Tag Archives: Greenhouse gas

Who Are The Zero Net Carbon Rules For?

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Obviously the zero net carbon rules are not for the people who recently attended the Climate Control Summit.

On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted the following:

JOSH HAMMER: A climate summit to turn you green with nausea: Kamala and Kerry flew on SEPARATE jets… the host is a Sultan oil boss… and it’s all held in Dubai – where they air condition the desert. What a net zero charade!

Keep in mind that these are the people who want to take away our gas stoves and air-conditioning and tell us to eat bugs while they jet around the world and eat Colby beef.

The article notes:

The United Nations‘ 28th climate change conference is melting down faster than an iceberg in the Arctic.

It’s a collection of the world’s rich and influential who’ve set out to save all of humanity by getting rid of fossil fuels. But apparently, the engines of this international powwow don’t run well on bull manure.

John Kerry, the failed presidential candidate now moonlighting as President Biden’s ‘special presidential envoy for climate’, is leading the American delegation for the COP28 summit.

True to form, Kerry, our Bay State plutocrat, reportedly jetted in on a carbon-belching private plane.

And Kamala Harris, our flailing vice president, deemed the meeting urgent enough to justify the greenhouse gases necessary to fuel Air Force Two and fly her to the lavish affair as well.

Would it be too much to ask them to ride share?

The article also notes:

Kerry is a hypocrite of world-historical proportions. He is a fabulously wealthy man (through marriage) who flies around the world aboard gas-guzzling planes to useless junkets to admonish the plebeians who drive to work in gas-guzzling cars. And to top it all off, this weekend in Dubai, Kerry had the chutzpah to preach that all coal plants must be shuttered posthaste.

His reason? Coal plants are killing people daily.

You know what else kills people daily, and on an order of magnitude considerably larger than climate change? Poverty. And there is no more time-proven, efficient method for alleviating poverty than ensuring the widespread availability of affordable energy.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The author makes a number of very important points.

Spin vs. Reality

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The Washington Examiner posted an article today about the latest events in the climate change debate.

The article reports:

Speaking at the United Nations in December, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi drew cheers by saying the United States was “still in” the Paris Climate Agreement. Green activists applauded Pelosi’s defense of the international climate accord, which President Trump had vowed to exit. These activists claim that remaining in the Paris Agreement will help reduce global emissions.

They are wrong.

European leaders have spent years trying and pointedly failing to solve the climate crisis with regulation. Whether intentionally or not, U.S. policymakers have mostly avoided top-down solutions. And counterintuitively, or perhaps it should have been intuitive, the U.S. now leads the developed world in reducing carbon emissions.

America didn’t need a treaty–we just needed a President who understood how to balance environmental policy and the freedom and interests of the American people.

The article explains why the American approach has worked:

…instead of banning fossil fuels outright, the U.S. embraced natural gas amid a boom in its production. Thanks to a process called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” we’ve managed to tap new reserves of natural gas. In 2015, the U.S. surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s top producer of natural gas. By 2018, energy companies produced over 60% more natural gas than they had two decades earlier. This newfound abundance of natural gas has helped our nation transition away from coal, which emits twice as much carbon dioxide.

Thanks to this shift, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have hit 30-year lows, even as global emissions have increased by 50% during the same period. And since 2005, natural gas has done more to reduce power sector dioxide emissions than all renewable energy sources combined, according to the Energy Information Administration.

By eschewing regulation, America has also spurred additional emissions-reducing innovations in the private sector. Freed from red tape, U.S. energy firms have been able to devise and implement a host of groundbreaking green technologies. For example, a new technology called CleanWave strips chemicals from fracking wastewater using positively charged ions and bubbles. The Texas-based energy firm Apache reduces greenhouse gas emissions by powering fracking engines with natural gas instead of diesel.

The article concludes:

While the rest of the world fumbles with green energy policies, the U.S. continues to reduce emissions. We don’t need regulation to guarantee future success. American firms will continue to combat climate change, as long as we let them.

The free market works any time you let it.

Despite What The Mainstream Media Says…

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Stephen Moore posted an article at Real Clear Politics today about global pollution. Remember all the hysteria when America didn’t sign the Kyoto Treat and didn’t institute a cap-and-trade carbon tax? Well, evidently Americans cared enough about keeping the air clean to reduce carbon dioxide emission on their own.

