President Obama Says National Energy Tax is Non-Negotiable
Freedom Project, March 23, 2009 [here]
The Associated Press reports [here] that President Obama’s jobs-killing national energy tax proposal won’t be “subject to wheeling and dealing.” According to AP:
President Barack Obama’s aides say the administration will work with Congress on his budget proposal, but energy independence is not subject to wheeling and dealing. …
Democrats worry the [President's budget proposal] inflates deficit spending; the Congressional Budget Office estimates Obama’s budget would generate $9.3 trillion in red ink over the next decade. Republicans say it would impose massive tax increases, including on polluters; Washington could raise billions from companies that use unclean fuels, what GOP leaders called a carbon tax.
The President’s massive, new, and non-negotiable national energy tax will hit poor and middle income families hardest, and will cripple small businesses and states with manufacturing jobs. The Wall Street Journal says it could cost taxpayers more than $629 billion [here].
Governor Haley Barbour blasted the energy tax in the Republican Weekly Radio Address [here]:
The cap and trade tax and other energy taxes will drive up both electricity and gasoline prices for families and for businesses. And while Wall Street gets trillions to bail them out, small businesses will get stuck with not only income tax increases but also enormous cost increases for energy: for electricity and gasoline. Families will get clobbered, too.
Don’t take my word for it; listen to what Barack Obama himself told The San Francisco Chronicle last year, and I quote: “Under my plan of cap and trade, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
And President Obama was right. His energy taxes, like the cap and trade tax, will drive energy costs for American families through the roof.
Mt. Redoubt Erupts
NPR.org, March 23, 2009 [here]
Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano has erupted five times since Sunday night, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air in the volcano’s first emissions in nearly 20 years.
Residents in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, were spared from falling ash, though fine gray dust was falling Monday morning on small communities to the north. … [more]
Alaska Volcano Observatory [here]
2009-03-23 07:46:00
The eruption of Redoubt volcano continues.
Ash plumes generated by the explosive bursts are drifting north-northeast. Ash fall has been reported in Skwentna and the Chuitna area.
Ashfall advisories are available on the National Weather Service site [here]
AVO’s web camera near the volcano is no longer functioning.
AVO is planning an overflight of the volcano later this morning.
U.N. Proposes “Green New Deal”
$750 billion “green” investment could revive world economy: U.N.
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent, Mar 19, 2009 [more]
OSLO (Reuters) - Investments of $750 billion could create a “Green New Deal” to revive the world economy and protect the environment, perhaps aided by a tax on oil, the head of the U.N. environment agency said on Thursday.
Achim Steiner said spending should focus on five environmental sectors including improved energy efficiency for buildings and solar or wind power to create jobs, curb poverty and fight climate change.
“The opportunity must not be lost,” Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), told Reuters of a UNEP study that will be put to world leaders meeting in London on April 2 to work out how to spur the ailing economy.
The UNEP report said investments of one percent of global gross domestic product, or about $750 billion, could bankroll a “Global Green New Deal” inspired by the “New Deal” of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt that helped end the depression of the 1930s. … [more]
Note: Roosevelt’s New Deal prolonged the Great Depression for 12 years. It was the rise of Fascism in Europe, engendering World War II, that finally ended Roosevelt’s failed socialist experiment. Capitalism won WWII and lifted Europe out of the shambles of its own self-destruction. The U.N. was created in an effort to prevent further mass insanity and debilitating “experiments” by Euro politicos. Ironically.
Global hurricane activity reaches 30-year low
by Ryan N. Maue, Florida State University COAPS, Climate Audit, March 12th, 2009 [here]
As previously reported at Climate Audit, and chronicled at my Florida State Global Hurricane Update page, both Northern Hemisphere and overall Global hurricane activity has continued to sink to levels not seen since the 1970s. Even more astounding, when the Southern Hemisphere hurricane data is analyzed to create a global value, we see that Global Hurricane Energy has sunk to 30-year lows, at the least. Since hurricane intensity and detection data is problematic as one goes back in time, when reporting and observing practices were different than today, it is possible that we underestimated global hurricane energy during the 1970s. …
During the past 2 years +, the Earth’s climate has cooled under the effects of a dramatic La Nina episode. The Pacific Ocean basin typically sees much weaker hurricanes that indeed have shorter lifecycles and therefore — less ACE. …
Through March 12, 2009, the Southern Hemisphere ACE is about half of what’s expected in a normal year, with a multitude of very weak, short-lived hurricanes. All of these numbers tell a very simple story: just as there are active periods of hurricane activity around the globe, there are inactive periods, and we are currently experiencing one of the most impressive inactive periods, now for almost 3 years. …
Under global warming scenarios, hurricane intensity is expected to increase (on the order of a few percent), but MANY questions remain as to how much, where, and when. …
The perceptible (and perhaps measurable) impact of global warming on hurricanes in today’s climate is arguably a pittance compared to the reorganization and modulation of hurricane formation locations and preferred tracks/intensification corridors dominated by ENSO (and other natural climate factors). Moreover, our understanding of the complicated role of hurricanes with and role in climate is nebulous to be charitable. … [more]
$600 million blow from timber losses
By Darren Gray, WA Today, March 17, 2009 [here]
MORE than $600 million of timber and economic activity related to its harvesting was lost in last month’s bushfires, new estimates reveal.
