But some Chicken Littles in the environmental panic industry are preventing people from heating their homes and driving up the cost of electricity, while simultaneously denying needed jobs in the worst unemployment in decades. They claim to have found environmental damage in the process to retrieve the gas from shale deposits – called hydraulic fracturing, but the short answer is they’re wrong. The long answer is that they’re really fracking wrong: hydraulic fracturing is safer, cleaner, and cheaper than any of our current alternatives; and that’s just what’s scares these pseudo-scientists.

We must look at the scientific facts before making a policy decision, and the facts about shale gas, when you cut through a great deal of disinformation, are simple. First, it’s less expensive than the fossil fuel alternatives. At $66 per megawatt-hour, natural gas beats the dirtier and more dangerous coal, which costs around $90 per MWh. It even costs less than solar, wind (off and onshore), nuclear, oil and bio-diesel.

And shale gas doesn’t just save money, it saves lives. On average, fifty to sixty coal miners die every year. Every miner must wear artificial breathing apparatus to protect them in case of a disaster, disasters which happen with alarming frequency. Explosions, cave-ins and methane leaks combine to make coal mining the most dangerous job in the United States today.

Fortunately, the same regions rich in coal are also rich in shale gas, courtesy of the Marcellus Shale formation. Coal doesn’t only mean disaster for our miners, but for air we breathe. Particulate matter from coal causes asthma, black lung disease and lung cancer.  We need to replace coal yesterday, but these so-called environmentalists are shooting themselves, and our planet, in the foot – and maybe the face.

But these activists will tell you that fracking contaminates your water. This is false. Hydraulic fracturing takes place below aquifers, thousands of feet below impenetrable, nonporous rock. Nothing used in fracking ends up in your drinking water. What about those pictures the movie directors show you, the ones where you can burn the water from the tap? If any natural gas well, using fracked or unfracked gas, is made without steel and cement casing, the well can leak natural gas. A properly made well will not leak. Put simply – there is no difference between a safe gas well using shale gas or conventional natural gas. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection report from 2010 stated quite clearly that, according to the Pennsylvania Bureau of Watershed Management, “no groundwater pollution or disruption of underground sources of drinking water have been attributed to hydraulic fracturing of deep gas formations.” That’s right – none.

Activists tell you that greenhouse gasses are worse in natural gas, and they’ll give you a very faulty study led by Cornell ecologist (not a climatologist) saying that greenhouse effects of natural gasses are worse than coal. In fact, when the Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory checked this ecologist’s numbers, they found that natural gas was “50 percent lower than average coal.” And that’s just the beginning of the faults with this particular study, which overestimated natural gas leakage by 10-, and sometimes 20-fold.

So why are they dissembling? Why are they hiding the numbers and the facts? Because their jobs are in danger. These people have all their time and money invested in the future of renewable energy, a future they believe will be accelerated if fuel prices are kept unnaturally high. While the Obama administration wastes money on Solyndras and other pipe dreams, people can’t afford to heat their homes or turn on the lights. I believe in the future of renewable energy, but that future can’t be built on lies, or on the frozen corpses of our nation’s poor.

The financial crisis and ensuing recession hit the Northeast particularly hard, and the hydraulic fracturing process has the potential to bring clean, inexpensive energy to millions of Americans who need it. And it can also bring jobs – the Democratic White House, no stranger to the environmental lobby, estimates that fracking could bring more than half a million jobs over the next decade. The next time you see a sign that reads “No Fracking,” translate into English – “No Jobs, No Heat, No Power – and No Future”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog said Wednesday the Obama administration cut corners in evaluating the science it used to back up its finding that carbon is a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated under existing federal law.

The report by the EPA’s inspector general is certain to be used in court by those seeking to overturn EPA’s claim that it can write global-warming rules under existing law and doesn’t need new authority from Congress.

Investigators did not evaluate the scientific conclusions. The report said EPA did follow basic rules but didn’t treat the finding as seriously as the situation required, and failed to meet administration guidelines for peer review of such a major issue.

“EPA had the [science] reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. However, the panel’s findings and EPA’s disposition of the findings were not made available to the public as would be required for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments,” the investigators said. “Also, this panel did not fully meet the independence requirements for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments because one of the panelists was an EPA employee.”

The inspector general said EPA failed from the outset to identify the Technical Support Document, or TSD, as “influential,” which would subject it to heightened standards of scientific review.

Read the whole thing here.

Global Warming

The science is settled.  Mankind is indeed killing itself, just as I knew would happen when I voted for Mondale in 1984.  Admittedly, I thought the apocalypse would result from a nuclear war back then.  I was close.  Things would indeed get really hot, but strictly from greenhouse gas emissions, not from thousands of nukes going off all at once.  According to the totally balanced summary provided by Wikipedia, carbon dioxide causes 9% – 26% of the greenhouse effect.  The way I see it, if we can wipe out just this portion of the greenhouse emissions alone, we can make a serious dent in the warming trend.