The article reports:

Yet the latest world climate report from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy finds that in 2017, America reduced its carbon emissions by 0.5 percent, the most of all major countries. That’s especially impressive given that our economy grew by nearly 3 percent — so we had more growth and less pollution — the best of all worlds. The major reason for the reduced pollution levels is the shale oil and gas revolution that is transitioning the world to cheap and clean natural gas for electric power generation.

Meanwhile, as our emissions fell, the pollution levels rose internationally and by a larger amount than in previous years. So much for the rest of the world going green.

The world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions is China. According to the invaluable Institute for Energy Research, “China produces 28 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. India is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide and had the second-largest increment (93 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide emissions in 2017, more than twice as much an increase as the U.S. reduction.” This means it doesn’t really matter how much America reduces its greenhouse gases because China and India cancel out any and all progress we make. Those who think they are helping save the planet by purchasing an electric car or putting a solar panel on their roof are barking up the wrong tree. There is no way to make progress on greenhouse gases without China and India on board — which they clearly are not.

It is basically ironic that China and India, both countries that signed the Kyoto Treaty, have increased their carbon dioxide to the point where they are cancelling out the gains made by America.

The article concludes:

So there you have it. The countries in the Paris climate accord have broken almost every promise they’ve made and the nation (the U.S.) that hasn’t signed the treaty is doing more than any other nation to reduce global warming. Yet, we are being lectured by the sanctimonious Europeans and Asians for not doing our fair share to save the planet. It’s another case study in how the left cares far more about good intentions than actual results. What matters is that you say that you will wash the dishes, not that you actually do it.

Unfortunately the war on carbon has never been about making the earth a cleaner place–it has always been about money. The Chicago Climate Exchange was set up in 2003 so that powerful Democrats could make a ton of money once cap-and-trade legislation was passed in America. It closed in 2010 when the legislation was not passed, and those Democrats lost their investment. Its two biggest investors were Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs–and President Obama, who helped launch CCX with funding from the Joyce Foundation, where he and presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett once sat on the board of directors. Had cap and trade gotten through Congress, all of those people would have made a lot of money. That is one of many reasons why they supported the legislation–clean air was simply a side issue. (References here and here).

 

 

Things That Just Make You Wonder

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Investor’s Business Daily posted an article yesterday about the Paris Climate Accord. It seems as if President Trump did the right thing by pulling America out of the agreement.

There is still no agreement among scientists as to the role that man and his civilization play in climate change. Obviously the climate has been changing continually since man has inhabited the earth. There is a documented period of global warming during the Middle Ages, and there is no way that carbon emissions could be responsible for that. There are also plant fossils found beneath the ice in Greenland, another indication that the climate has changed over time. We all remember the TIME Magazine cover during the 1970’s warning of the coming ice age. We also know that our local weatherman is not accurate 100 percent of the time.

The article at Investor’s Business Daily reports:

According to the latest annual UN report on the “emissions gap,” the Paris agreement will provide only a third of the cuts in greenhouse gas that environmentalists claim is needed to prevent catastrophic warming. If every country involved in those accords abides by their pledges between now and 2030 — which is a dubious proposition — temperatures will still rise by 3 degrees C by 2100. The goal of the Paris agreement was to keep the global temperature increase to under 2 degrees.

Eric Solheim, head of the U.N. Environment Program, which produces the annual report, said this week that “One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future. Governments, the private sector and civil society must bridge this catastrophic climate gap.”

The report says unless global greenhouse gas emissions peak before 2020, the CO2 levels will be way above the goal set for 2030, which, it goes on, will make it “extremely unlikely that the goal of holding global warming to well below 2 degrees C can still be reached.”

The article concludes:

What the report does make clear, however, is that all the posturing by government leaders in Paris was just that. Posturing. None of these countries intended to take the drastic and economically catastrophic steps environmentalist claim are needed to prevent a climate change doomsday. As such, Trump was right to stop pretending.

Whether you believe in climate change or not, the Paris climate accord amounted to nothing, or pretty close to it. Even the UN admits that now.

We need to look at the balance between civilization of the environment. America is one of the economic leaders in the world and yet one of the least polluting. Look at the progress we have made in recent years–many of our formerly polluted rivers are being cleaned up, the industries that created the ‘super fund sites’ are now controlled to the degree that they can no longer ruin the environment, waste disposal has improved, and carbon emissions for cars and factories have decreased.

The following chart is from the Energy Information website:

We are making progress. The Paris Agreement would not have positively impacted that progress–it would only have crippled the American economy.

He’s Back

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The Washington Examiner is reporting today that former Vice-President Al Gore wants to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s energy system.

The article reports:

Al Gore wants to reverse modernity and save the world from itself through an elimination of its fossil-fuel-based energy system. During the final week of April, his newly created Energy Transitions Commission released a document setting forth a fool’s-errand pathway to “decarbonize” the world’s energy system.

…But, don’t worry! The all-in estimated cost to re-engineer humanity is only a mere $15 trillion—enough money to give every man, woman, and child in the United States more than $46,000.

Al Gore has been demonizing fossil fuels and attempting to marginalize all those involved in the traditional energy sector since 1988, the year the climate-change movement was rolled out in Washington, D.C., which happened to correspond with a nationwide heatwave and with Yellowstone in flames. Ever since, Gore’s pathway to political power and personal riches has been a successful one, to be sure, but his multi-trillion-dollar effort today is his most sophisticated effort to date. Unfortunately for him, it will also fail, because what he’s selling in his “new” proposal is bad for the people being asked to embrace it.

The plan suggested by the former Vice-President would tax carbon use at $50 per ton and gradually increase to $100 a ton. This would essentially destroy the market for the continuing development of fossil fuel. Since the world’s economy runs on fossil fuel, this tax would be devastating to the world’s economy.

I need to explain that I am concerned about keeping planet earth as clean as possible and providing the best living conditions for everyone living on the planet, but I don’t believe taxing carbon is the answer. I am also not impressed by those complaining about the carbon footprints of most Americans while they live in mansions and travel in private jets to climate conferences??!!

In August 2014, The Daily Caller posted an article which stated:

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed global warming regulations aren’t just about stemming global temperature rises — according to agency’s chief, they are also about “justice” for “communities of color.”

“Carbon pollution standards are an issue of justice,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a teleconference call with environmental activists. “If we want to protect communities of color, we need to protect them from climate change.”

If you truly want to protect communities of color, you need to reform the welfare culture in those communities, and help the residents of those communities obtain the education and tools they need to be successful. You need to restore the two-parent family in all communities and bring back the values that made America great–hard work, equal opportunity (not equal results), honesty, respect for the law, and the concept of working together to help everyone reach their potential. We need to teach all Americans that nothing is free and that you can choose not to be a victim.

Meanwhile, hopefully Al Gore’s carbon tax will be dead on arrive in Congress and at the EPA.

 

I Am Told That This Is Not A Joke

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At the bottom of the article I am about to mention, the Associated Press copyright appears. The article is from KPIX in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am not making this up.

The article reports:

California’s Legislature has approved regulations on cow flatulence and manure – both blamed for releasing greenhouse gases.

The measure was approved shortly before the end of the legislative session Wednesday after its author, Democratic Senator Ricardo Lara of Bell Gardens, agreed to give dairy farms more time to comply.

In 2014, The Daily Caller reported:

As part of its plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama administration is targeting the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions in their operations.

This comes despite falling methane emission levels across the economy since 1990.

The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeable portion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas.

Some of these methane emissions come from cow flatulence, exhaling and belching — other livestock animals release methane as well.

I suspect that there may be some wives out there reading this that want to find a way to apply this law to their husbands. Just sayin’.

Time To Rethink The Ethanol Thing

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On Friday WattsUpWithThat posted an article about biofuels. It seems that the use of biofuels instead of carbon fuels is not as kind to the environment as originally thought.

The article reports:

Statements about biofuels being carbon neutral should be taken with a grain of salt. This is according to researchers at the University of Michigan Energy Institute after completing a retrospective, national-scale evaluation of the environmental effect of substituting petroleum fuels with biofuels in the US. America’s biofuel use to date has in fact led to a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions, says lead author John DeCicco in Springer’s journal Climatic Change.

The use of liquid biofuels in the transport sector has expanded over the past decade in response to policies such as the US Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). These policies are based on the belief that biofuels are inherently carbon neutral, meaning that only production-related greenhouse gas emissions need to be tallied when comparing them to fossil fuels.

This assumption is embedded in the lifecycle analysis modelling approach used to justify and administer such policies. Simply put, because plants absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, crops grown for biofuels should absorb the carbon dioxide that comes from burning the fuels they produce. Using this approach, it is often found that crop-based biofuels such as corn ethanol and biodiesel offer at least modest net greenhouse gas reductions relative to petroleum fuels.

