Category: Fighting back

‘Carbon Criminal’ WANTED Poster Campaign Goes to G-20 Meeting in Pittsburgh

Wanted Poster Alcoa Sketch Final
‘Carbon Criminal’ WANTED Poster Campaign Goes to G-20 Meeting in Pittsburgh

JunkScience warns public to be on look-out for Alcoa CEO Klaus Kleinfeld, the ‘Carbon Villain’

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — JunkScience.com announced today that it was taking its “Carbon Criminal” WANTED poster advertisement campaign to Pittsburgh for the G-20 economic summit. The campaign will protest the CEO of Pittsburgh-based Alcoa, Klaus Kleinfeld, who is lobbying for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation that will wreck the U.S. economy.

“Klaus Kleinfeld personifies the non-thinking corporate stampede toward economy-killing and environmentally-ineffectual greenhouse gas regulation,” says Steve Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and author of the Amazon.com Best-selling book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

The purpose of the WANTED poster campaign is to spotlight the CEOs who belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) and who have teamed up with America-hating green groups to lobby for legislation that would make energy dramatically more expensive and that would eviscerate the American dream and standard of living, while not accomplishing anything positive for the environment.

At the G-20 protest, protesters from JunkScience.com will wear sandwich boards featuring the WANTED poster for Klaus Kleinfeld, the “Carbon Villain.”

The Kleinfeld WANTED poster notes that after Alcoa announced the layoff of 15,200 workers in January 2009, it then had the temerity to boast that its “operational excellence” reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 3 percent from 2007 to 2008.

“Kleinfeld cut 15% of his workforce due to the global economic slowdown and then boasts about CO2 emission cuts that amount to avoiding less than 0.005% of atmospheric CO2 accumulation,” observed Milloy. “If I were a CEO that just laid-off that many employees, the last thing I would be doing is touting nonsense in support for policies that would keep those workers unemployed,” Milloy added.

“Alcoa’s profitability depends on U.S.-led and energy-intensive global economic growth,” Milloy said, “but Kleinfeld nevertheless courts disaster by lobbying for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill that will make energy needlessly expensive, sabotage economic recovery, and hamstring future economic expansion — all while doing nothing positive for the environment.”

JunkScience’s WANTED poster campaign kicked off last week by running a poster advertisement of John Rowe, the CEO of USCAP member Exelon Corp., on the Drudge Report in Exelon’s hometown of Chicago. JunkScience continued the Drudge Report campaign this week by running an ad featuring Jim Rogers, CEO of USCAP member Duke Energy, in Duke’s hometown of Charlotte, NC.

“The Senate is about to take up the Waxman-Markey bill in hopes of enacting it before December when President Obama goes to Copenhagen to submit the U.S. to a United Nations-run international cap-and-tax agreement,” Milloy notes.

“But for CEOs like Kleinfeld, America would not be looking down the barrel of the Waxman-Markey gun,” Milloy observed. “If you see one of them,” Milloy warns, “approach with caution and shake your head in disgust.”

The WANTED posters may be viewed at http://www.junkscience.com/Wanted

More of US more strongly opposes climate bill

From Rasmussen, read it and weep climate freaks…

Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans favor the climate change bill, while 40% are opposed to it. However, the antis feel more strongly: Twenty-six percent (26%) Strongly Oppose the bill versus 10% who Strongly Favor it…

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Democrats support the climate control bill, while the identical number (58%) of Republicans and the plurality (47%) of adults not affiliated with either party oppose it. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Republicans Strongly Oppose, while 20% of Democrats Strongly Favor the bill…

Among investors, 19% say it will help the economy, 37% that it will hurt, and 17% predict no impact…

Sixty-five percent (65%) of all Americans say creating jobs is more important than taking steps to stop global warming. Only 22% put curbing global warming as more important, with 14% unsure…

To paraphrase Winston Churchill in May 1941 when the Nazi battleship Bismarck was unleashed onto the high seas:

“I don’t care how you do it… You must sink the climate bill.”

Climate Bill Is Built On ‘Clean Coal’ Myths

By Steven Milloy
Investor’s Business Daily, August 26, 2009

The fate of the Waxman-Markey climate bill rests upon two myths about so-called “clean coal.” The first is that coal, as used today in the U.S., is a dirty fuel. The other is that coal can be made “clean” by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants and storing them underground in geologic repositories.

As to the first myth, if the chief concern about burning coal for electricity is limited to CO2 emissions, then coal is already clean. CO2 is a colorless, odorless, naturally occurring trace gas in the atmosphere that humans exhale and plants need to grow.

There is no direct evidence that humankind’s comparatively minuscule CO2 emissions predictably or discernibly affect the climate. Controversy surrounding the first myth has given rise to the second myth as a potential solution.

Some in the coal and electric-power industries are touting the second myth in hopes of being able to survive climate legislation with hard emission caps that may be enacted this fall.

These groups are looking for time and taxpayer money to develop CO2 capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies that would allow the continued use of coal in power plants. The Waxman-Markey bill that is now being considered in Congress would provide about $60 billion for CCS technologies.

The problem, though, is that even if $60 billion were enough money to implement CCS — and it’s not by a long shot — it would make no difference to the atmosphere and climate, regardless of whether you believe the first myth.

Atmospheric levels of CO2 are currently about 380 parts per million (ppm), as opposed to perhaps about 290 ppm around 1850. Based on this increase, we can reasonably estimate that about 40% of manmade CO2 emissions since 1850 remain in the atmosphere, while the other 60% is transferred to oceans and the terrestrial biosphere.

In 2007, U.S. coal-fired power plants emitted about 2.4 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, meaning that about one billion metric tons of CO2 remained in the atmosphere. Since each part per million of CO2 in the atmosphere weighs about 7.81 billion metric tons, the annual accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere resulting from U.S. power-plant emissions is on the order of 0.12 ppm.

So if CCS were commenced immediately and continued until, say, the year 2100, that would avoid accumulation of atmospheric CO2 by about 11 ppm — not exactly an earth-shaking amount. EPA scenarios forecast future CO2 levels to rise to 500 to 700 ppm.

Using the climate models relied on by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that attempt to project atmospheric warming caused by CO2, the theoretical amount of atmospheric warming avoided by CCS works out to between 0.045 to 0.15 degree Celsius avoided over the next 90 years.

Again, this is hardly significant compared with the 0.7-degree increase we seem to have experienced since 1850.

But then, CCS cannot be implemented immediately and is not affordable on any significant scale in the first place. The most ambitious plans put the first commercial-scale CCS projects 10 years or more into the future.

In a presentation to the Society of Petroleum Engineers last March, energy expert Michael Economides estimated that CO2 cuts on the order of the U.S.-shunned Kyoto Protocol would require the drilling of 161,429 injection wells by 2030 at a cost of $1.61 trillion.

That price tag doesn’t include the cost of capturing the CO2 at the point of generation, purchasing rights of way for pipelines, pipeline installation costs, and liability insurance. Power plants would have to use 30% more energy for CO2 capture, transport and storage.

Economides says the total cost may be as high as $1 trillion annually — without any guarantees that the CO2 would stay sequestered. Importantly, the Kyoto Protocol requirement of a 7% reduction in CO2 emissions from 1990 levels pales in comparison to that required by Waxman-Markey — an 83% reduction from 2005 levels.

For those who still hold dear the fantasy of CCS, it may serve to remember ill-fated Yucca Mountain, the almost 30-year-old project to develop a site for storing spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants one mile under the Nevada desert.

Despite tens of billions of dollars spent on site planning and engineering, Nevada NIMBY-ism and anti-nuclear power activists delayed the project long enough for the Obama administration to defund the project.

If the comparatively small Yucca Mountain project could not be made to happen, it’s doubtful that hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of pipelines carrying pressurized CO2 to much more uncertain underground entombment and possible environmental contamination will happen either.

The CCS myth has only served to derail the debate that needs to occur in Congress about the all-important first myth. Desperate coal and utility companies that rely on coal as fuel have advanced CCS in order to avoid a carbon-cap death penalty and to be perceived as environmentally progressive.

Energy-realistic politicians looking for an easy out on the climate issue are more than happy to dangle taxpayer money in front of the much-needed coal and utility industries to get them to the table for a quick-and-dirty deal.

Some environmentalists — Al Gore, for one — are willing to pay lip service to the CCS concept just to get a bill passed and establish a beachhead for their political power grab.

But few in the climate debate have stopped to seriously consider the realities of CCS. Now is the time for that consideration so that Congress can decide how seriously it believes in the first myth and whether it is worth its universally recognized economic pain.

Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery 2009).

Ohio’s Green Hell: JunkScience.com launches job loss awareness campaign

BoccieriFront

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — JunkScience.com today announced a “Save Ohio Jobs” campaign to educate Ohio voters about steep job losses that may be caused by the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill.