Now, follow me on this next part — every time a human being exhales, he emits carbon dioxide.

The solution is obvious — we need to mandate less exhaling.  So, five times a day, every day, at the exact same time that Muslims stop for their prayers, everyone around the world should hold their breath for a good 90 seconds or so.  If you own a corporation, you have to hold your breath twice as long.   I think even Conservatives will get on board with this because it gives lip service to that whole personal responsibility garbage they buy into.

Additionally, it appears that methane accounts for 4% – 9% of greenhouse emissions.   The solution here is so simple I’m shocked that my fellow global warming alarmists have not figured it out already.

We need less farting.

I know everyone’s primary concern is about diet, but nobody has to give up beans. The farmers shouldn’t suffer just because people need to toot less.  We can have the USDA issue “fanny corks” to every American, free of charge.  Enforcement is easy.  The TSA already has experience inspecting private areas, so Janet Napolitano can just issue a decree expanding their powers.  It will also help with job growth, because we’ll need an army of TSA employees to check fanny corks, particularly in heavily populated urban areas.

These two initiatives alone will cut greenhouse emissions by 13% – 35%, and also make the world less smelly.  But just to make sure we’re okay, if the EPA detects even the tiniest increase in ocean levels, the IRS will institute a surtax on all yachts, and distribute the money so everyone can get a free rowboat.

Religion

I got really sick of the crazy Christians trying to push their morals and values on me.  The rigidity of right-wing morality — their moral absolutism — is Fascist.  Everyone knows right and wrong depends on circumstance.  For example, war is not the answer, except when union worker rights (like collective bargaining) are challenged.  So religion must either be removed from influencing public policy, or public policy should be influenced by only one single religion that we all agree on.

Because the science is settled, Global Warming Alarmism (GWA) is the religion we can all agree on, so only it should be permitted to affect public policy.  Al Gore will be the head of the church.  Give him a cool-sounding name, like “The Goracle”.

Since he’s essentially the religion’s Father, and he always disappears like a Ghost whenever someone confronts him, he fills three roles — a kind of Holy Trinity thing that might even get Christians to come on board.  All legislation must pass through federal and state chapters of GWA for approval, since our very existence is at stake.

The Constitution does call for separation of church and state, but the Constitution is a living, breathing document (although it should be required to hold its breath five times daily, also), and the Founders never anticipated global warming.  So I think the courts will let this slide.

Abortion

Republicans insist life begins at conception.  Then answer me this: why is it that when a pregnant woman drives in the carpool lane, she gets a ticket for only having one passenger?

I have numerous other issues to bring up, but that’s enough for now.  Please send a copy of this note to President Obama so we can get these policies in place via regulatory fiat.

The Washington Post has a predictable, propagandistic lead Monday editorial — “Climate change underscored: A new report leaves little room for doubt” — that merits a fisking for the prominence given such admittedly non-newsy, if wildly spun and internally inconsistent, repetitiveness (emphases added throughout):

“CLIMATE CHANGE is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”

So says — in response to a request from Congress — the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s preeminent institution chartered to provide scientific advice to lawmakers.

Ah, so — the implication is clear — it is a panel of scientists; wait, not just scientists, but climate scientists, and worthy of description as ‘preeminent’. But, then, the piece continues oddly without elaboration on this hint:

In a report titled “America’s Climate Choices,” a panel of scientific and policy experts also concludes that the risks of inaction far outweigh the risks or disadvantages of action.

Well, as Hoover fellow Paul Gregory notes, prompted by similar slop from the New York Times, “Of the first eight names, only one appears to be a climate scientist. The others are engineers, lawyers, and public policy types”.

But of course, we’re used to these gents being railroad engineers (the IPCC’s chief scientist, Rajendra Pachauri) and anthropology teaching assistants (see the IPCC ‘world’s leading climate scientists’). By the next paragraph, however, surely the reader would begin wondering what is such a panel of scientists doing making these recommendations, which are in fact policy calls?

And the most sensible and urgently needed action, the panel says, is to put a rising price on carbon emissions, by means of a tax or cap-and-trade system. That would encourage innovation, research and a gradual shift away from the use of energy sources (oil, gas and coal) that are endangering the world.

Slippery, slippery. We need not belabor the ‘what if a skeptic trotted out such an ‘expert climate panel’ argument here. It’s just too obvious.

None of this should come as a surprise. None of this is news. But it is newsworthy, sadly, because the Republican Party, and therefore the U.S. government, have moved so far from reality and responsibility in their approach to climate change.