There is also research showing that ethanol damages engines. As the government attempts to increase the amount of ethanol in gasoline, the potential damage to car, boat, motorcycle and other engines should be considered. It would also be wise to consider the fact that biofuels are not carbon neutral.

Meanwhile, Power Line reported today that the reports of the ‘warmest month ever’ that periodically show up in the media are not based on sound science.

Power Line reports:

We are living in a relatively cool era. Temperatures today are lower than they have been something like 90% of the time since the last Ice Age ended 12,000 or so years ago. In fact, “ever” means since approximately the 1880s, when thermometer records became widespread. As it happens, that was also around the time when the Little Ice Age ended, so–happily!–the Earth is a bit warmer now than it was then.

One of the many problems with global warming hysteria is that it is based on the surface temperature record since the 1880s, which is deeply flawed when it is not outright falsified by alarmists who control the historical records. This happens often, as we and others have documented.

The article at Power Line explains why the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is using faulty data in its reports:

Actually, the explanation is political. The IPCC was explicitly established by the U.N. for one purpose only, to “study” the impact of human-emitted CO2 on global temperatures. This was for the purpose of justifying government control over industry worldwide. Anyone who is interested in science rather than left-wing politics relies on the satellite data, which are transparent and have not been “adjusted” by political activists.

The United Nations has forgotten that its original mission was to encourage democracy and world peace. It has morphed into an organization run by a cadre of dictators who would like to extort money from countries who have prospered because of their freedom. The climate change information that is coming from the United Nations is part of that effort.

Stuck On An Idea That Isn’t True

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On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Al Gore’s latest comments on global warming. Any relationship between Al Gore’s comments and actual reality is purely coincidental.

The article reports:

Former Vice President Al Gore told The Hollywood Reporter his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” actually underestimated how serious global warming would be — despite all the patently false predictions he made in the film.

“I wish the film had over-estimated the seriousness of the crisis, but unfortunately it actually underestimated how serious it is,” Gore told THR in an interview Thursday, just days before the 10th anniversary of his film.

The article lists some of the predictions made in the movie that have proven to be false. Here are a few:

Some of his more famous predictions, including that Mount Kilimanjaro would have no snow by 2016, were hilariously incorrect — and, yes, Kilimanjaro still has snow.

…The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) data doesn’t even support Gore’s claim. The IPCC found in 2013 there “is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century.”

In 2014, The New American reported some of Al Gore’s other predictions that haven’t happened:

Five years ago at a UN Conference on Climate Change, Al Gore predicted that, global warming having reached such an unbridled pitch, the North Pole might be completely ice-free during the summer of 2014.

…The Danish Meteorological Institute‘s (DMI) Centre for Ocean and Ice closely monitors Arctic sea ice extent and publishes a monthly plot on its website. According to DMI, 2014 is the second summer in a row that the ice cap has expanded. Data from the U.S. National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) agrees, showing 2014’s summer ice well within the average range for the years 1961-2010. In fact, NSIDC’s website points out an ice extent decline rate of “slightly less than the average” for the month of August.

To understand what the hype about global warming and carbon footprints is really about, all you need to do is follow the money. Unfortunately for those who tried to sell the climate change scam to Americans, the money hasn’t been what it was expected to be.

In 2009, The Canada Free Press ran an article about the funding and financial connections found in the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Chicago Climate Exchange was supposed to play a major role in the American economy once Congress passed cap-and-trade legislation that would regulate carbon emissions and grant carbon credits. The legislation did not pass, and the Chicago Climate Exchange closed in 2011. Many Democratic Congressmen lost large amounts of money when the Exchange closed–they had made investments figuring they could pass cap-and-trade legislation. If you follow the link to The Canada Free Press article, you can find out who was in on the scam and how it was supposed to work. There is an article on the closing of the Exchange in The New York Times in January 2011. I can almost guarantee that if a Democratic majority is elected in Congress in the near future we will see the Exchange magically reappear with as much corruption as was involved in its original founding.

The story of the Chicago Climate Exchange is only one example of how Congressmen who do not have principles will make investments that will benefit from legislation they plan to pass. That is not the way our government is supposed to work.

The website that I strongly recommend for accurate, scientific information on climate is wattsupwiththat.com.

Following The Money On Climate Change

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On July 30, The Insurance Journal posted an article about the climate change industry. Yes, you read that right. Climate change has become an industry.

This is a chart taken from the article:

Source: Climate Change Business Journal

The article reports:

On Monday the final version of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan, national air pollution regulation aimed at curbing carbon emissions from power plants, is scheduled to be released.

Ferrier believes the plan may eventually prove to be a driver of further growth in the industry. That is if the plan withstands any legal challenges from states, industries and entities opposed to it.

“I think the EPA’s Clean Power Plan has a lot more teeth to it than many other attempts of the past,” Ferrier said. “I think we’ll see more (growth) out of that.”

Following this more climate change policy could come out of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December, also called COP21 or CMP11.

“I think we’ll see the U.S. and China possibly make more comprehensive commitments rather than at past meetings, where they let the European leadership of the group make commitments while they sat on the sidelines,” Ferrier said.

Policy, or the anticipation of new policy, has been one of the biggest drivers of the industry, the report shows.

I suppose we need to give the Obama Administration credit for growing the economy at least in one area. The fact that his policies are causing Americans to lower their standard of living and taking away our freedoms and national sovereignty does not seem to bother the President.

When The Science Doesn’t Agree With The Politics

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Associated Press posted a story today about a recent government study about the use of biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants. The study showed that these biofuels release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with gasoline.

The article reports:

While biofuels are better in the long run, the study says they won’t meet a standard set in a 2007 energy law to qualify as renewable fuel.

The conclusions deal a blow to what are known as cellulosic biofuels, which have received more than a billion dollars in federal support but have struggled to meet volume targets mandated by law. About half of the initial market in cellulosics is expected to be derived from corn residue.

Note–the “cellulosic biofuels have received more than a billion dollars in federal support.” That is obscene. America would have a better chance of finding alternative fuels if we allowed private industries to develop them and make a profit from the research.

The article concludes:

Still, corn residue is likely to be a big source early on for cellulosic biofuels, which have struggled to reach commercial scale. Last year, for the fifth time, the EPA proposed reducing the amount required by law. It set a target of 17 million gallons for 2014. The law envisioned 1.75 billion gallons being produced this year.

“The study says it will be very hard to make a biofuel that has a better greenhouse gas impact than gasoline using corn residue,” which puts it in the same boat as corn-based ethanol, said David Tilman, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has done research on biofuels’ emissions from the farm to the tailpipe.

Tilman said it was the best study on the issue he has seen so far.

Alternate fuels are somewhere in our future, but they are not currently ready for prime time. It’s time to get the government out of the energy business, build the Keystone Pipeline and get on with it.

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Your Tax Dollars At Work

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Below are some of the provisions in the current farm bill being debated on by the House and the Senate. Are these really things we need to do when we are currently more than $17 trillion in debt?

Some highlights:

…provide for “Economic Adjustment Assistance” that would pay domestic manufacturers of cotton products $66 for each ton they use of “upland cotton”—the most common type of the fiber grown in the United States

…grants have included $1,055,996 to the Unison Resource Company, San Francisco Carbon collaborative, and EcoAnalytics to prevent global warming by reducing intestinal methane emissions from cattle

…transforming goat manure into “biochar” (a.k.a. charcoal) to mitigate global warming. Said biochar is buried to eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise occur from the natural degradation of goat manure

…a tax of 15 cents per (Christmas) tree on sellers to support a marketing program for enhancing the image of the industry

…$100 million and the House $225 million for the “Rural Energy for America” program. Recipients have included the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona, which was awarded $45,263 to install a solar energy system. The center is dedicated to “whole-person enlightenment” under the direction of an ordained rabbi, “acknowledged” yogi, and four-year Native American Sundancer. (Just FYI: The body-cleansing regimen starts at $3,159.)

…subsidies for “Access to Broadband Telecommunications Services in Rural Areas.” The Senate would double the current spending—to $250 million—and include subsidies for “ultra-high speed broadband.” The House proposes to maintain spending at $125 million

Just as some of the smart phone commercials used to say, “There’s an app for that,” Americans can say in almost any case, “There’s a government program for that.” I don’t think that is a good thing.

 

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Climate Change Really Is All About Money

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This article is based on three articles, one posted at Power Line yesterday, one posted at Tulsa World on Saturday, and one posted at the Daily Caller yesterday. All three articles are related to the United Nations climate conference at Doha.