Substantial timber losses have hit both privately owned plantations and native forests that could be harvested for timber.
The plantations and forests will take decades to regrow. Meanwhile, the bushfire losses will deplete timber supplies.
The lost timber would have been used in furniture making, house construction, floorboards, joinery, timber pallets, copy paper and newsprint. A substantial amount of it would have ended up in new Melbourne houses and extensions.
VicForests, the body that manages timber harvesting in state forests, estimates 25,000 hectares of “merchantable forest” was burnt.
The largest area affected was in state forest in a triangle from Toolangi to Marysville to Alexandra.
Further native state forest was lost in the Bunyip fires in West Gippsland.
VicForests estimates that $600 million of timber and economic activity related to its harvesting was lost.
In addition to these native forest losses, an estimated 18,000 hectares of plantation timber, eucalypt and pine, were severely burnt. … [more]
Obama Gray Wolf Decision Unpopular But Right
Environmentalists Boo Decision, but NCPA Expert Applauds
National Center for Policy Analysis E-Team [here]
Dallas (March 19, 2009) - The decision to remove the gray wolf from endangered species lists in Montana, Idaho and the Great Lakes Region is the environmentally correct decision even though it’s unfavorable among other so-called environmental groups, according to NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett.
“It’s encouraging that President Obama and his Administration have decided to continue the Bush Administration’s recommendation to delist the gray wolf in the Great Lakes and most of the northern Rocky Mountains,” Dr. Burnett said. “The president passed his first test of his dedication to follow the science, even though his choice was an unpopular one given the political agenda of the environmentalists that supported his campaign.”
Burnett says the gray wolf population had surpassed standards set by biologists that would count the species as recovered long ago, so there is no biological reason to keep the gray wolves as endangered. Environmentalists have fought delisting the wolves as a means of trying to control local resource management in the West, he says.
The Obama Administration decided to leave the wolf under federal protection in Wyoming, where Interior Department has found the state’s management plan lacking.
“While I disagree with the Administration’s decision not to delist the wolf in Wyoming, allowing them to manage the wolf population under plans approved by fish and wildlife scientists, this is clearly a case of three-fourths of a loaf being much better than none,” Burnett said. “In this instance, science won out over politics. That’s change; a welcome change. Bravo!”
Pine Beetle being killed off in Alberta, BC not so lucky
News1130, Canadian Press, March 20th, 2009 [here]
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - It’s too late for BC, but new scientific data from the Canadian Forest Service suggests frigid temperatures this [record cold] winter have killed off 95 per cent of the mountain pine beetles in southern Alberta and the mountain parks and about 90 per cent in northern Alberta.
The numbers are promising, but the province won’t know until May if the death rate was high enough to stop the destructive bugs from continuing to spread to healthy trees.
The beetles threaten about 60-thousand square kilometres of Alberta pine forests.
Triumph of Parochialism over Common Sense
by Dr. Tom Coburn, U.S. Senator, March 19, 2009 [here]
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) released the following statement today after the Senate’s passage of the Public Lands Act.
“Parochialism and short-term political expediency have once again trumped common sense in the United States Senate. The public lands bill handicaps future generations with additional debt and new barriers to both renewable and traditional energy resources in our own country,” Dr. Coburn said.
“Today, we rejected transparency and the ability to know the size and cost of federal property so we can better manage our resources. We rejected transparency because we prefer darkness and a lack of accountability. We rejected eliminating earmarks because we want to look good back home even if we undermine our future. We rejected the ability to access energy both renewable and traditional. We rejected prioritizing the needs of our national parks, which are deteriorating in the face of at least a $10 billion maintenance backlog because we prefer new ribbon cutting ceremonies to the hard work of upkeep and oversight,” Dr. Coburn said.
