In an article titled “Calif. looks to storage technologies and people to balance its grid” (Aug. 11), ClimateWire reports that,
Another technology [seen as key] is demand management, a process by which consumers adjust how much electricity their homes or offices are using based on real-time information from the grid on prices and other indicators of how much supply is available at the moment. Such communication… would be based on a smart grid, which will automatically receive information from the grid operator and adjust electricity use — for example, by turning off a house’s air conditioner for five minutes during times of peak demand.
Only in the bizarre world of green-think would your local utility’s ability to turn off your air conditioning when you need it the most be considered “technology.”
If you listen to President Obama these days, you are likely to hear him attack and deride people who oppose or raise questions about his policies.
Just today, for example, he blasted critics of his healthcare reform policies:
“I don’t find Canadians particularly scary, but I guess some of the opponents of reform think that they make a good bogeyman.”
Also today, he blasted critics of his policy on Honduras:
“The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we’re always intervening and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America. You can’t have it both ways.”
The Detroit News recently editorialized that:
President Barack Obama is chiding critics of his carbon cap-and-trade proposal to combat global warming for being afraid of a future shaped by new energy technologies and thriving with so-called green jobs.
So is he really the post-partisan politician that was pitched to America in 2008? You decide in the poll below:
President Obama: Post-partisan or...... just most-partisan?
Northeastern governors may ban home furnaces that burn oil in order to meet greenhouse gas emission limits.
The governors are expected to approve “a blueprint for slashing carbon dioxide from cars — and perhaps home furnaces — by January,” reports ClimateWire.
About half of Massachusetts 2 millions homes, for example, rely on oil heat. “Thousands of homes might have to replace oil furnaces with wood-burning heaters” or with heat from renewable electricity or natural gas, or upgrade furnaces to burning biofuels, ClimateWire reports.
New home furnaces cost between $3,000 to $5,000.
There would also be international trade implications from such a policy since about half of the region’s heating oil comes from Canadian tar sands.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Green Mafia) has made an offer that, he says, the coal industry should not refuse.
As reported by Carbon Control News, Kerry said at a hearing earlier this week:
“All these companies that are sort of stating exaggerated opposition to [cap-and-trade] based on very unrealistic modelling need to stop and consider what their models are going to look like when this is regulated by the EPA without any allowances and without any auction, because then they’re in for a very different economic world… [EPA regulation of CO2 is] going to happen if we don’t do something up here, and I hope people hear that message loudly and clearly. They are smarter and better to come to this table and work with us as they did with the House to find a solution here. It may not be ideal, but the alternative I would think for most of those companies is going to be they will be regulated… “If you care about coal in America—and there are plenty of senators up here and plenty of states that do, and reasons to do so—then the only solution is not to sit there and wait to be regulated… [The only way coal can continue to be used is if it can be made to burn cleanly]… And the only way to burn it clean is to have clean coal technology. And the only way to do that is through this kind of a mechanism where you have $10 billion dollars over 10 years going into that clean coal technology. If it’s regulated by EPA, there’s no money going into clean coal technology.”
Translation: If the coal industry stops fighting the green mob, it will get taxpayer welfare for the rest of its days. If it doesn’t, the green enforcer (EPA) will rub it out.
Actually, it’s already happening. The New York Timesreported (Aug. 4):
Last week, New Jersey began a statewide program that offers residents a $30 rebate by recycling eligible refrigerators or freezers. Old refrigerators and freezers in Vermont also fetch $30, under a program begun last month.
But is the taxpayer subsidy necessary? According to the Times:
Utilities commonly estimate that homeowners can save up to $150 a year on their electricity bill by dumping their old refrigerator or freezer. Old refrigerators, made prior to 1990, also use three times as much electricity as new ones, the utilities say.
Industry attorneys are calling on EPA to include language in its final greenhouse gas (GHG) endangerment finding banning GHG tort claims filed in response to the finding, fearing the document may cause a flood of new common law damages claims that the attorneys say could impose significant transaction costs even if eventually dismissed.
But the industry call may face hurdles as the Obama administration has already signaled in federal rules and other policy documents its reluctance to preempt such litigation.
Perhaps the upside is that the rest of us will be able to sue Al Gore for breathing.
Texas Instruments smart-meter marketing director Mark Buccini told SmartGridToday that,
Legislation is driving replacement [of electricity meters]. Perfectly good mechanical meters are being replaced [with smart meters]… In the past, a mechanical meter wasn’t replaced until it wore out. That changes the opportunity for us…
Buccini estimated that 500 million meters will be replaced in the next decade at a cost of $750 million per year — that’s $15,000 per meter change.
That’s just the beginning. Buccini said that “adjacent markets” — i.e., in-home displays, programmable thermostats, direct response (DR) units, distributed generation and plug-in vehicle technology] almost doubles the market to $1.4 billion per year.
Smart meters and adjacent technology are little more than a way for the government to monitor your electricity use and then to ration electricity to you via your local utility. It is an expensive and needless insult to Americans.
The Obama administration — via the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) — issued an economic analysis of Waxman-Markey concluding that the bill will cause electricity prices to increase only slightly through 2020.
While we’re still reviewing the report, here are a couple things you ought to know about it:
The EIA report appears to show merely that if no true CO2 control is put in place, electricity prices won’t increase. But as soon as true CO2 control is implemented electricity prices could more than double.
The report is chock full of demonstrably faulty assumptions and misleading economics. Assumptions include that nuclear power and carbon capture and storage are easily and inexpensively implemented on a large scale. The misleading economics portion includes the notion that Congress can impose more than $6 trillion of annual costs on energy production and use, and energy users won’t notice.
The real loser here is the EIA — America’s source of energy data — which is squandering its reputation in order to advance President Obama’s agenda.
For insight into why greens oppose the cash-for-clunkers program — even though it would reduce tailpipe emissions — read this op-ed by Gwen Ottinger in today’s Washington Post.
Here’s an excerpt:
First, even when new cars and appliances are more efficient than the ones they replace, the act of replacing them entails environmental costs not accounted for in the stimulus programs. Building a new car, washing machine or refrigerator takes energy and resources: The manufacture of steel, aluminum and plastics are energy-intensive processes, and some of the materials used in durable goods, especially plastics, use non-renewable fossil fuels as feedstocks as well as energy sources. Disposing of old products, a step required by most incentive and rebate programs, also has environmental costs: It takes additional energy to shred and recycle metals; plastic components often cannot be recycled and end up as landfill cover; and the engine fluids, refrigerants and other chemicals essential to operating products end up as hazardous wastes.
Cash-for-clunkers, you see, just breeds new/more consumption — and consumption is evil.
Take home message: Stop consuming. Start Decomposing.
For insight into why greens oppose the cash-for-clunkers program — even though it would reduce tailpipe emissions — read this op-ed by Gwen Ottinger in today’s Washington Post.
Here’s an excerpt:
First, even when new cars and appliances are more efficient than the ones they replace, the act of replacing them entails environmental costs not accounted for in the stimulus programs. Building a new car, washing machine or refrigerator takes energy and resources: The manufacture of steel, aluminum and plastics are energy-intensive processes, and some of the materials used in durable goods, especially plastics, use non-renewable fossil fuels as feedstocks as well as energy sources. Disposing of old products, a step required by most incentive and rebate programs, also has environmental costs: It takes additional energy to shred and recycle metals; plastic components often cannot be recycled and end up as landfill cover; and the engine fluids, refrigerants and other chemicals essential to operating products end up as hazardous wastes.
Cash-for-clunkers, you see, just breeds new/more consumption — and consumption is evil.
Take home message: Stop consuming. Start Decomposing.
Some people who are serious about wanting to reduce their “carbon footprint” on the Earth have one choice available to them that may yield a large long-term benefit – have one less child.
And why should we have fewer children?
The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S. – along with all of its descendants – is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.
“In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime,” said Paul Murtaugh, an OSU professor of statistics. “Those are important issues and it’s essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources.”
In this debate, very little attention has been given to the overwhelming importance of reproductive choice, Murtaugh said. When an individual produces a child – and that child potentially produces more descendants in the future – the effect on the environment can be many times the impact produced by a person during their lifetime.
Under current conditions in the U.S., for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.
Moving past the junk science-fueled notion of the “carbon footprint” and the discredited population-growth and resource-scarcity fearmongering of the likes of Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich, Western birth rates are already falling precipitously — the U.S. replacement rate is barely at break-even. