Another Green Industry Failure

By Henry Payne

When the MSM isn’t outright ignoring Green scandals like Climategate, it is shrugging off the failure of Big Government’s green “investments” like Solyndra as isolated incidents.

“The failure of a single company — and anyone who knows anything about transformative technologies knows there will be failures — is no reason to stop our efforts to catch up,” huffs the New York Times’s editors.

“Those who oppose taxpayer-funded subsidies for alternative energy, either on ideological grounds or to protect their own stake in the carbon-based status quo, have pounced on (the Solyndra bankruptcy and Chevy Volt troubles) as proof that all such government initiatives are prone to failure,” writes the Detroit Free Press editorial page.

But the proof is everywhere.

Before Barack Obama hung out his White House Investment Bank shingle (“We invest, taxpayers bear all the risk”), former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm had already thrown away millions in taxpayer money on green ventures from bankrupt Fisher Coachworks to Evergreen to RASCO. Obama & Co. have followed with investments in boondoggles like Beacon Power and A123 Systems — which is struggling in part because government has mistakenly invested in too many battery suppliers chasing too little demand.

Now the snowball of bad investments has claimed another victim: Saginaw’s GlobalWatt solar company.

ABC-affiliate WJRT reports that “eviction proceedings have begun for . . . GlobalWatt. It’s no secret people have been skeptical about this business . . . especially when the CEO has declined to comment on production or how many people have been hired.”

Due to skimpy press coverage, it was likely a secret to taxpayer investors who are about to lose even more money.

“It was two years ago, mid-December, when California based GlobalWatt Inc. announced it would bring 500 jobs and invest $177 million into making solar panels in Saginaw,” continues WJRT. “The state of Michigan awarded millions in tax credits, A MEGA grant included, and the break was to come when jobs were created.

This despite the fact the experts like the Mackinac Center’s Michael LaFaive and consultant Chris Philbrick were warning of GlobalWatt’s lack of viability. “I’m not surprised, based on the public record,” Philbrick said this week at the news of GlobalWatt’s eviction.

Meanwhile, Governor Granholm continues to parade around the country on a book tour touting green energy as the future and the federal Department of Energy continues to pour money down the drain. And Green cheerleaders like the Free Press blindly insist that “there’s a great deal (of evidence) to suggest that federal support for alternative energy is increasingly critical to America’s economic recovery.”

Imaginary benefits, extensive harm

EPA mercury rules for electricity generating units are based on false science and economics

Craig Rucker

The Environmental Protection Agency clams its “final proposed” Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rules will eliminate toxic pollution from electrical generating units, bring up to $140 billion in annual health benefits, and prevent thousands of premature deaths yearly – all for “only” $11 billion a year in compliance costs.

This may be true in the virtual reality of EPA computer models, linear extrapolations, cherry-picked health studies and statistics, government press releases and agency-generated public comments. However, in the real world inhabited by families, employers and other energy users, the new rules will bring few benefits, but will impose extensive costs that the agency chose to minimize or ignore in its analysis.

Emissions of mercury and other air toxics from power plants have been declining steadily for decades, as older generating units have been replaced with more efficient, less polluting systems or retrofitted with better pollution control technologies. While a few older plants still violate EPA’s draconian proposed rules – the new rules are not based on credible scientific and epidemiological studies.

As independent natural scientist Dr. Willie Soon and CFACT policy advisor Paul Driessen pointed out in their Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily articles, and in Dr. Soon’s 85-page critique of EPA’s draft rules, US power plants account for only 0.5% of the mercury in US air. Thus, even if EPA’s new rules eventually do eliminate 90% of mercury from power plant emission streams, that’s still only 90% of 0.5% – ie, almost zero reduction. The rest of the mercury in US air comes from natural and foreign sources, such as forest fires, Chinese power plants and the cremation of human remains (from tooth fillings that contain mercury and silver).

EPA fails to recognize that mercury is abundant in the earth’s crust. It is absorbed by trees through their roots – and released into the atmosphere when the trees are burned in forest fires, fireplaces and wood-burning stoves. In fact, US forest fires annually emit as much mercury as all US coal-burning electrical power plants. Mercury and other “pollutants” are also released by geysers, volcanoes and subsea vents, which tap directly into subsurface rock formations containing these substances.

The agency compounds these errors by claiming fish contain dangerous levels of mercury that threatens the health and mental acuity of babies and children. In making this claim, the agency commits four more grievous errors. First, it ignores the fact that selenium in fish tissue is strongly attracted to mercury molecules and thus protects people against buildups of methylmercury, mercury’s more toxic form.

Second, EPA based its toxicity claims on a study of Faroe Islanders, who eat few fruits and vegetables, but feast on pilot whale meat and blubber that is high in mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – but very low in selenium. Third, it ignored a 17-year Seychelles Islands evaluation, which found “no measurable cognitive or behavioral effects” in children who eat five to twelve servings of fish per week.

Fourth, it used computer models to generate linear extrapolations from known or assumed toxic levels down to much lower levels. Not only is this method contrary to sound science and epidemiology; it resulted in politicized “safety” levels that are twice as restrictive as Canadian and World Health Organization mercury standards, three times more restrictive than US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and four times tougher than US Food and Drug Administration recommendations. No wonder the Centers for Disease Control says blood mercury levels in US women and children are already well below excessively “safe” levels set by EPA.

Simply put, EPA grossly exaggerated the health benefits of its proposed mercury rules – and then claimed additional mercury benefits based on double counting of reductions in particulate matter. It also ignored the adverse effects that its rules will inflict. Not only is EPA’s anti-mercury campaign scaring mothers and children into not eating nutritious fish that is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. It is also raising electricity heating, air conditioning and food costs, impairing electrical reliability, costing jobs, and thereby harming the health and welfare of countless Americans.

Energy analyst Roger Bezdek has calculated that utilities will have to spend $130 billion to retrofit older plants – and another $30 billion a year to operate, maintain and power the energy-intensive pollution control equipment they will be forced to install. Moreover, under its MACT rules, EPA intends to micromanage every aspect of power plant operations. It will now cite companies for violations even if emissions fully comply with air quality standards, if operators merely deviate from new agency “work practice standards” and “operational guidelines,” even under unusual weather conditions or equipment malfunctions that are beyond the operators’ control.

While it is true that older power plants are more significant sources of toxic air emissions, those plants are mostly in key manufacturing states that burn coal to generate 48-98% of their electricity. Many utility companies cannot justify those huge costs – and thus plan to close dozens of units, representing tens of thousands of megawatts – enough to electrify tens of millions of homes and small businesses. Illinois alone will lose nearly 3,500 MW of reliable, affordable, baseload electricity – with little to replace it.

Electricity consumers could pay at least 20% more in many states within a few years. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois families and businesses will pay 40-60% more. That will severely affect business investment, production and hiring – and family plans to repair cars and homes, save for college and retirement, take vacations, or have health physicals or surgery.

Chicago public schools will have to pay an additional $2.7 million annually for electricity by 2014, says the Tribune. Hospitals, factories and other major electricity users will also be hard hit. Many poor and minority families will find it increasingly hard to afford proper heating and air conditioning. Further job losses and economic stress will lead to further reductions in living standards and nutrition, more foreclosures and homelessness, and additional drug, alcohol, spousal and child abuse.

The very reliability of America’s electricity grid could be at risk, if multiple power plants shut down. Brownouts, blackouts and power interruptions will affect factory production lines, hospital, school, farm and office operations, employment, and the quality of food, products and services.

The impact on people’s health and welfare is patently obvious. But EPA considered none of this.

EPA insists there was strong public support for its rules. However, its rules were clearly based on false, biased or even fraudulent information. Furthermore, EPA itself generated much of that public support.

The agency recruited, guided and financed activist groups that promoted its rulemaking. Over the past decade, it gave nearly $4 billion to the American Lung Association and other advocacy organizations and various “environmental justice” groups, according to a Heritage Foundation study. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and members of her staff also visited historically black and other colleges – giving speeches about “toxic emissions,” providing templates for scare-mongering posters and postcards, and making it easy for students to send pro-rulemaking comments via click-and-submit buttons on websites.

This EPA action does nothing to improve environmental quality or human health. In fact, by advancing President Obama’s goal of shutting down power plants and raising electricity costs, it impairs job creation, economic recovery, and public health and welfare. It is intrusive government at its worst.

It is a massive power grab that threatens to give EPA nearly unfettered power over the electrical power we need to support our livelihoods and living standards.

Congress, states, utility companies, affected industries, school districts and hospitals, and families and citizen groups should immediately take action to postpone the MACT rules’ implementation. Otherwise, their harmful impacts will be felt long and hard in states that depend on coal for their electricity.

Craig Rucker is CEO of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

The EPA Is Dreaming Of A Blackout Christmas

Flashlights make great stocking stuffers.
By John Hayward

In another triumph for government transparency, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson signed the final MACT Rule last Friday, but she’s been keeping it secret until a formal announcement planned for today. MACT stands for Maximum Achievable Control Technology. It covers emission rules for various industries, controlling the technologies the EPA finds achievable in the same sense that a choke chain controls a dog.

The new MACT rules are going to come down hard on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, despite serious questions raised by critics about the EPA’s methodology for calculating costs and benefits from the rule. Many of the benefits it claims to provide already emanate from the Clean Air Act, while its project costs are deliriously underestimated, compared to independent analyses. One reason the EPA is keeping things under wraps is that it got tired of all the criticism.

How high are those costs likely to be? The Associated Press estimated that “more than 32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to close because of the new, more stringent regulations. Another 36 plants are at risk of closing.” This will drain at least 14.7 gigawatts, “enough power for more than 11 million households,” off the grid between 2014 and 2015. The town manager of Glen Lyn, Virginia worries that his entire town might actually be wiped out when their power plant is shut down by the new rules.

The AP nevertheless assures us that “no lights will go dark,” which sounds less like a prediction than a prayer. How do we lose 14.7 gigawatts without any lights going dark?

And that’s a fairly lowball estimate of the impact from these plant closings. Last month, the Institute for Energy Research estimated that the true effect will be nearly double what the EPA estimates, or at least 28 gigawatts of generating capacity… and even that might not be the end of it. According to the Wall Street Journal, the highly respected North American Electric Reliability Corporation believes that “on top of the 38 gigawatts of generation that is already being run below normal levels or slated for early retirement, another 36 to 59 gigawatts will come offline by 2018, depending on the ‘scope and timing’ of EPA demands.” (Emphasis mine.)

So the total damage might be twice as bad as the Institute for Energy Research fears, and they’re predicting twice as much energy loss as the EPA. Building new power plants to take up the slack is not something that can be done quickly. As the Wall Street Journal explains, “there are bottlenecks in permitting, engineering, financing, and building a new plant and then tying it to the electricity networks.”

You know that piddly $70 or $80 bucks a month Obama has been raiding Social Security to tuck into your breast pocket? You might want to start saving that money to pay your future electric bills, with 15% to 20% increases on the table in many states, just for starters. Not to mention your skyrocketing local taxes, if you happen to live in the “coal belt” or a town that’s about to lose its coal-fired plant. Those industries pay a lot of taxes, and you’ll be expected to make up the shortfall. The Associated Press looked at one example:

Take Giles County, where American Electric Power​’s Glen Lyn plant is located, and where 44 jobs are on the line.

County Administrator Chris McKlarney worries about the $600,000 tax-revenue hit his $40 million budget will take. But that’s just one concern involving a plant and workers whose community contribution is “hard to quantify.”

“They’ve done so much donation-wise for local causes … And they’re really good people working there,” he said. “They’re coaches in Little League sports, involved in the Parent-Teacher Organization — you lose those kind of people, it’s tough.”

And they’re good jobs — stable, well-paying positions with good benefits in places where such things can be hard to find.

Good jobs are going to be much harder to find in the energy-starved America the Obama Administration has been plotting to inflict upon us.

On the bright side, you might recall a panicked President Obama, after reports of zero net job growth last summer, stammering something about how the EPA would be instructed to consider the impact of its rules upon job creation. If you recall that, please be a good citizen and strike yourself in the forehead repeatedly until you forget it. Also, please forget about Obama openly promising to destroy the coal industry during the 2008 campaign. It’s one of the few campaign promises he seems hell-bent on keeping, but we’re supposed to politely ignore it and pretend he’s a wise technocrat who cares about the middle class.

Fortunately, leaving useless White House promises aside, there is a federal agency changed with maintaining the integrity of America’s electrical power grid, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Unfortunately, they’re deadlocked over whether to take action. The Administration is eager to regulate the dickens out of Americans, but much less keen about regulating itself.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has been trying to work up Congressional legislation to delay the new EPA rules, as well as demanding an investigation into why this appendage of the Most Transparent Administration In History refuses to answer his questions about the methodology behind its new rules. Meanwhile, a thought for your last-minute Christmas shopping: flashlights and batteries make great stocking stuffers.

German Solar Industry Faces Bankruptcy

Future of energy is NOW.

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Workers in Germany’s once booming solar energy industry face a shakeout of major proportions following declines in the price of solar panels over the past year. A decision by the German government earlier this year to phase out nuclear energy has done little to reignite the sector. The resulting power gap is likely to be filled by coal and gas rather than solar and wind energy. — Sarah Marsh and Christoph Steitz, Reuters, 15 December 2011

Solon SE slumped the most in eight years in Frankfurt trading after becoming the first publicly traded solar company from Germany to file for insolvency. The Berlin-based company filed for insolvency after failing to reach an “amicable solution” with banks and investors, it said in a statement yesterday. “I would be surprised if Solon remains the only European company struggling,” said Henning Wicht, an analyst at researcher IHS Isuppli. –Stefan Nicola, Bloomberg, 14 December 2011

Solon’s insolvency filing is likely to be followed by other high-profile German solar company failures, analysts said, as the blood-letting in the global industry intensifies. Shares in Solon plunged 58 percent on Wednesday after the solar module maker announced the filing late the previous day, becoming Germany’s first major casualty of a crisis in the sector. “Solar managers and experts warned already about further bankruptcies,” a Frankfurt-based trader said. –Christoph Steitz, Reuters, 14 December 2011

WHEN is a job not a job? Answer: when it is a green job. Jobs in an industry that raises the price of energy effectively destroy jobs elsewhere; jobs in an industry that cuts the cost of energy create extra jobs elsewhere. You will hear claims from Chris Huhne, the anti-energy secretary, and the green-greed brigade that trousers his subsidies for their wind and solar farms, about how many jobs they are creating in renewable energy. But since every one of these jobs is subsidised by higher electricity bills and extra taxes, the creation of those jobs is a cost to the rest of us. The anti-carbon and renewable agenda is not only killing jobs by closing steel mills, aluminium smelters and power stations, but preventing the creation of new jobs at hairdressers, restaurants and electricians by putting up their costs and taking money from their customers’ pockets. –Matt Ridley, City A.M., 15 December 2011

The parallel-energy universe known as renewables, a place where dollars and economic theory know no bounds and make no sense, looks increasingly like a bubble set to collapse. Or, as I wrote here back in March of 2010: “That eerie hissing you hear may well be the air beginning to seep out of the green energy bubble. The sound is similar to the pfffffft and sshhhhsssssp noises we heard in the early days of the dot-com bubble collapse or the subprime mortgage meltdown.” –Terence Corcoran, Financial Post, 15 December 2011

EU carbon prices fell to their lowest ever level on Wednesday as the euro currency and equities slid on renewed fears over the bloc’s debt crisis and oil prices tanked after producers promised to maintain high output. “I still don’t see any bottom to this market,” said one carbon trader. “It’s clear that Durban didn’t help, and Canada’s announcement of its Kyoto Protocol withdrawal tells you what little countries think about international agreements,” he added. –Reuters, 14 December 2011

Renewable Energy: Vision Or Mirage?

Adam Smith Institute

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•As renewable energy sources produce power intermittently, they cannot replace gas, coal and nuclear generation, even with further development.
•Solar and wind energy have no prospect of becoming economically competitive in an unrigged market. Government intervention will lead to higher energy costs and jeopardize energy security.
•Increased investment in wind turbines will do little to reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel consumption.

The report ‘Renewable Energy: Vision or Mirage?’, released today by the Adam Smith Institute and Scientific Alliance, reveals that the government’s focus on renewable energy sources is misguided. The UK’s plans for renewables are unrealistic, and these technologies cannot provide the secure energy supply the country needs. Present policies will lead to an energy crisis by the middle of this decade. The key points from the report are detailed below:
•Wind and solar power do little to reduce carbon emissions, as they need large-scale back up generating capacity to compensate for their intermittency.
•With the decommissioning of many of the UK’s coal-fired stations – and nearly all existing nuclear reactors – over the coming decade, energy security is now a priority for policymakers alongside the drive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, even ignoring cost issues, problems of intermittency mean that renewable technologies are incapable of making a major contribution to energy security.
•The Renewable Energy Roadmap for 2020 is hugely overambitious. Renewable energy generation is currently 28% below its already reduced target. Subsidising renewable energy also comes at a cost to consumers who pay for it through higher electricity prices. Nuclear and gas are the most viable energy sources to avoid a capacity crisis in the near future.

Wind turbines are not the solution
•To achieve current targets for wind turbines for 2020, almost 5 wind turbines must be installed every working day, with the majority of them offshore. This is unrealistic.
•No matter how much wind capacity is added, there is no way of storing the energy long enough to avoid the need for backup generators. It cannot ensure the lights stay on, so there can be little reliance on it.
•Experience in other countries shows that a large investment in wind turbines must be matched by large-scale conventional back up generating capacity, which makes any reductions in CO2 emissions quite modest.
•Wind farms in the UK have a capacity factor of only 25%; investment in these farms would not be a commercial proposition without subsidies, even ignoring the intermittency problem.
•Wind power operators in the UK get a higher subsidy per MWh than in other countries in the EU and yet many approved wind farms never get built due to problems connecting to the Grid. Onshore wind turbines face much opposition from the public and off-shore turbines are more expensive to install.
•The operational life for wind turbines is just 20 years. This is much shorter than for coal, gas or nuclear and is another factor making wind power an expensive option.
•Planned high investment in wind power up to 2020 will preclude the possibility of investment in diversified and efficient generating capacity. Wind power is an inefficient of use of taxpayers’ money, is not as green as commonly perceived, and will not provide for the energy needs of the UK.

Solar power
•This is high cost and inefficient at our high latitude.
•The focus of subsidies has been on small scale, domestic installations which are intrinsically less cost effective.
•As there is no technology for long-term, high capacity storage of electricity, this technology cannot help to meet Britain’s energy needs.
•Large solar farms are difficult to build as they need a large land area. This acts as a financial disincentive – nuclear and coal-fired power stations need much less land.

It is difficult not to conclude that the official enthusiasm for renewables has more to do with the power of the green lobby than economics and energy security. Martin Livermore, joint author of the report, adds:

“For too long, we have been told that heavy investment in uneconomic renewable energy was not only necessary but would provide a secure future electricity supply. The facts actually show that current renewables technologies are incapable of making a major contribution to energy security and – despite claims to the contrary – have only limited potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.”

“Consumers have a right to expect government to place high priority on a secure, affordable energy supply. It seems that ministers have not yet realised the need to invest in more nuclear and gas generating capacity if the electorate is not to be badly let down.”

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Click to access renewableenergy2011.pdf

More U.N. Insanity Paid For By U.S. Taxpayers

Larry Bell, Contributor

One year after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged at least $100 billion annually by 2020 to help Third World countries address climate problems attributed to America and capitalism at the U.N.-sponsored World Climate-Change Summit in Copenhagen, the Cancun meeting that followed focused primarily upon formulating a plan of action to implement that commitment. This commenced literally with a vengeance, producing the design for a new $100 billion per year “Green Climate Fund” (GCF). Its purpose is nothing less than to fundamentally transform the global economy…beginning with ours.

And the key players? They include George Soros, a World Bank representative, and Lawrence Summers, former director of the White House National Economic Council and assistant to President Obama for economic policy. Be advised to take what is envisioned very seriously.

The first GCF meeting of the 40-member design team, the “Transitional Committee” (TC), took place in Mexico City on April 28-29. Its charge was to prepare “operational specifications” for the GCF in time for approval at U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Durban, South Africa last week. You can bet that its primary goal will be to finalize financing strategies to squeeze those annual $100 billion installments out of American consumers unencumbered by Congressional approvals.

