RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-epas-latest-power-grab-power-plant-proposal-clean-air-act-climate-change-emissions-ff0f1890?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

The Biden administration’s new power-plant proposal, announced Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency, would hobble the natural-gas industry. In the process it would make electricity more expensive, cause more blackouts and brownouts, and force Americans to pay more for less energy.

The proposed rule would require most existing gas- and coal-fired power plants to cut their carbon-dioxide emissions by 90% or more over the next 10 to 15 years—up to 96% for the largest and most heavily used plants. Newly constructed gas plants, as soon as they start up, would immediately have to meet standards based on the most efficient—and most expensive—generating equipment, reaching the same 90%-or-higher reduction over time. These massive cuts assume the use of carbon capture and other, even less proven measures.

This is more than misguided policy. It’s legally dubious, and the agency knows it. But the Biden administration’s urgent goal is shifting how markets allocate capital among types of energy before a potential power shift in Washington next year, with little regard for the longer-term effect on American families and businesses.

Section 111 of the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to consider cost when determining whether a “system of emission reduction” is “adequately demonstrated.” In other words, EPA regulations can’t be too expensive, and must be grounded in technical and market realities. But Thursday’s proposal is based mainly on assumptions that plants will employ carbon capture and hydrogen co-firing—replacing the natural gas the plant was designed to run on with hydrogen gas—which impose exorbitant costs on electricity producers and haven’t yet been used at scale. These technologies are, at best, many years away from viability even with large subsidies under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. In tacit admission of this reality, the Biden administration’s proposed rule would instead create an incentive for many existing power plants to shut down, allowing those that close by 2032 to avoid any new requirements in the interim.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-cracks-down-on-gas-stoves-furnaces-light-bulbs-dishwasher-energy-342b6514?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. fired a shot heard ’round America in January when he informed the public of his agency’s plans for natural-gas stoves. “This is a hidden hazard,” Mr. Trumka said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

The comment sparked a strong consumer backlash, forcing the Biden administration to deny that its regulators were doing such a thing. But they most certainly were and still are. The gas-stove kerfuffle is merely one piece in a larger campaign against consumer appliances, all in the service of President Biden’s climate-change agenda. Let’s review the items under federal scrutiny:

• Lighting. Beginning in July, commercial retailers will no longer be able to sell incandescent light bulbs without incurring a significant penalty, thanks to an onerous Energy Department efficiency regulation. Last summer the Biden administration reversed a Trump-era reprieve for the old-fashioned bulbs, adjusting the appliance’s lumens-per-watt threshold beyond what the incandescent technology can meet. As a result, newer LED bulbs will soon be the only game in town. While LEDs are improving, they cost more than incandescent bulbs, don’t work well with most dimmers, and cast a light that some consumers consider unpleasant.

• Furnaces. Like stoves, furnaces commit the sin of sometimes running on natural gas. Though ostensibly a fuel-neutral efficiency standard, the Energy Department’s furnace regulation disproportionately burdens gas models relative to electric ones. “The proposed furnace rule has at least as much to do with the Biden administration’s war on natural gas [as] it does with saving energy,” says Mark Krebs, a natural-gas industry consultant, in an interview. The agency is moving ahead with this proposal despite its own analysis that natural gas is less than one-third as expensive as electricity on a per unit energy basis. The final rule could be out soon, and the only gas furnaces likely to survive will be more expensive and harder to install in millions of homes, especially older and space-constrained ones.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/net_zero_grid_batteries_alone_would_bankrupt_america_.html

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) cites “the climate crisis” at almost every opportunity. President Biden calls it a greater threat than nuclear war. They and their allies champion “carbon-free” electricity generation by 2035 and nearly fossil-fuel-free energy by 2050.

Achieving “net zero” carbon dioxide emissions will be painless, they assure us. Costs will be so low you’ll need a magnifying glass to see them. Governments merely have to enact mandates, provide subsidies, and the transformation to “clean” energy will just happen. Almost like in a fairy tale.