The article at Power Line quotes Walter Russell Mead in it’s closing remarks:

The Kyoto protocol, the ineffectual walking dead climate treaty, will lurch on for a few more years, toothless and brain dead. The rich countries yet again remain vague about what for most developing countries is the only real point of the whole thing, substituting vague pledges of good well for the annual $100 billion in green gold demand by the third world countries whose clueless militancy turned the General Assembly into a pointless sideshow decades ago.

The inexorable decline of the climate movement from its Pickett’s Charge at the Copenhagen summit continues. The global green lobby is more flummoxed than ever. These people and these methods couldn’t make a ham sandwich, much less save Planet Earth.

The Daily Caller reports:

However, the Kyoto extension — which lasts until 2020 — was only backed by 37 out of 194 countries, accounting for 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the German publication FOCUS magazine. There is still no clear deal on how much these countries would reduce their emissions.

Der Spiegel online also reports that only 37 countries have agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2012, but that no reduction targets were specified.

Tulsa World reports some of the background on the United Nations and climate charge:

“Three years ago, President Obama helped create a United Nations Green Slush Fund that would redistribute over $100 billion from developed countries to developing countries,” Inhofe (U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe) said.

“While he has been racking up huge deficits and talking up tax increases, the president has already sent billions of American taxpayer dollars to the United Nations – and he’s managed to do it quietly so that no one will notice.”

The U.S. also subsidizes fossil fuel use – at five times the rate of alternative fuels, according to some sources – in developing countries, but those subsidies do not threaten the status quo.

In his video message to the Doha group, Inhofe quotes U.N. Climate Chief Christiana Figueres as saying her job involves “transformation” directed by “a centralized policy perspective.”

“This is the top U.N. climate chief,” Inhofe said. “She sees herself as the overseer of ‘transforming’ the lives of everyone on the planet.”

This is a worldwide redistribution of wealth program. I would be truly wise of the United States to refuse to cooperate.

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One Way To Deal With A Shakedown By Extreme Environmentalists

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Reuters is reporting today that China is banning its airlines from the European Union (EU) policy that charges a carbon fee for flights in and out of Europe. The carbon fee is essentially an additional tax and China has said that it simply will not pay the tax.

The article reports:

The EU plan is intended to curb rising greenhouse gas pollution from aviation and fight climate change. Globally, emissions from aviation comprise about two percent of mankind’s greenhouse gas pollution and this share is expected to grow.

“China hopes Europe will act in the light of the broader issues of responding to global climate change, the sustainable development of international aviation and Sino-European ties, strengthening communication and coordination to find an appropriate solution acceptable to both sides,” an unnamed official from China’s civil aviation authority said, according to the announcement.

The interesting fact in this little dust up is that China is included in the EU plan to reduce air pollution. One of the problems with the Kyoto Protocol of 2006 was that the restrictions on greenhouse gases were not extended to India and China.

The National Geographic Magazine reported in July of 2007:

Damaging air pollutants include sulfur dioxide, particulate matter—a mixture of extremely small particles and water droplets—ozone, and nitrogen dioxide. China accounts for roughly one-third of the global total for these pollutants, according to Krzyzanowski (Michal Krzyzanowski, an air quality adviser at the WHO Regional Office for Europe).

China is not willing to play the global warming game. As I have stated before, I do not support dirty air. However, I think we need to make sure that any climate change is man-caused before we cripple the major free economies of the world in the name of saving the planet. The current ‘solutions’ to global warming are nothing more than a global redistribution of wealth–the major polluters are not included in the restrictions. Evidently China does not like being included in the efforts to save the planet.

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Starting A Trade War With Carbon Credits

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An Icelandair Boeing 757-200 takes off from Lo...

Image via Wikipedia

CNS News is reporting today that starting January 1, all American airlines flying into European airports will be be liable for charges for emitting greenhouse gases blamed for “global warming.”

The article reports:

Under an E.U. directive that comes into effect in just 10 days, airlines using European airports will be allocated tradable allowances covering a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted each year, based on historical emissions data. CO2 emissions beyond the allowance must be paid for, and airlines can trade permits among themselves depending on how much carbon they produce.

Proponents say aviation accounts for three percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Please read the sentence above again.