According to plans, the U.N. would be granted taxing authority that will effectively transform its role of governance to “government” and preempt our national sovereignty. This falls in line with proposals prepared by a 20-member “High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing” assembled by U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon for the purpose of calling upon nations “to fundamentally transform the global economy-based on low-carbon, clean energy resources.” Resulting recommendations are to institute:

•a carbon tax

•a tax on international aviation and shipping

•a financial transaction tax

•a wire tax for producing electricity

•redirection of 100% of all fossil fuel subsidies for international climate action.

Fox News reported possession of position papers indicating topics covered in meetings involving Ban ki-Moon and 60 of his top lieutenants during a two-day 2010 Australian Alpine Retreat discussing ways to put their sprawling organization in charge of world agendas. Those topics included:

•how to restore “climate change” as a top global priority after the Copenhagen fiasco

•how to continue to try to make global redistribution of wealth the real basis of that climate agenda, and widen the discussion further to encompass the idea of “global public goods”

•how to keep growing U.N. peacekeeping efforts into missions involved in police, courts, legal systems and other aspects of strife-torn countries

•how to capitalize on the global tide of immigrants from poor nations to rich ones, to encompass a new “international migration governance network”

•how to make “clever use of technologies to deepen direct ties with what the U.N. calls “civil society”, meaning novel ways to bypass its member nation states and deal directly with constituencies that support U.N. agendas.

An underlying position paper theme those top U.N. bosses grappled with was how to cope with the pesky issue of national sovereignty that interferes with their global governance goal. As one paper put it: “the U.N. should be able to take the lead in setting the global agenda, engage effectively with other multinational and regional organizations as well as civil society and non-state stakeholders, and transform itself into a tool to help implement the globally agreed objectives.” It went on to state: “it will be necessary to deeply reflect on the substance of sovereignty, and accept that changes in our perceptions are a good indication of the direction we are going.”

And just how much of this sovereignty sabotage has to do with sinking capitalism, stifling consumption and achieving global wealth redistribution? A bunch.

As an opening session explained: “The real challenge comes from the exponential growth of the global consumerist society driven by ever higher aspirations of the upper and middle layers in rich countries, as well as the expanding demand of emerging middle-class in developing countries. Our true ambition should be therefore creating incentives for the profound transformation of attitudes and consumption styles.” A paper prepared by Secretary General Ban’s own climate change team called for “nothing less than a fundamental transformation of the global economy.”

Such ambitious goals will of course require lots money to carry out…our money, along with new taxing authority. And manufactured carbon-based climate change alarmism provides an excuse to get it.

In 2004 the United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) published a study addressing possible scenarios for implementing a global tax. It asked “How can we find an extra US $550 billion for development funding? Our focus is on flows of resources from high-income to developing countries.” The conclusion? “Any foreseeable global tax will be introduced, not by a unitary world government, but as the result of concerted action of nation states…The taxation of environmental externalities is an obvious potential source of revenue.” It went on to say “We are presupposing that the tax is indeed levied on individuals and firms in the form of a carbon levy.”

Another UNU-Wider publication states: “Support for an international ‘carbon tax’ has been growing since the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit focused international attention on the damage to the environment caused by excessive use of fossil fuels worldwide…Over 20% of the tax yields would originate in the U.S.”

As Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change admitted in an Investor’s Business Daily interview, “The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month [December, 2010] is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.”

Neither the Cancun meeting or the Copenhagen conference that preceded it paid any attention to the revelation of science frauds associated with the “Climategate” and “Glaciergate” scandals (the latter involving a fabricated IPCC report that Himalayan glaciers were melting due to man-made global warming). Instead, all seemed much more interested in creating the Green Climate Fund to replace many smaller agreements between nations that have developed after the 1997 Kyoto Protocol terms were established. It’s entirely unlikely that the recently revealed Climategate II scandal will influence their agenda either.