Here in the real world, however, we would need literally millions of weather-dependent wind turbines, billions of equally unreliable solar panels, millions of half-ton battery modules for vehicles, billions more modules to back up intermittent electricity generation, millions of transformers, and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines.

All these technologies must be manufactured from metals, minerals, and petroleum extracted from the Earth, via mining on scales unprecedented in human history.

The dollar costs alone — just for a U.S. transformation — are almost incomprehensible.

Science and policy analyst David Wojick calculated that just the batteries needed to back up wind and solar electricity generation in a “net zero” USA would cost $23-trillion — America’s entire 2021 gross domestic product (GDP) — and probably many times that.

Energy and technology consultant Thomas Tanton found that battery backup to replace current U.S. fossil fuel electricity — and convert vehicles, furnaces, water heaters, and stoves to electricity — would cost at least $29 trillion in initial outlays.

Trillions more would be needed to cover financing, repairs, maintenance, replacements, burying broken and worn-out non-recyclable equipment, and building systems strong enough to survive hurricanes.

Professional engineer Ken Gregory determined that grid-backup battery costs could reach $290 trillion (12.6 times the USA’s 2021 GDP), based on actual 2019 and 2020 hourly intermittent electricity-generation data, rather than annual average data utilized in the other studies.

None of these estimates includes the costs of turbines, panels, transmission lines or transformers.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/08/biden-unleashes-the-regulatory-kraken-and-theres-no-land-in-sight/

In the span of a few weeks, the Biden administration has proposed regulations that would effectively ban gas stoves, force a massive shift to electric cars, sharply raise the cost of dishwashers, increase loan costs for frugal borrowers, regulate puddles as “navigable waters,” and limit hunting and fishing across the country. It will soon release a proposed rule targeting power plants with hugely expensive carbon capture mandates.

This is just the tip of the spear.

As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Clyde Wayne Crews put it recently, “President Biden is leading an unprecedented expansion of the administrative state. In two years, his administration has imposed 517 regulatory actions with some $318 billion in total costs.”

The newest attack on freedom, Biden’s dishwasher regulation, would require new machines to use 27% less power and 34% less water, making already barely functioning dishwashers virtually useless. (It takes nearly three hours for dishwashers today to “clean” dishes. President Donald Trump tried to loosen these anti-consumer mandates.)

Another rule would eliminate 98% of all top-loading washing machines on the market today. There are new efficiency mandates in the works for everything from microwaves to toothbrush chargers.

“The effort is forcing manufacturers to produce more costly products they say reverse innovation by decades and potentially eliminate thousands of U.S. jobs,” the Washington Times reports.

The Securities Exchange Commission, meanwhile, wants publicly traded companies to disclose the “climate risks” of their operations. The rule “could shift $18.4 billion to consulting firms, lawyers, and data providers,” according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/follow_the_science__to_where_.html

The dictum “follow the science” seems to make good sense until you actually follow it to a conclusion that is opposite to that which the “experts” intend you to reach.  We all saw that during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Entire cities were shut down.  Schools and churches were closed.  Enforcement was at times brutal.  In contrast, some states remained open, and the result was that, health-wise, they fared no worse than the states that gutted their economies and violated their citizens’ civil rights.  We are still waiting for apologies.

Another dictum makes a lot more sense: “follow the money.”  While small businesses were starved into ruin, large businesses were allowed to continue operation.  Churches were closed — even their parking lot services were forbidden — but casinos operated night and day.

While “Mister Science” led us astray in important policy decisions, there is another area of science that seems a lot less important, but which has subtle implications that have had pernicious effects for a long time.  It is called the Standard Model of Cosmology, which encompasses theories of how the universe was formed and how nature operates today.  For most of the population, this is Ivy League, ivory tower stuff.  It consists of incomprehensible squiggles on blackboards by (according to stereotype) bespectacled, bearded professors “vith” foreign accents.  They seem too smart to be wrong, but lately, new discoveries are challenging their authority and, by extension, opening criticism of the social policies that affect our daily lives and the future of our grandchildren.