“A recent study by the Heritage Foundation estimates that Ohio may lose an average of 46,000 jobs annually between the years 2012-2035 if Waxman-Markey bill is enacted into law,” said JunkScience.com publisher Steve Milloy. “Unless Ohio wants to experience this kind of unemployment, Ohio voters must make their voices heard by their representatives in Congress.”

Ohio congressman who voted for Waxman-Markey and against jobs in Ohio in June include: Rep. John Boccieri (OH-16), Rep. Steve Driehaus (OH-1), Rep. Marcia Fudge (OH-11), Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH-9), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH-15), Timothy Ryan (OH-17), Zack Space (OH-18), and Betty Sutton (OH-13).

Ohio Senators who may be voting on the Waxman-Markey bill this fall include Sen. Sherrod Brown and Sen. George Voinovich.

“Our on-the-ground campaign will encourage Ohio voters to express their outrage to these politicians about Waxman-Markey,” said Milloy. “Not only would Waxman-Markey send Ohio jobs overseas to places like China, India and Mexico, but the bill would force Ohioans to pay more for energy, including an almost doubling of monthly electric bills,” Milloy added.

Ironically, the Waxman-Markey will accomplish nothing for the environment since, along with jobs, Ohio will simply be outsourcing its greenhouse gas emissions to China, India and Mexico.

“Even if you believe in the junk science-fueled notion that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are altering global climate, this bill doesn’t reduce emissions so much as it merely shifts them to other parts of the world — especially since China and India have vowed not to commit to binding emissions limits,” Milloy said. “A further irony is that, to the extent Waxman-Markey makes the state poorer, Ohio’s environment will suffer since environmental protection is expensive,” Milloy added.

“Waxman-Markey is all pain and no gain for Ohio,” Milloy says.

This campaign will be paid for by JunkScience.com and will feature Milloy’s new book, the Amazon.com Best Seller, “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

BoccieriBack

Click here for images of the postcards Ohio citizens sent to Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. John Boccieri.

Click here for the news release.

Update BG&E vs. AARP

The Maryland Public Service Commission has sided with AARP in denying Baltimore Gas & Electric’s request for an expedited processing of the utility’s smart meter program, reports SmartGridToday.

As we reported on August 3, the Maryland chapter of the AARP had filed a letter in opposition to BG&E’s request stating that not enough was known about the plan to justify rushing into it.

Inhofe on Senate climate bill: ‘We will defeat it’

Hearing Statement: Climate Change and Ensuring that America Leads the Clean Energy Transformation
August 6, 2009

Contact:

Matt Dempsey Matt_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov (202) 224-9797

David Lungren David_Lungren@epw.senate.gov (202) 224-5642

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JAMES M. INHOFE

Climate Change and Ensuring that America Leads the Clean Energy Transformation

August 6, 2009

Madame Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing today. This is the last hearing on climate change before the August recess, so I think it’s appropriate to take stock of what we’ve learned.

Madame Chairman, since you assumed the gavel, this committee has held over thirty hearings on climate change. With testimony from numerous experts and officials from all over the country, these hearings explored various issues associated with cap-and-trade-and I’m sure my colleagues learned a great deal from them.

But over the last two years, it was not from these, at times, arcane and abstract policy discussions that we got to the essence of cap-and-trade. No, it was the Democrats who cut right to the chase; it was the Democrats over the last two years who exposed what cap-and-trade really means for the American public.

We learned, for example, from President Obama that under his cap-and-trade plan, “electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket.”

We learned from Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) that cap-and-trade is “a tax, and a great big one.”

We learned from Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) that “a cap-and-trade system is prone to market manipulation and speculation without any guarantee of meaningful GHG emission reductions. A cap-and-trade has been operating in Europe for three years and is largely a failure.”

We learned from Sen. Dorgan (D-N.D.) that with cap-and-trade “the Wall Street crowd can’t wait to sink their teeth into a new trillion-dollar trading market in which hedge funds and investment banks would trade and speculate on carbon credits and securities. In no time they’ll create derivatives, swaps and more in that new market. In fact, most of the investment banks have already created carbon trading departments. They are ready to go. I’m not.”

We learned from Sen. Cantwell (D-Wash.) that “a cap-and-trade program might allow Wall Street to distort a carbon market for its own profits.”

We learned from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson that unilateral U.S. action to address climate change through cap-and-trade would be futile. She said in response to a question from me that “U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.”

We learned from Sen. Kerry (D-Mass.) that “there is no way the United States of America acting alone can solve this problem. So we have to have China; we have to have India.”

We learned from Sen. McCaskill (D-Mo.) that if “we go too far with this,” that is, cap-and-trade, then “all we’re going to do is chase more jobs to China and India, where they’ve been putting up coal-fired plants every 10 minutes.”

In sum, after a slew of hearings and three unsuccessful votes on the Senate floor, the Democrats taught us that cap-and-trade is a great big tax that will raise electricity prices on consumers, enrich Wall

Street traders, and send jobs to China and India-all without any impact on global temperature.

So off we go into the August recess, secure in the knowledge that cap-and-trade is riddled with flaws, and that Democrats are seriously divided over one of President Obama’s top domestic policy priorities.

And we also know that, according to recent polling, the American public is increasingly unwilling to pay anything to fight global warming.

But all of this does not mean cap-and-trade is dead and gone. It is very much alive, as Democratic leaders, as they did in the House, are eager to distribute pork on unprecedented scales to secure the necessary votes to pass cap-and-trade into law.

So be assured of this: We will markup legislation in this committee, pass it, and then it will be combined with other bills from other committees. And we will have a debate on the Senate floor.

Throughout the debate on cap-and-trade, we will be there to say that:

According to the American Farm Bureau, the vast majority of agriculture groups oppose it;

According to GAO, it will send our jobs to China and India;

According to the National Black Chamber of Commerce, it will destroy over 2 million jobs;

According to EPA and EIA, it will not reduce our dependence on foreign oil;

According to EPA, it will do nothing to reduce global temperature;

And when all is said and done, the American people will reject it and we will defeat it.

Thank you, Madame Chairman.

# # #

No campaign funding for Republican turncoats

Two Republican congressmen who voted for the Waxman-Markey bill have announced their candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2010.

Steve Milloy wrote to National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Sen. John Cornyn asking that NRSC-funding be denied to the congressmen and any other Republican who votes for a climate bill.

July 27, 2009

The Hon. John Cornyn
Chairman
National Republican Senatorial Committee
Ronald Reagan Republican Center
425 2nd Street NE
Washington, DC 20002

Dear Sen. Cornyn,

I am writing to request your commitment that the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) will not support any candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2010 who supported the Waxman-Markey bill or who votes for a similar climate bill in the Senate.

The Waxman-Markey bill is nothing more than a steep and stealthy energy tax and left-wing political power grab that will undermine the American standard of living and subvert our political system. That the bill will accomplish absolutely nothing in terms of energy security and environmental protection is the least of its many flaws and shortcomings.

I am concerned, for example, that Reps. Mike Castle (R-DE) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) will seek NRSC support in 2010 to run for the Senate seats that will be vacated by Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE) and Roland Burris (D-IL), respectively. Reps. Castle and Kirk voted for the Waxman-Markey bill and, in our view, against the interests of their constituents and the rest of America’s consumers and taxpayers.

The NRSC should not support Reps. Castle and Kirk or anyone else who lacks the common sense and/or fortitude to stand against the I-hate-America nature of Waxman-Markey and its supporters.

Sincerely,

Steven Milloy
Publisher, JunkScience.com

India rejects global warming junk science

From the Financial Times:

A split between rich and poor nations in the run-up to climate-change talks widened on Thursday.

India rejected key scientific findings on global warming, while the European Union called for more action by developing states on greenhouse gas emissions.

Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers.

He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming.

“We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere,” he said.

I guess Hillary Clinton’s “Ugly American” routine set them off…

Ready for a Green TEA Party?

You’re invited…

What: The first Green TEA Party
Where: Lafayette Park, Washington, DC (across the street from the White House)
When: September 26, 2009, 1-5pm

Click here for more info… more details to follow!

Show up and help tell President Obama that we’re not going to take the green ROD (regression, oppression and depression) lying down.

Four governors (1 Republican) to testify for raising taxes on families

The following governors and mayors will testify tomorrow before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in favor of the Waxman-Markey bill:

  • Gov. Bill Ritter (D-Col)
  • Gov. Chris Gregoire (D-Wash)
  • Gov. Jon Corzine (D-NJ)
  • Gov. John Hoeven (R-ND)
  • Mayor Robert Kiss, Progressive, Burlington, VT
  • Mayor William Euille, Democrat, Alexandria, VA
  • Mayor Douglas Palmer, Democrat, Trenton, NJ

Waxman-Markey represents an unearned multi-trillion dollar transfer of wealth from consumers and taxpayers to special interests including Al Gore and Goldman Sachs.

If you live in one of these states or cities, let these officials know that you don’t want to be taxed so that Al Gore and Goldman Sachs can laugh all the way to the bank with their ill-gotten profits.