If you are a believer in global warming, there is an aspect of this you need to keep in mind. Paying an extra $10 to $52 a ticket to fly to Europe actually has no impact on pollution–it is a way for someone to collect money from your activities. If the surtax decreases the number of people flying to Europe, it means fewer people in each plane, thus each person in the plane has a bigger carbon footprint–not a smaller one! It is the equivalent of your going up to someone and saying, “If you pay me five dollars, I won’t take a shower today and that will help the planet.” It won’t make a significant difference, and depending on what your daily activities are, it might even make your corner of the planet a little less pleasant.

Global warming, unfortunately, is about redistribution of wealth. The science is not settled and the people pushing the panic button have an agenda other than the welfare of the planet. As I have stated before, one of the best sources on the current science of climate change is wattsupwiththat. It is a very scientifically oriented site and is quite often well over my head, but there are great charts and graphs explaining what is actually going on with the earth’s climate–both now and in the past.

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It Never Really Was About The Environment

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On Friday, Investors.com posted an article about new information on the impact of carbon dioxide on global warming.

The article reports:

The study’s findings are simple and devastating. “This implies that the effect of CO2 on climate is less than previously thought,” said Oregon State University’s Andreas Schmittner, the study’s main author.

Even with a doubling of CO2 from levels that existed before the Industrial Revolution, the study found a likely increase in Earth’s temperature only from about 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit to 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

That compares with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report, which predicted an increase of 3.6 degrees to 8.6 degrees.

The latest batch of emails released by European climate-change scientists have shown that scientific data is not as important as the global-warming agenda.

The article concludes:

Happily, the left’s pernicious, economy-destroying and false global warming ideology is collapsing under a growing body of evidence that the CO2 scare is a fraud.

The environmental movement as it currently exists is not about the environment. It is about redistributing the wealth of prosperous democracies to poverty-stricken third-world tyrants. The Kyoto treaty (which was supposed to control greenhouse gas emissions) expires in 2012. There is serious question as to whether or not a new treaty will follow.

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Why Global Regulations Don’t Work

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Theoretically the idea of all countries working together to make the world a better place is a really good idea. Unfortunately, it loses something when you put it into practice. My current case in point–the debate over greenhouse gas emissions.

Breitbart.com reported yesterday that Brazil, South Africa, India and China have asked industrialized nations to step up their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a key UN climate summit later this year. China’s climate change minister Xie Zhenua called for greater cooperation from industrialized countries. Well, wait a minute. This is ridiculous. This is like having a race with someone who when you take the lead says, “Stop, I need a chance to pass you so I can win.” Why are China and India not considered industrialized countries?

The article reports:

Former president George W. Bush said Kyoto was fatally flawed because it does not require developing giants, already major polluters, to take on similar constraints.

European countries are generally on track for their emissions reductions, but Canada is poised to miss its target by a wide margin.

At the same time, emissions by China, India, Indonesia and Brazil have rocketed — nations bound by Kyoto account for less than 30 percent of global CO2 emissions, which hit record levels in 2010.

Japan, Canada and Russia have said they will not sign up for a new round of carbon-cutting vows.

The European Union (EU) says it will only do so if other nations — including emerging giants such as China and India, which do not have binding targets — beef up efforts in a parallel negotiating arena.

Developing countries, though, insist the Protocol be renewed in its current form. 

Of course the developing countries want the Protocol renewed in its current form–it puts no restrictions on them, just on everyone else.

In September of 2010, a website called Alttransport.com reported:

For the first time this decade global CO2 emissions decreased 1.3 percent in 2009, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. But that drop was offseted by a significant rise in emissions in China and India by 9 and 6 percent.

While the drop is a reason to celebrate, the decrease in emissions is linked to the slow global economy. China and India, on the other hand, have had two of the fastest growing economies — with India’s growth rate at about 8.6 percent and China’s at 10.3 percent.

I don’t wish any harm on the ‘developing’ counties–I just want to know at what point they cease to be ‘developing’ and become developed. It seems to me that with the amount of jobs outsourced from America to India, that maybe America should be seen as de-developing and India should be seen as developed. Considering the trade deficit between America and China, are we sure China is ‘developing,’ or is it developed? The debate over carbon emissions is another way to penalize countries that have achieved commercial success in an attempt to let other countries achieve that success. I have a better idea. If ‘developing’ countries truly want to become commercially successful, they need to look to the model of America at its founding–give everyone an equal chance to own property and to be successful. You’d be surprised what equal opportunity does to the growth of a country’s economy!
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