There is a saying that disputes in academia are savage, not because the subject matter is important, but rather because it is trivial.  In that regard, we must ask, how important is the Standard Model of Cosmology?  If it collapses, what else will collapse with it?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/biden_administration_waging_pointless_war_on_our_comfort_in_the_name_of_climate.html

Looking forward to using your air-conditioning this summer to keep you from misery and lack of sleep? Well, you might have some issues. You see, the Biden administration has declared war on comfort. It’s not just gas stoves, leaf blowers, and lawnmowers the Biden-ites are coming for.  No siree. They are also bound and determined to eventually make air-conditioning prohibitively expensive for all but their coastal elite friends and allies.

New Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations are limiting supplies of freon and other refrigerants, because they are allegedly contributors to “climate change.” The new production quotas have driven up the price of these refrigerants by about 300%, meaning that a recharge may cost $100 to $500 more than before these regulations took effect, depending on how much replacement refrigerant is needed. 

But wait, there’s more! The coolant quotas get even more stringent next year. Moreover, other new EPA rules are directed at those who service air conditioners. Some of these pertain to the types of containers in which refrigerants can be housed and transported. And all of which are going to impose additional costs that will need to be passed on to the consumer.

So, if you balk at the price of refilling or repairing your air-conditioning unit this summer, perhaps you could consider purchasing a new one. Unfortunately, Department of Energy (DOE) efficiency standards will be piled on to the EPA measures, and the combined effect of these excessively stringent requirements will be to raise the price of new A/C equipment, as well.

If infants and the elderly and infirm end up dying because they and their families can no longer afford air-conditioning to cool their living and sleeping quarters—due to government policies purportedly intended to fight “global warming” — that would be ironic as well as tragic.

It is one thing if the global average temperature rises by, say, 1.5 degrees by the year 2100. It is quite another if the temperature in one’s apartment jumps from, say, 72 to 92 in the course of one year.

That would be real climate change.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2023/05/04/king_charles_iii_has_a_climate_record_to_live_down_897662.html

This Saturday’s coronation of King Charles III marks a significant moment in Britain’s history. No previous constitutional monarch has expressed his political views so openly. Unlike his mother and grandfather, whose opinions, if they had any, remained unknown to the general public, the king’s record-setting seventy years as heir apparent to the British throne saw him define himself as a deeply committed environmentalist.

In 2000, the BBC invited the then-Prince of Wales to give the last of the 2000 Millennium Reith lectures on sustainable development. Charles spoke of his belief in the “bounds of balance, order and harmony in the natural world which sets limits to our ambitions and define the parameters of sustainable development.” He name-checked the founders of the modern environmental movement—Rachel Carson and Fritz Schumacher, authors, respectively, of Silent Spring and Small is Beautiful. He embraced the precautionary principle, warning that the absence of hard scientific evidence of harmful consequences from genetically modified (GM) crops should not be taken as a green light to exceed nature’s limits. 

Instead of looking to science for all the answers, mankind should work with the grain of nature, Charles argued. If a fraction of the investment going into GM technologies was devoted to improving traditional systems of agriculture, “the results would be remarkable,” he declared. He then praised fellow Reith lecturer Vandana Shiva, an environmental campaigner and director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in New Delhi, for condemning large-scale commercial farming “so persuasively and so convincingly.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/05/were-taking-bets-how-long-before-environmentalists-start-attacking-evs/

Today, you’re not allowed to say a bad word about electric cars. They’re planet savers, after all. Environmentalists tell us so. But there will come a day — in the not-too-distant future — when the climate change fanatics will decide that EVs are planet killers, too.

We’ve seen this bait-and-switch tactic before.

Back in 2007, energy producers pumped money into environmental groups to promote natural gas. The Sierra Club used the funds to mount a “Beyond Coal” campaign touting the benefits of gas. Joe Romm, a climate advocate at the Center for American Progress, declared that natural gas “may be the single biggest game changer for climate action in the next two decades.”

Then came the fracking revolution, and the resulting abundance of natural gas caused power plants across the country to switch to gas from coal. Then environmentalists decided natural gas wasn’t so good after all. By 2015, they were at war with it. The motto for the Sierra Club’s new “Beyond Natural Gas” was “Dirty, Dangerous, and Run Amok.”

Environmentalists tried to stop fracking, opposed new pipeline development, and then started pushing for bans on gas-fueled appliances.

More than 70 cities in California alone have voted to ban natural gas hookups in new homes. New York became the first to impose a statewide ban. Sarah Fox, an associate law professor at Northern Illinois University School of Law, gleefully told CNN that this ban “is becoming a mainstream policy.”

Soon it will be the auto industry’s turn.

Just as natural gas producers before them, they are bear-hugging green groups and working arm-in-arm with government while promising to bring forth a magical electric car future.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/05/03/slipstream_climate_envoy_john_kerrys_jet-set_spending_is_getting_plenty_of_cloud_cover_897101.html

John Kerry leads an international jet-set life that might exhaust a runway model. If President Biden’s special envoy for climate was not in Washington or relaxing at his mansion near Nantucket Harbor, he could be found in Brazil, Panama, the Bahamas, or Germany. And that’s just in February and March. 

The boss and his climate czar: Kerry is indefatigable in attending conferences and meetings in far-flung posts and glittering capitals. But details are scant.

While Kerry trumpets his meetings and appearances around the world, the State Department wraps the rest of his efforts in a cloak of secrecy usually reserved for CIA black box operations. It has refused to specify lists of people he is meeting with and who is advising him as he circles the globe. His office has stonewalled requests for budget and staffing information from legislators and government watchdog groups. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed last year by RealClearInvestigations for a breakdown on how the climate envoy’s roughly $16.5 million 2022 budget was spent, the State Department said it could not comply with the request until April 2025, months after both the 2024 election and the expiration of President Biden’s current term. 

The secrecy surrounding Kerry’s work is reaching a boiling point with the threat of a congressional subpoena. 

Frustrated that Kerry’s office ignored two previous requests for detailed information about its budget when his party was in the minority, Republican Rep. James Comer, who now heads the House Oversight Committee, sent what he labeled a final courtesy letter on April 25 and added that a subpoena would accompany the next request if Kerry’s “powerful, unchecked position” continued to hide the information. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/01/hot-hot-hot/

The sky warriors hold the climate models that have been predicting global doom to be sacrosanct. But as we have reported many times in the past, they’re flawed. A new research paper confirms our warnings. It would be helpful if the brand name media would make note of it. We won’t be holding our own hot air, though.

A January report from Berkeley Earth – self-described as a “non-profit research organization” that “has been preparing independent analyses of global mean temperature changes since 2013″ – starts out as anyone would expect: with a frightful declaration “that 2022 was nominally the fifth warmest year on Earth since 1850.” Which of course means nothing.

It goes on to say “​​the last eight years have included all eight of the warmest years observed in the instrumental record,” another string of words that sound ominous but aren’t. 

What is important, however, is buried near the bottom of the report.

Since 1980, Earth’s temperature trend “has changed little.” The researchers reckon that global temperatures have increased 0.19 degrees Celsius per decade over that period. The data was pulled from 50,498 weather stations combined with sea-surface temperature data.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at the predictions that have been made by the climate models. Their forecasts indicate that ​​temperatures should be increasing at the rate of about 0.28–0.29 degrees Celsius per decade. That’s about 50% higher than the increases Berkeley Earth found.