“The American people also should be disappointed that in a time of economic turmoil the United States Senate has devoted seven weeks to a bill that could have been done in two weeks. Seventy of the bills in this package, which I supported, could have passed by voice vote. Had the majority agreed to a simple and open amendment process months ago we could have been focusing on more important issues. The fact that one-third of the Senate supported some of my amendments demonstrated that this bill was too complex and controversial to pass essentially in secret with no debate, no amendments and no recorded votes,” Dr. Coburn said. … [more]
Shell dumps wind, solar and hydro power in favour of biofuels
Tim Webb, guardian.co.uk, 17 March 2009 [here]
Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.
Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world’s largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generation of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment.
The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell’s controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.
The company said that many alternative technologies did not offer attractive investment opportunities. Linda Cook, Shell’s executive director of gas and power, said: “If there aren’t investment opportunities which compete with other projects we won’t put money into it. We are businessmen and women. If there were renewables [which made money] we would put money into it.” … [here]
The Answer, My Friend is NOT Blowing in the Wind
By Jay Dwight and Joe D’Aleo, ICECAP, March 19, 2007 [here]
Many states and the Federal Government are putting a lot of faith in renewable energy sources especially wind and solar as solutions for our energy independence and future cost reduction. However, unlike other energy sources such as natural gas, oil, coal, nuclear, tidal, geothermal and to a large degree hydro, wind and solar are much less reliable and cost effective, requiring heavy subsidization. See how Shell Oil just announced today it is backing off its wind and solar efforts as they found them to be not cost effective.
In fact of the primary energy sources, wind power is the most expensive:
Wind = 21.97 cents per kwh
Gas and oil = 12.28 cents per kwh
Nuclear = 11.06 cents per kwh
Hydro = 7.60 cents per kwh
Believing in wind is a fool’s errand. The reasons are simple. Wind is costly, inefficient and erratic.
The New Hampshire Climate Action plan to be released on March 27th by Governor Lynch like the one in neighbor state Maine relies heavily on wind power. Dr. Fred Ward using the NHDES’s own calculations, found you could put a wind power turbine on every hill in the state and yet get at most half the electricity that one single nuclear power plant could deliver.
Vaclac Klaus from the Czech Republic in his book “Blue Planet in Green Shackles” asked the question “Could the Czech Republic replace the power output from the Temelin nuclear power plant by wind?” Using conservative estimates the answer is yes but it would take 7,750 wind turbine power plants requiring 8.6 million tons of material and would cover a 413 mile long line of turbines 492 feet high, corresponding to a distance from Temelin in the southern Czech Republic to Brussels in Belgium or in the US, the distance from Concord, NH to Washington DC.
Even if, under ideal conditions, wind could provide a substantial portion of the energy needed for a state or region, you would have to have a back-up permanent and reliable source to turn to when the wind fails. See examples of how the wind has stopped when needed most [here, here and here]. In other words, hydro, gas, oil, nuclear, or coal turbines must be available and in ready back-up mode at all times. If the ’shovel ready’ sources are at a much less expensive cost, why waste money on an unreliable source? Ask Arnold how the enviro inspired government programs are working so far in his state, which he proudly announced was leading the nation. [more]
Obama climate plan could cost $2 trillion
Tom LoBianco, Washington Times, March 18, 2009 [here]
President Obama’s climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House’s initial estimate of the so-called “cap-and-trade” legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House.
A top economic aide to Mr. Obama told a group of Senate staffers last month that the president’s climate-change plan would surely raise more than the $646 billion over eight years the White House had estimated publicly, according to multiple a number of staffers who attended the briefing Feb. 26.
“We all looked at each other like, ‘Wow, that’s a big number,’” said a top Republican staffer who attended the meeting along with between 50 and 60 other Democratic and Republican congressional aides.
The plan seeks to reduce pollution by setting a limit on carbon emissions and allowing businesses and groups to buy allowances, although exact details have not been released.
At the meeting, Jason Furman, a top Obama staffer, estimated that the president’s cap-and-trade program could cost up to three times as much as the administration’s early estimate of $646 billion over eight years. A study of an earlier cap-and-trade bill co-sponsored by Mr. Obama when he was a senator estimated the cost could top $366 billion a year by 2015. … [more]
U.N. climate chief hustles on global warming deal
By Gerard Wynn, Reuters, Mar 18, 2009 [here]
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Big gaps remain in a new U.N. deal on global warming meant to be agreed in December and time is running worryingly short with just 265 days left, the U.N. climate chief said on Tuesday.
