CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen explains how the EPA's war on coal, petroleum, nuclear, and hydroelectric power is an eco-imperialist war on reliable, affordable electricity – and on poor and minority families. Policies that drive energy prices up drive people out of jobs, drive companies out of business, drive families into green energy poverty.
No one should dispute the fact that hurricanes rank among our planet’s most terrifying and devastating natural disasters or that they are influenced by that enigmatically complex phenomena collectively referred to as “climate." Hurricane Matthew, which resulted in the tragic deaths of an estimated 34 people in the U.S., more than 500 in impoverished Haiti, and many billions of dollars of property and business losses, was clearly no exception. Climate changes and hurricanes began occurring long before the Industrial Revolution introduced smokestacks and SUVs. Sadly, and despite all best efforts of Al Gore, the United Nations, President Obama, and the EPA [...]
CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen explains that policies that raise electricity rates have devastating impacts on the poor and on large medical facilities who serve the poor. Thus it is ironic at best that the U.S. Civil Rights Commission has come down on the side of raising rates (in effect) by siding with the fear mongers who demand an impossible to meet standards for chromium 6 in drinking water -- standards an order of magnitude tighter than what is known to be safe.
While the sensationalist New York Times publishes fearmonger articles warning of imminent massive coastal flooding as a result of global warming, real-world data present a very different picture -- for example, the Marshall Islands have actually GAINED land mass since World War II. Not even Warren Buffett is concerned.
By Calvin Beisner The planet is doomed unless humans achieve zero net “carbon” emissions within 40 years—and maybe even if we do. That’s the word from 11 co-authors, led by Johan Rockstöm of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, of a pseudo-scientific screed published August 24 in Earth’s Future, an open-access online journal of the American Geophysical Union. Here’s the abstract: The scale of the decarbonisation challenge to meet the Paris Agreement is underplayed in the public arena. It will require precipitous emission reductions and a new carbon sink on the scale of the ocean sink within 40 years. Even then, the world is [...]
By Lawrence Kogan A massive 792-page Senate Energy Committee bill threatens to authorize federal bureaucrats to cede extensive control over Western states' water and property rights, energy development, and forest management to Native American tribes, local UN sustainability councils, and radical environmentalist groups. Certain provisions could undermine the foundations of our nation from within our nation. S.2012, the North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2016, incorporates some 393 amendments. Incredibly, it is being driven forward by U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and other Members of Congress behind closed doors. Probably very few have read the bill in its entirety. Virtually [...]
Erin Brockovich became rich and famous by promoting the notion that people in Hinkley, CA, got cancer because of hexavalent chromium (Chromium-6) in drinking water. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) settled a 1993 lawsuit for $333 million, rather than risk trial by a jury frightened by a steady drumbeat of horror stories from lawyers, activists, celebrities, “journalists,” and hired “experts.” The lawyers got $134 million in fees, and Ms. Brockovich pocketed a cool $2-million bonus – plus movie royalties and other cash. Now Ms. B is trying to reprise her California success, by bringing the Cr-6 saga to North Carolina. She [...]
Winston Churchill called Russia a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. We could say Obama’s energy and climate policy is confusion wrapped in muddled thinking inside obfuscation – and driven by autocratic diktats that bring job-killing, economy-strangling, racist, and deadly outcomes. President Obama was recently in China, where his vainglorious arrival turned into an inglorious snub, when he had to use Air Force 1’s rear exit. He was there mostly to join Chinese President Xi Jinping and UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon to formally sign the Paris climate treaty that Mr. Obama insists is not a treaty (and thus does not [...]
General Electric, one of the world’s largest suppliers of electrical power plant equipment, is all fired up about large markets for new coal-fired generation in India and China as America’s shut down. This may seem quite a turnaround for a company which has been characterized by the National Center for Public Policy Research as “the poster boy for crony capitalism and corporate America’s green energy cheerleader." After all, GE had previously assured investors that coal was on its way out. Its “ecomagination” campaign launched in 2005 focused the company’s future on an “Age of Gas” powered by their heavy-duty turbines along [...]
Ethanol may be a good deal for corn farmers, but it is bad for Gulf fishing and marine life in general, bad for automobile and other engines, bad for the economy, bad for gasoline mileage, and bad for the environment. So why are we still mandating its use in vehicles?
If a country’s goal is to decrease carbon emissions by increasing reliance on renewable energy, it only makes sense to install the new equipment in the location with the best potential—both in geography and government. For Australia, which has a national Renewable Energy Target (RET) of 33,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity generated by defined renewable sources by 2020, South Australia (SA) is that place. According to SA Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis, who is also the Energy Minister, the federal government had determined that SA is where “the best conditions for wind farms” could be found. The state government was amenable, [...]
CFACT Advisor Larry Bell reports that Secretary of State John Kerry is continuing his assault on sanity through his ridiculous diatribes on climate change. Now he wants to ban air conditioning (most likely only for the poor and middle class, though). Meanwhile, Kerry and his pals are still celebrating killing half a million jobs formerly generated by the U.S. coal industry.
CFACT Advisor Marita Noon highlights the failure of anti-fracking activists to generate wide-scale support despite flying in super-activist Bill McKibben and spending a boatload of billionaire Tom Steyer's money. Their petition drive has apparently failed to get two vaunted initiatives onto the November ballot there.
CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen shows how the blathering video shown at the Rio Olympics opening ceremony is replete with lies and distortions -- and speculates that the intent was to refocus attention away from the Zika virus, polluted water, crime, and other bad news coming out of Rio and as usual to scare people into surrendering their freedoms.
CFACT advisor Marita Noon shares the good news about the Dakota Access Pipeline project which has won federal approval -- but the fight is not over, thanks to a small band of activists.