Oh. So it was the Republican-controlled Senate, with 60 and then 59 Democrat Senators, which refused to take up the issue last Congress? No. Just like the opposition in the House, then and now, Senate opposition is bipartisan, and strongly so. Though you’d never know that from reading the hyper-political WaPo:

Seizing on inevitable points of uncertainty in something as complex as climate science, and on misreported pseudo-scandals among a few scientists, Republican members of Congress, presidential candidates and other leaders pretend that the dangers of climate change are hypothetical and unproven and the causes uncertain.

Not so, says the National Research Council. “Although the scientific process is always open to new ideas and results, the fundamental causes and consequences of climate change have been established by many years of scientific research, are supported by many different lines of evidence, and have stood firm in the face of careful examination, repeated testing, and the rigorous evaluation of alternative theories and explanation.”

Climate-change deniers, in other words, are willfully ignorant, lost in wishful thinking, cynical or some combination of the three.

Ah, yes, ‘certainty’, and name-calling to prove the point. But then, as Jacobs, seizing on uncertainty also pointed out:

“The report tells us… the science is far from certain. I quote: ‘How will the climate system respond to increased greenhouse gases? The exact value of “climate sensitivity” – that is, how much temperature rise will occur for a given increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration – is uncertain due to incomplete understanding of some elements of the earth’s climate system.’ Note the wobbly use of language, such as “exact” or “some elements,” to signal that the science is “almost certain.” I can imagine the illustrious committee members searching for appropriate qualifiers that would not let the cat out of the bag.

In fact, climate sensitivity to doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations is fairly summarized as the whole shootin’ match of the climate issue. Computer models on which policy types base their demands (and alarmists their prophesying) assume a climate sensitivity that is vastly greater than the les policy-relevant observations. You might know the latter as ‘reality’.

This group-grope “is not a study of climate science but of risk management”, per Jacobs, although I must add it is one accepting fairly well disproved assumptions (key among them: the climate’s sensitivity), which in itself is highly problematic.

I could go on. Because the Post surely did. But the point is that all of the tired name-calling and hyperventilation gets no more compelling the fifth or fiftieth time it is trotted out. These people demand a terrible imposition on society for no detectable climate impact. Let alone the subjective idea of ‘gain’ (as warming has historically been beneficial, indeed called a ‘climate optimum’.

But outlets like the Washington Post and its editorial board have always had a difficult time with good news. It’s just not news at all. Sort of like the NRC ‘report’ WaPo flogs, as it does each and every such one. Meanwhile, the sky remains just where we left it.

What else can one say about this?

Governor Christie to Talk Global Climate Change with Scientists

Governor tells NJ Environmental Federation his original doubts were due to not having a “fully formed opinion.”

The Republican governor, who caused a stir when he told a town hall meeting he was unsure about the science of global warming, plans to sit down this week with a couple of climate change scientists recommended by the New Jersey Environmental Federation.

As I have noted, translated, the latter means a Castro toady and some of his pals.

Wait, lemme guess: his doubts arising from an unfully formed opinion have evaporated under further scrutiny, making this the first time further scrutiny led to siding with the global warming movement?

Er, maybe. There’s another option, and that’s that he’s seen the New Hampshire Senate fold like a cardboard suitcase on withdrawing from the RGGI regional cap-n-trade energy tax and has decided to throw in with the go-along-to-get along crowd. In his defense, and not much of one, one could say as Andrew Dice Clay once did about a famous painting I won’t mention here as it would make the gag’s crudeness too obvious: he needed the money.

Yes, yes, I know, running for president brings out the Pander Bear in all of them. But Christie’s entire shtick is that he’s the guy speaking truth to all of these entrenched powers, industries, political sacred cows et al.

So, particularly before we know what his ‘fully formed opinion’ is, I cannot interpret what is behind this. But if it is as seems most likely, we know it this is not a move to position himself for higher office. Yes, it would gain him some McCain-style (that is, conditional and temporary) media love — in the form of proclaiming proof that global warming is real and most Americans are extremists and wrong! — soon to turn to ever-more demanding fury.

But he won his office, in NJ, admitting his doubts. He sees how past pandering indiscretions like Pawlenty’s, Huckabee’s, Huntsman’s and others’ are viewed by the majority. The agenda failed in Congress and greatly contributed to a change in management. ClimateGate remains a fatal wound to be proved as much by the next penny when it drops.

It would just be so boneheaded. It would show no ability to approach something free of politics and simply exercise judgment. It would reveal crass political calculation if economic illiteracy. It would be on the side that demands a ‘wrenching transformation of society‘ that they also admit will be climatically meaningless, thereby admitting it isn’t about the climate.

So that just can’t be it. But we shall see.

Policy sanity also stands to take a beating, or else gain a new lease on life. The United States derives over 80% of its total energy from the three fossil fuels now being regulated by the Clean Air Act on the basis of EPA’s Endangerment Finding, which by design strangles our ability to use them.  Further, the Obama Administration has in effect decided that the EPA knows how to run the U. S. economy.