Yvo de Boer criticized a meeting of European Union finance ministers last week, which he said put conditions on financial help for climate action in developing countries, contrary to promises at the launch of the two-year climate talks in Bali in 2007.
The talks are meant to conclude in Copenhagen in December with a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. One battleground is between industrialized and developing countries on how to split the cost of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
“How are things looking in terms of that agreement? Worrying,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a carbon trading conference in Copenhagen. … [more]
Rocky Mountain Wolf Population Surges
Numbers of wolves increase again
By MATTHEW BROWN, Billings Gazette, March 18, 2009 [here]
Federal officials say a record 1,645 gray wolves counted in the Northern Rockies this winter shows the predators’ population remains strong but is no longer expanding as rapidly as in past years.
Since their reintroduction to the region in the mid-1990s, wolf numbers had previously grown on average by 24 percent annually in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
This year’s figure is up only 8 percent, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Ed Bangs.
Bangs said the slowdown - combined with increasing numbers of livestock killed by the animals - signals that wolves have filled most prime habitat in the three states. “The population is getting to about as many as you’re going to have,” he said. “There’s a big, healthy population in the Northern Rocky Mountains,” he said. “At some point, the suitable habitat will be filled with wolves and the population just won’t grow any more.”
The government’s annual winter wolf count found 497 of the predators in Montana, 302 in Wyoming and 846 in Idaho.
Livestock kills by wolves spiked more than 40 percent, with 601 cattle, sheep, llamas, dogs and other domestic animals killed.
In response government wildlife agents and ranchers killed 264 wolves last year, or about one of every six wolves in the entire population. That included 21 entire packs.
Wildlife Services - the division within the U.S. Department of Agriculture that removed most of those wolves - spent almost $1 million on its efforts. In total, $3.7 million was spent on wolf management in the region in 2008.
Federal officials in January declared that the region’s wolves were ready to come off the endangered-species list in Idaho and Montana. That decision was upheld by the Obama administration earlier this month - to the dismay of environmental and animal rights groups that contend that wolves need further protection.
Those groups have vowed to challenge that decision in court once it is published in the Federal Register. That could happen next week. … [more]
Anti-logger school book replaced in Grants Pass
by The Associated Press, March 17, 2009 [here]
Loggers made a dramatic transition from tree-killing litterers to kindhearted animal lovers in a “Help the Forest” textbook for first-graders at Grants Pass schools.
An eight-page book was replaced with a decidedly rosier version after the original copy generated criticism for its negative portrayal of loggers.
Parents objected to a spread in the book that showed loggers chopping down trees and various bits of litter on the ground. The text on page 6 read: “These people do not take care of the forest. They cut down huge trees. They drop trash on the ground.” That was followed by a tearjerker page 7: “The trees are gone. The birds cannot find homes. The animals cannot find food.”
After news broke that the book had been pulled from classrooms, the publisher sent the district 108 new copies with a different take on loggers: “These people take care of huge forests. They put out fires. They cut down sick trees. Then new trees can be planted. Animals will still have homes. They will still find food.”
The illustrations, too, have changed. Rather than a trash-littered forest floor, the new edition shows a firefighter and a tree planter, and in a tree there’s a bear.
A top official for Pearson-Scott Foresman, the publishing house, sent a letter along with the books. “The publication of this edition was an egregious error on our part, and I will not attempt to offer an explanation,” wrote Paul McFall, senior vice president. … [more]
Note: evidently the Pearson-Scott Foresman executives had an epiphany. They finally realized where the paper in their books comes from. Book publishers are in the wood products industry, if the truth be told.
Cow Fart, Burp Taxes Denounced in Europe
By Carl Mortished, World Business Editor, The London Times, March 10, 2009 [here]
Proposals to tax the flatulence of cows and other livestock have been denounced by farming groups in the Irish Republic and Denmark.
A cow tax of €13 per animal has been mooted in Ireland, while Denmark is discussing a levy as high as €80 per cow to offset the potential penalties each country faces from European Union legislation aimed at combating global warming.
The proposed levies are opposed vigorously by farming groups. The Irish Farmers’ Association said that the cattle industry would move to South America to avoid EU taxes.
Livestock contribute 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The Danish Tax Commission estimates that a cow will emit four tonnes of methane a year in burps and flatulence, compared with 2.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide for an average car. … [more]