World leaders -- other than Barack Obama -- are ignoring the United Nations as it tries very hard to promote the New York City climate conference as a major event. Meanwhile, President Obama and his coterie have been taking great pains not to alienate their antiwar base while plotting air strikes against the Islamic State that the President says is not Islamic.
Unless President Obama stops unilaterally forcing UN climate policy on America, and directs his EPA to back down on harsh regulations and grant power plants a reprieve, blackouts are all but guaranteed.
The EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan, which by setting strict limits on the life-giving gas carbon dioxide would effectively shut down coal-fired power generation in the U.S., is an unconstitutional overreach, according to CFACT advisor Marita Noon. Noon quotes Justice Scalia's decision that blocked EPA's "tailoring rule": "The power of executing laws…does not include a power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work in practice.” NOTE: You can still send in written comments to the EPA regarding this job-killing, economy-killing regulation.
Larry Bell finds that there is "not even a smidgen of evidence" to support the theory of climate change caused by carbon dioxide as a major threat to humanity. Indeed, an EPA internal report acknowledges that "there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based upon a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.”
Larry Bell recalls what Bush Administration officials said would happen if the Clean Air Act were extended to incorporate regulation of carbon dioxide -- and none of it was good. In the words of CEQ chair James Connaughton, the “case-by-case application of old regulations to an entirely new set of circumstances and parties foreshadows unrelenting confusion, conflicts over compliance, and decades-long litigation windfall for attorneys, consultants, and activists, as communities and the courts strive to sort it all out.”
With the President and the unaccountable regulatory agencies joined by the Supreme Court in declaring Congress to be irrelevant in governing America, it is time for Congress to raise itself up from the dead and reestablish itself as the sole creator of new laws. Given that too many in Congress have gone along with this massive Presidential (and regulatory) power grab, this may require sweeping out a lot of dead wood from both chambers.
EPA assumes zero benefits from the burning of fossil fuels while proclaiming heavy costs from increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Now, as Greens push for increasing the alleged "social cost of carbon" from the current 36/ton (up from $22/ton back in 2010) to an astonishing $43/ton, Roger Bezdek and Paul Driessen show that EPA is violating federal law (including Executive Order 12866) by ignoring the massive benefits to society (some $70 trillion in the U.S. alone) from fossil fuels use.
To justify their steady stream of anti-fossil fuel “climate change prevention” regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and other federal agencies have invented the “social cost of carbon” concept. It attaches arbitrary monetary values to the alleged impacts of using hydrocarbons and emitting carbon dioxide – and thereby enables government agencies to say the energy that powers 80% of our U.S. economy imposes enormous costs on society … which expensive, punitive regulations will prevent. However, the entire exercise is arbitrary, of questionable merit and validity, illegal, and even fraudulent. Most ridiculous of all, in violation of an important 1993 executive order, the federal methodology does not even consider one single aspect of the countless benefits that hydrocarbon energy provides to modern societies. In fact, if they considered both costs and benefits of carbon and carbon dioxide, federal officials would find that the benefits of carbon outweigh the costs by as much as 500 to 1!
At an October 23 hearing in Atlanta called by EPA to solicit public comments about "reducing carbon pollution" from existing stationary power plants, Dr. James Rust of the Heartland Institute joined several CFACT Collegians in providing testimony. Dr. Rust noted that these EPA rules would be both damaging to the economy and dangerous to public health and welfare -- and are wholly unneeded.
"Climate scientists" and their political masters insist they are "right" about carbon dioxide being the precursor of "global warming" that is perhaps taking a pause but will surely return soon with a vengeance far more devastating than the same people predicted just a few years ago. Many go so far as to suggest that anyone who dares challenge them should be locked up or even tried for treason. Trouble is, Mother Nature is not cooperating with their scary scenarios. How long before people begin to notice that they are wearing no clothes in a blizzard?
When Presidential candidate Barack Obama said in 2008 that under his energy plan, "electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket," he wasn't kidding! His new EPA carbon capture scheme is not designed to work but to force coal plants to shut down forever.
Climate alarmists are trying to sucker, snooker, and stampede us into taking “immediate action” on job- and economy-strangling taxes and restrictions, before more people catch on to what’s really happening. This protection racket is one more example of passing a law, so that we can find out what’s in it. We simply cannot afford to let science continue being coopted to serve anti-hydrocarbon political agendas.
In this special report, CFACT senior policy advisor Paul Driessen examines carbon dioxide and its many benefits. While global warming alarmists rail against it, carbon dioxide is actually the "gas of life," without which life on earth would perish.
The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more it is absorbed by plants of every description – and the faster and better they grow, even under adverse conditions like limited water, extremely hot air temperatures, or infestations of insects, weeds and other pests. As trees, grasses, algae and crops grow more rapidly and become healthier and more robust, animals and humans enjoy better nutrition on a planet that is greener and greener.
When it comes to urging people to lower their carbon footprint, no organization is more outspoken than the United Nations. But is this international body hypocritical?