how to stop up these Volcanoes? I think not.
Throughout history of history in the United States We The People have cleaned up our own messes. Did you know that Methane from fracking is now used to decontaminate water wells? I’ll bet Jock Gosto could have use that information in Europe when Water wasn’t fit to drink. The global warming agenda is clearly to destroy the industrial revolution in the USA that gave us freedom to pursue it in the first place.
When Methane from Fracking burns there is no CO2. The exhaust is all water. From Global warming foolish standpoint to stop the use of Methane would be even more foolish scene its burning does not cause CO2 emission.
Alternative energy is very expensive therefore it is unsustainable economically no matter how much we wish it wasn’t so and that includes most people. The threat is that it is at the very foundation of our economy.
The Non Democs stand to gain the most. Only one third of the worlds Nations are Democracies and they are the only having their economies stopped.
The EPA is merely a political instrument in the wiley hands of Obama. Obama is a traitor to the USA. Gina McCarthy is a woman. Women have no idea about things comprehensive such as the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere. She I clueless about the molecular weight of CO2 one would imagine. It is one and half times heavier than air. It is not forming a greenhouse. Garbage!
Obama must be put out. He is a secret one-world dictatorship agent.
The church needs to stop all services and be in continual prayer for a nation in crisis.
In crisis with the enemy, the EPA, and enemy Obama, and the mountain of debt. It will take every dollar of GDP to just pay the interest on debt very soon.
EPA fails to comply with its own regulations. Each rule and EO under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act must tie directly to the law;
– Must be scientifically measurable and capable of duplication (baseline, during and after any EPA action),
– Measure the financial and life impact assessment,
– Have readily available a financially and technologically feasible alternative. (Carbon capture has only been conducted in a lab and has not been duplicated).
This EPA sidestepped all of this.
The Science Advisory Board hearings were stacked with hand selected ‘experts’ who were only allowed to address certain questions already defined in advance.
This EPA pursues public opinion and fad of the week goals. The outcomes and improvement to the environment are not important. We at EPA spent 40 years getting lead and mercury out of the environment only to see it go back in within a year….because of populist trendy attitudes, not science.
While the herds of lemmings chase the trend of the day, this EPA has no problem passing any new rule to placate uneducated masses. Meanwhile, the enviro wavers, exemptions and grants go to best friends. Business goes overseas to best friends well funded by our tax dollars.
Fracking, another red headed step child, will be shut down..because of appearances, not science.
Lemmings look at the bright shiny objects and ignore the Obama EPA exemptions to Monsanto, HFO-1234yf, Exelon, union refineries, wood pellet plants, Harry Reid’s ENN development, Pelosi’s golf course and vineyard (while small family farms are not allowed water) and its many other friends.
Now, without coal or Nat gas, we can go into our backyards, cut down a tree and burn it, (or furniture as needed) right? Wrong. Wood burning stoves will be shut down along with fireplaces.
How will we make our flat screen tvs, cell phones, hip implants, etc all made with unique components of coal? Friends in China and India will.
I have worked for or with EPA for 21 years. I am a tree hugging environmentalist. More damage to the environment has occurred under the mismanagement of EPA and science during the last 5 years than the previous 30.
Anyone who dares to speak up about science or who does revise their studies is walked out. That goes for employees and contractors. A business or concern outside of EPA? lol You will be getting a proctologist call shortly.
I live in Tehachapi, CA and within about a mile of Lehigh Southwest Cement Plant. The black stuff entering the air is mercury laden coal dust. Lehigh is the #2 greatest polluter of cement kiln mercury in the U.S. This German giant has moaned and groaned for the last 15 years about installing equipment to capture the mercury pollutants. Now that a bill passed that is forcing them to reduce pollution they say they need more time. Personally, I can’t be happier that they’re forced to change. By the way, it doesn’t show in the photo but in the background on the left is a limestone quarry that turns the sky brown with air pollution.
Nothing more needs to be proven that EPA is on the right track.
http://www.ewg.org/research/body-burden-pollution-newborns
Photo is coal dust laden with mercury blowing into the air at Leight Southwest Cement Plant in Tehachapi, California.
I subscribe to CFACT and can’t figure out why a single one of you would want to trade places with China or would push to have EPA scrap their laws on coal emissions.
Coal combustion releases mercury, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health. This report looks at the cumulative harm inflicted by those pollutants on three major body organ systems: the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, and the nervous system. The report also considers coal’s contribution to global warming, and the health implications of global warming.
http://www.psr.org/news-events/press-releases/coal-pollution-damages-human-health.html
China pollution causes over a million birth defects a year.