Thursday, February 14, 2013

And we're all going to down with this ship if someone doesn't fight back!


Scuttling the Ship of State to appease climate activists

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- Tom Harris (Bio and Archives)  Thursday, February 14, 2013
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Imagine you are travelling on the safest, most powerful ocean liner in the world. One day, the captain announces, “We are approaching a severe storm so we’re scuttling the ship. Man the lifeboats!”

A deck-hand explains to the incredulous passengers, “The Captain believes that big vessels like ours are causing an increase in ocean storms. So we must sink the ship!”

Hours later, the crew assure frightened passengers huddled in lifeboats, “A smaller ship is due in a few days. We’ll be fine as long as a real storm doesn’t blow up.”

In his State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama demonstrated that, like scuttling the best ship in the fleet to control the weather, he too is risking America’s prosperity with irrational climate and energy policies.

If it were actually true that “Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and intense”, as the President said in his address, then he should be boosting the most affordable and reliable energy sources to prepare for and cope with these hazards. After all, we would need more electricity to handle greater demands for air conditioning and heating. More power would be required to irrigate lands, build dikes, strengthen public infrastructure and relocate populations living on flood plains or at risk from tornadoes and hurricanes.

Yet, in discussing his solution to these dangers, Obama promoted wind and solar power, the least reliable and most expensive sources. He said nothing about the most reliable and cheapest energy source available—coal, from which comes half of all America’s electricity.

The President presents the transition to wind and solar as drivers of strong economic growth. This is a serious mistake. Even though wind and solar power have had decades to mature, energy from these sources still costs between three and ten times that from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear. While Obama was right to say that, “Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America”, this only happened because the American government funneled vast amounts of money into subsidies for the field. The U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that for 2010, non-hydroelectric renewable electricity generation was still only 3.6% of all generation even though it received 53.5% of all federal financial support for the electric power sector.

No industrialized society can successfully replace dependable coal-fired electricity generation stations with intermittent and diffuse sources such as wind and solar. We need massive quantities of reliable, high quality power to run steel mills, Internet servers and our transportation system, even when the wind drops or a cloud passes in front of the sun. Obama’s conclusion, “So let’s generate even more [wind power]”, begs common sense.

Obama also promoted natural gas in his address. Given the vast reserves that modern fracking technology is making available, this is sensible. But it is a mistake to use natural gas to replace coal as the country’s main base load electricity source. Natural gas should be saved for domestic cooking and heating, transportation, fertilizer production and for peaking power when electricity demand rises suddenly. And, if gas resources turn out to be less plentiful than forecast, America will need its coal-fired stations to avoid freezing in the dark.

Obama’s drive to dismantle coal is not about providing energy and economic security for the country. After all, the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal with enough reserves to last for centuries. The President is basing national energy policy on the improbable hypothesis that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion is a major cause of dangerous climate change. Although coal combustion does emit more CO2 than most other sources, Obama was wrong to refer to CO2 as “dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet.” CO2 is not a pollutant.  It is essential to life on Earth and its increasing concentration has led to greater agricultural productivity. And the idea that the rise in CO2 is causing a climate crisis is falling into disrepute as the world fails to warm as alarmists predicted.

Obama was also wrong to imply that “the overwhelming judgment of science” supports man-made climate catastrophe theories.  It has never been demonstrated that there is any consensus about the causes of climate change among scientists who specialize in this research. Polls that have attempted to make this connection either asked the wrong questions or are so methodologically flawed that they cannot be taken seriously.

Even if there were a climate crisis of our making, Obama’s expensive energy policies would have little climatic impact as long as China, which derives 80% of its electricity from coal and is planning to build 500 coal‐fired plants over the next ten years, continues on its current path. To say they are “going all-in on clean energy”, as the President did in his address, is simply a mistake.

Obama warned Congress that if it doesn’t enable climate legislation soon, he will direct his Cabinet to devise “executive actions” that he could use to force strong climate policy on the country. If he fulfils this threat, his legacy will be one of mass unemployment and millions of Americans joining the billions throughout the world already mired in energy poverty. And climate will continue to change as it always has with the impact of America’s sacrifice being too small to even be measured.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition.
Tom can be reached at: tom.harris@climatescienceinternational.net

Think Energy! Think Jobs! Don't Think Like Obama!


Republican response to Obama throwing down the gauntlet on climate and energy was weak, wholly inadequate

Americans who know anything about the crucially important role energy plays in human affairs should be very afraid of the direction President Barack Obama is taking the United States. In clear, unambiguous language, he told the nation in his State of the Union address exactly where his dangerous quest to control the planet’s climate is headed. Obama delivered nothing short of an ultimatum to Congress, a direct threat to the country’s prosperity and fundamental way of life, when he said:
obama-small
President Barack Obama delivering his State of the Union address on February 12, 2013 in which he warned Congress to deliver climate legislation or he will impose policy by fiat.
“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”
Note 1: When the President said “pollution”, he was really speaking of the benign gas carbon dioxide which he erroneously blames for more frequent and intense heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and even “Superstorm Sandy”, as he calls the level 1 (lowest) hurricane.
Note 2: When the President said he is going to “speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy”, he really means he is going to continue to kill coal as America’s largest source of electricity (currently 50% of their electric power generation) in favour of hopelessly inadequate wind and solar power.
Obama dedicated 630 words in his address (see * below for that whole section) to explaining his rationale for such extreme actions and his relentless determination to lead the country to energy suicide, no matter what Congress says.
If Obama fulfils this threat, his legacy will be one of mass unemployment and millions of Americans joining the billions throughout the world already mired in energy poverty. In the meantime, climate will continue to change as it always has with the climatic impact of America’s sacrifice being too small to even be measured.
President Obama’s frighteningly aggressive stance demanded a direct, no-holds-barred response from Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio who gave the GOP’s response to the address.  Instead, Rubio practically ignored the issue, never even mentioning the word “climate”.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio gave a weak response to President Obama throwing down the gauntlet on the nation’s energy policy.
“When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather – he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air.
“One of the best ways to encourage growth is through our energy industry. Of course solar and wind energy should be a part of our energy portfolio. But God also blessed America with abundant coal, oil and natural gas. Instead of wasting more taxpayer money on so-called “clean energy” companies like Solyndra, let’s open up more federal lands for safe and responsible exploration. And let’s reform our energy regulations so that they’re reasonable and based on common sense. If we can grow our energy industry, it will make us energy independent, it will create middle class jobs and it will help bring manufacturing back from places like China.”
This is a wholly inadequate reaction to Obama throwing down the gauntlet on the nation’s energy policy. Rubio must understand that, with a President who is working to destroy coal, America’s largest and most important energy source, nothing less than a candid, factual, point-by-point correction of the address was urgently required.
Rubio was, of course, completely right when he said,
“On foreign policy, America continues to be indispensable to the goal of global liberty, prosperity and safeguarding human rights. The world is a better place when America is the strongest nation on earth. But we can’t remain powerful if we don’t have an economy that can afford it.”
He should have added that, without plentiful, inexpensive and safe energy, America will collapse into poverty and eventually chaos and failure. And with it, will go Canada and most of the free world. Then, the “next chapter in the amazing story of the greatest nation man has ever known”, as Rubio correctly described the United States, may be its last.
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Compare Rubio’s weak response above to Obama’s fearless but reckless energy challenge as extracted from the State of the Union Address:
“Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race. We need to make those investments. And today, no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy.
“After years of talking about it, we are finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas, and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar – with tens of thousands of good, American jobs to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before – and nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.
“But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Now, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.
“Now, the good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.
“And four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market and the jobs that came with it. We’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year – let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.
“In the meantime, the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. We need to encourage that. That’s why my Administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits. That’s got to be part of the all of above plan. But I also want to work with this Congress to encourage the research and technology that helps natural gas burn even cleaner and protects our air and water.
“In fact, much of our new-found energy is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together. So tonight, I propose we use some of our oil and gas revenues to fund an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good. If a non-partisan coalition of CEOs and retired generals and admirals can get behind this idea, then so can we. Let’s take their advice and free our families and businesses from the painful spikes in gas prices we’ve put up with for far too long. I’m also issuing a new goal for America: let’s cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next twenty years. We’ll work with the states to do it. Those states with the best ideas to create jobs and lower energy bills by constructing more efficient buildings will receive federal support to help make that happen.”
America, and indeed the whole free world, desperately needs a strong Republican response to this serious threat.
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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition, and a Research Fellow to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.