So okay, let’s recognize that it’s very doubtful that the TC will complete its Green Climate Fund tax the rich plan at this week’s UNFCCC meeting in Durban, South Africa, or that given an apparently chilly political climate in Congress that any such challenge to our national sovereignty would be successful. Still, one might have good reason to wonder why our present administration would dignify such proceedings with the assignment of Assistant Treasury Secretary for International Development and Markets Marisa Lago as a formal member of the TC’s Green Climate Fund design committee. Much worse, consider the insanity of the Obama administration’s annual pledge of $100 billion we don’t have to assist other countries in solving fictitious climate problems premised upon the U.N.’s politically-corrupted agenda-driven IPCC report summaries.

But there are even larger questions – in fact very much larger. Why do we continue to support the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change that sponsors IPCC at all, knowing that its activities and conclusions are rife with manipulation and outright corruption?

Why do we blithely continue to enable and empower the U.N.’s Agenda 21 plan, operating through its UNFCCC, U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, U.N. Environment Program and other organizations in the form of an International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) to advance a global scheme for healthcare, education, nutrition, agriculture, labor, production and consumption within counties and communities throughout America?

Why would we tolerate the U.N.’s planned abridgement of our Second Amendment rights as our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces the Obama administration intent to work hand-in-glove with them to pass a new “Small Arms Treaty” disguised as an “International Arms Control Treaty” which will essentially force the U.S. to:

•Enact tougher gun licensing requirements that create more bureaucratic red tape,

•Confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms,

•Ban the trade, sale and ownership of all semi-automatic weapons,

•Create an international gun registry, setting the stage for future confiscation.

And why, pray tell, should we not become at least a wee bit peeved to hear U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay call for America to make “full disclosure of the accurate facts” on our killing of Usama bin Laden – on behalf of a Human Rights Council where Cuba, and until very recently Libya, have been members. Or that Pillay’s spokesman Rupert Colville is now calling for a full investigation into circumstances surrounding the killing of Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi?

Consider applying a trigger provision that has been operative in U.S. law since 1990 which terminated our handouts to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization last October…an automatic cutoff that occurs when a recipient takes anti-American actions. That was after UNESCO voted 107-14 to approve full membership of Palestine. Why not urge Congress to pass a similar law requiring termination of all U.N. appropriations in the event that any infringement of our sovereign rights is sanctioned?

Another approach is to require that all future U.N. funding comply with responsible policies. In August, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) introduced a United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act of 2011” (H.R. 2829) which would make U.S. funding voluntary rather than based upon an assessment subject to their cession of anti-American and anti- Israel policies. For example, it would eliminate our contributions to the Palestinian Authority through the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which has been caught bankrolling terrorism.

Such measures, of course, would be strongly opposed by those who believe we must continue to subsidize the U.N. if we want to be popular and respected by the international community. But there’s just one really big question. Is any of that working yet?

Reprinted with permission of author.

Kiwi Carbon Credits crash an burn!

The New Zealand ETS is serious trouble with the price of carbon credits in Europe destroying the local scheme.The whole theory that shuffling bits of paper will save the earth is now being seen as the scam it is. New Zealand units have halved in price from May this year and are now only $11 reflecting the European price, and the Government may have to ban international credits to prevent embarrassment.

Industry leaders call for limits on imports of low-quality European carbon credits, writes Rob Stock.
A crash in carbon credit prices means the government has no option but to ban or drastically restrict the use of imported carbon credits of dubious quality, or the emissions trading scheme (ETS) could become a national embarrassment.

The price of New Zealand units (NZUs) has crashed from $22 in May to about $11 last week, stifling interest in developing carbon offsetting initiatives here, according to carbon market participants.
The price crash has been so steep that by one calculation, if the price trend continued for another 100 days, the value of NZU credits would be zero.

The reasons for the crash appear to be the unfettered ability of New Zealand emitters to import credits of dubious quality from overseas, coupled with the recent dumping of international credits by cash-strapped European industrial and utilities companies selling down their stockpiles of carbon to realise cash as the debt crisis worsens, participants in the fledgling carbon trading market say.

Big emitters here have been able to buy the UN-backed Certified Emmissions Reductions (CERs) cheaply to surrender under the ETS, gutting the price of NZUs.

As a result, those who have created NZUs – perhaps through planting timber on part of their farm – have almost abandoned the market.

