Climate Bills and a Green Economy

Obama Says He’ll Push for Clean Energy Bill

June 2, 2010

New York Times — President Obama said Wednesday that it was time for the United States “to aggressively accelerate” its transition from oil to alternative sources of energy and vowed to push for quick action on climate change legislation despite almost unanimous opposition from Republicans and continued skepticism from some Democrats.

Seeking to harness the deepening anger over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the advantage of his legislative agenda, Mr. Obama promised to find the lagging votes in the Senate to get the climate change and energy bill passed this year. Last year, the House passed a version of the bill, which tries to address global warming by putting a price on greenhouse gas pollution and provides incentives for alternative clean energy sources.

“If we refuse to take into account the full cost of our fossil fuel addiction — if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and national security costs and true economic costs — we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future,” Mr. Obama said. “The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months.”

Mr. Obama’s remarks were made to a group of about 300 local business owners and economic officials at Carnegie Mellon University. He used them to reiterate his call to roll back Bush administration tax breaks for oil companies and to make a broader case for his administration’s accomplishments heading into an election season.

He defended what he cast as his vision of active but restrained government against a conservative limited-government philosophy that he said had proved a failure under President George W. Bush, and he criticized Republicans in Congress as obstructionists.

“From our efforts to rescue the economy to health insurance reform to financial reform, most have sat on the sidelines and shouted from the bleachers,” the president said. “They said no to tax cuts for small businesses, no to tax credits for college tuition, no to investments in clean energy. They said no to protecting patients from insurance companies and consumers from big banks.”

Republicans shot back quickly. Even before Mr. Obama had begun his speech, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, issued a statement saying “the president gives a good speech, but good speeches can’t improve failing policies.”

“Out-of-control Washington spending,” Mr. Cantor said, “has created a massive debt; private-sector businesspeople — small and large — are preparing for additional tax increases, and the government keeps on growing.”

Many clean-energy advocates have argued that Mr. Obama should try to take advantage of the national anger over the gulf oil spill to challenge Republicans on the climate change bill, saying that his best chance to get such a bill passed is now.

Apparently eager to seize an opportunity to take the offensive after weeks of playing defense on the oil spill, Mr. Obama suggested that he was happy to engage in a major battle for the legislation in the coming months.

He described the “inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the earth,” to fuel the country’s dependence on oil.

“We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves,” he said. “Without a major change in our energy policy, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month, including countries in dangerous and unstable regions.”

The White House has been trying to stop the environmental disaster in the gulf, now in its seventh week, from consuming the second year of his presidency.

A day after disclosing that the federal government is conducting criminal and civil investigations of BP and other companies in connection with the spill, Mr. Obama did not directly criticize BP or the oil industry generally. Instead, he framed his agenda in positive terms, saying that the “time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future” and that the transition would succeed only “if the private sector is fully invested in this future.”

Kerry, Lieberman and the America Power Act: Corrupt Climate Science Used to Destroy U.S. Economy

Three reasons for Kerry – Lieberman; a massive tax grab, crippling of the US economy, and offer of salvation through total government control

May 17, 2010

Canada Free Press - The Kerry - Lieberman American Power Act (APA) is a disastrous, unnecessary solution for a non-existent problem. Worse, it’s a problem that exists only in a grossly inadequate computer model whose projections have never been correct. It is predicated on the false assumption that an increase in CO2 causes a temperature increase. Every record of any duration for any period in Earth’s history shows temperature increases before CO2 increases.

The false assumption is the basis of all global warming and climate change used in the corrupted research and models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is impossible to imagine such an unjustified basis for any action, except to undermine the US economy for political gain. It will make the US economy uncompetitive, dramatically increase the cost of living, and give more power to the government. This is already proven in the failure of countries that have pursued similar alternative energies and green economies.

The name of the Act is in the deceptive tradition of climate-based energy policy. It was carbon credits, then carbon tax, then cap and trade, and now the APA; but they are all the same, and completely unnecessary. Carbon credits were designed as a global equalization of wealth. Developed nations had to pay for the sin of making their money by using fossil fuels and producing the planet destroying global warming. Cap and Trade appeared virtuous by capping the planet-destroying CO2 while creating trade and business opportunity. It is actually the same old tax grab with more government control. The APA invokes patriotism and implies energy independence, especially from oil. The spill in the Gulf is unfortunate but has reinforced the push. As Rahm Emmanuel, White House Chief of Staff said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

[The American Power Act] provides the leverage to achieve the stated Obama administration goal of energy independence and a shift to alternative energy. However, it is much more than that because, as Richard Lindzen said,

“Controlling carbon is a bureaucrats dream. If you control carbon you control life.”

The IPCC Reports and especially the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) are used to demonize CO2. Ironically, they provide evidence of how inadequate they are for taking such dramatic, drastic and unnecessary political action.

In the Reports, what is initially included and then excluded, tells the story. For example, a graph showing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was included in the 1990 IPCC Report. It was a problem for Michael Mann and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) so it disappeared in later reports and then was replaced in the 2001 Report by the corrupted ‘hockey stick’ graph, as they rewrote history ...

So the science is wrong and the computer models don’t work. Even if all human produced CO2 was eliminated tomorrow, we would not be able to detect the difference in the amount in the atmosphere. The total humans produce is within the error of the estimate of at least three natural sources. For example, with the recent recession human production has decreased with no effect on global measurements. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) treats CO2 as a pollutant based on an ignorant ruling by the US Supreme Court. Kerry – Lieberman proposes to improve the environment by reducing CO2 when an increase is beneficial to the planet’s plants. Too bad the plants don’t get a vote.

There is no scientific justification for claims CO2 is causing global warming. It is a non-existent problem. Reducing the amount is harmful not helpful to the economy or plants and not necessary. It will cripple industry with draconian rules and taxation to make the entire economy expensive and uncompetitive. Alternate energies will not provide adequate power replacement and increase costs through the subsidies necessary to make them even remotely viable. Green jobs will cost regular jobs as Spain and other jurisdictions have discovered.

Energy independence is easily achieved with conventional sources and a transition to nuclear power and coal for home and industry, natural gas for vehicle power, and the oil industry for petrochemical needs.

There are only three reasons for Kerry – Lieberman; a massive tax grab, crippling of the US economy, and offer of salvation through total government control.

For related feature stories, see the following categories:
Man-Made Global Warming Hoax
Climate/Clean Energy/Cap-and-Trade
Climategate
Global Cooling and Food Supply