With über-green Germany, even nuke-happy France, appearing set to ramp up their coal use in the wake of Japan’s nuclear incident, the first rational response would be to call off EPA’s war on coal. Not to fight like mad to preserve and advance it.

But fight like mad to preserve and advance this war on coal is what the administration and its Senate enablers are doing.

And as George Mason University professor of science and public policy Thomas Lovejoy said in an astonishing admission to the Washington Post not long ago, in the context of this very Obama Power Grab:

“When Congress resists action on pressing environmental issues, regulation provides a way forward”.

Actually, no. Our Constitution – so quaint and outdated according to certain quarters though it may be (it’s still better than whatever it is we have today) – makes it quite plain that it is only when Congress decides to act that agencies have a way forward.

It is untrue that, in our system, elected representatives act on major policy issues only unless and until the unelected regulators decide they have waited long enough. If they act lawfully, they act only when granted authority by the legislative branch. The ‘executive’ branch is called that for a reason. They are to execute laws. Not make them.

Argue all you want that EPA is doing so, but the fact that EPA tries the patently untrue line that the supreme Court made them do this shows you how weak the argument for the action is. EPA’s power grab is nothing but an admission that they think they’ve waited long enough. They also know they would wait forever if they waited on the democratic process to work.

In June 2007 the House barely passed legislation authorizing this move. If the Senate followed suit, it would have expressly provided EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases for the very first time. As my CEI colleague Marlo Lewis details, the Clean Air Act as written and amended surely never did. And every other time Congress considered doing so it decided against it.

Senators, seeing the public outrage over the House’s move, proved to be too worried about jobs to pass the measure as well – their own jobs. The bill never saw the light of day.

So, now, EPA is seeking to impose regulations it acknowledges in public filings lead to ‘absurd results’; to accommodate this it also seeks to actually rewrite the statute even more expressly.

Remember this when the Senate votes on EPA’s power grab, an indirect if powerful tax on energy, with zero chance of doing that which it is ostensibly being pushed to do (impact the climate); amid standard-fare, mindless hysteria from usual suspects, but now trotting out children in oxygen masks (seriously) to preserve a scheme that the same senators – particularly Barbara Boxer (D-CA) – previously acknowledged would be devastating, in courting the few holdouts to come to the table and agree to legislate something less egregious if only by a matter of (pardon the pun) degree.

Two wrongs, by the math of people who think the Constitution is a mere impediment to be circumvented, actually make a right. They don’t of course. But it’s up to those who feel strongly enough about Big Government, regulatory overreach, separation of powers, economic recovery, and other mundane affairs whether those who vote know how the people they represent feel. Here’s to hoping the people make their voice heard.

In refusing to vote to authorize EPA’s stunt, the Senate listened once before. They’ll listen again if you make them.

Unable to pay off the Environmental lobby through legislation, Obama’s EPA is looking for every opportunity to end-run Congress by enacting stringent and un-neccesary new regulations.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration’s environmental agenda, long a target of American business, is beginning to take fire from some of the Democratic Party’s most reliable supporters: Labor unions.

And it isn’t only Labor. The American people as a whole have turned cold to the notion of climate change. Unfortunately, just as we saw with the passage of ObamaCare, this administration isn’t going to allow democracy in the form of the American people to get in the way of their kowtowing to special interest groups, be it the health care lobby, or the far-Left environmental movement in this case.

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who are worried about global warming has fallen to nearly the historic low reached in 1998, a poll released Monday showed.

This has resulted in a House panel acting today to begin to tell the EPA, no way!! Unfortunately, the battle isn’t over and we’ll need to be especially mindful of how the Senate may eventually behave.

By a vote of 34 to 19, House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a bill Tuesday that would strip the E.P.A. of its authority under the Clean Air Act to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from power plants, oil refineries and other sources. All Republicans voted in favor, along with three Democrats: Reps. John Barrow of Georgia, Jim Matheson of Utah and Mike Ross of Arkansas. The vote follows a subcommittee’s approval last week.

Reuters props up a Lisa Song, from a group called SolveClimate, to highlight just some of what the EPA has been planning. Many of these admissions have already been reduced over the years. But an Obama administration decidedly un-friendly to American business and domestic energy production doesn’t intend to let something as inconvenient as democray get in the way of growing government and continuing to over-reach and intrude into the private sector in ways that cost Americans jobs. That’s a recipe for disaster, most especially given our struggling economy and job market. I imagine the more people they can un-employ and put on the public dole, the more admirers and ultimately voters Obama and Democrats believe they will have when time comes for Americans to go to the polls in 2012.

This week the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release new standards for coal- and oil-fired power plants that will limit the emissions of 84 different “air toxics,” including mercury, benzene, hydrogen chloride and radioactive material.