The only people offering NZUs for sale appear to be certain “emissions intensive and trade exposed” emitters (known as Eite, curiously pronounced as though it rhymed with yeti) who receive NZUs as compensation for increased costs under the ETS, market sources say. And even they are not willing to accept the prices bidders are putting on the table.

Eco-Absurdity

By Alan Caruba

There are no lengths and no depths to which Greens—environmentalists—will not go to advance the greatest hoax of the modern era. It used to be called “global warming”, but when that was exposed as based on falsified computer models put out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the term “climate change” was adopted to mask it.

Billions of dollars have been wasted on claims of a massive increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere and entire careers, organizations, and government agencies have been financed to advance the hoax.

So much depends on this cash flow that the fraud’s machinery continues to function. Yet another IPCC conference on climate change began on November 30 in Durban, South Africa for the purpose of extending the absurd Kyoto Protocols that some nations signed onto with the promise of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions.” The original protocols exempted China and India. The U.S. refused to participate and many industrial nations have indicated they have no intention of doing so this time around.

As just one example of this BIG LIE, on November 30 I received a news release from the Missouri State University stating that one of its professors was “delivering a message in Washington, D.C. today urging the nation’s leaders to address the moral issue surrounding climate change.”

Oh, so now global warming is a moral issue, too?

As I have frequently noted, climate is something measured in centuries, while weather is forecast in days and, even then, can prove to be incorrect. The definition of the weather is “chaos” as it is subject to change in just hours as various “fronts” shift course. Even the most powerful events like hurricanes are difficult to predict and the U.S. mainland has not been hit by one in years. By the time Hurricane Irene arrived on the East Coast this year, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm.

This and the revelations of “Climategate”, the thousands of emails exchanged by the IPCC meteorologists of the University of East Anglia’s climate center, has hardly made a dent on the frantic efforts to keep the global warming lie alive.

“Michael Nelson, MSU associate professor of environmental ethics and philosophy, is part of the Climate Ethics Campaign, a team of representatives from government agencies, business and environmental organizations delivering a national climate ethics statement to President Obama and Congress.”

Here’s where it really gets absurd. Having blamed global warming for everything, this gang of hucksters assert that “’Missing from the international debate is the deeply disturbing moral and ethical implications of climate change.’ Nelson said ‘Climate change is a real, dangerous and rapidly worsening problem that cannot be driven solely by short-term economics or national self-interest.’”

The level of fear-mongering reaches new heights with the Climate Ethics Campaign claim that “Climate change-related impacts are already harming and killing people here and abroad. Unless carbon pollution is rapidly reduced, the resulting natural disasters, floods, diseases, illnesses, water and food shortages, and environmental degradation, along with associated rising violence and social breakdown, will injure or kill millions more every year.”

So, there you have it. Either we spend billions on “climate change” or people will die and societies will suffer turmoil. Can you name a single day when the weather somewhere has not killed someone? Do societies experience turmoil because of the weather or because they oppress their population? And can anyone do anything about the weather? No.

I fully expect these charlatans to announce that Santa may not show up on Christmas Eve if we don’t do something about climate change..

The weather, deemed too warm or too cold, continues to be touted as the result of too much CO2 in the atmosphere even though it is a mere 0.038% of the atmosphere and meteorological science has established its impact is virtually non-existent. There is no correlation between its increase and the climate except that it shows up well after any change.

Prof. Nelson, apparently concerned that his job is on the line, said, “We want to urge every citizen to push for policies that reduce emissions and prepare for climate change.”

Some of those policies threaten to further undermine the nation’s economy in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency’s assertion that CO2 is a “pollutant” and is falsely trying to use the Clean Air Act to shut down every coal-fired plant for the generation of electricity—even though they provide fifty percent of all electricity generated.

These aren’t just bad policies based on utterly false and debased science, but they represent the real threat to the lives of all Americans and to the economy in general.

There is no real “ethical” component to climate change. There is only the need to clean up after a hurricane, blizzard or flood in order to help people get their lives in order again. That is already addressed in part by government agencies like FEMA.

The time has long since passed when the U.S. and other nations should pay any attention, let alone waste any more time and money on the “sustainable” schemes being pushed by the United Nations and the many organizations dependent on this massive fraud..

© Alan Caruba, 2011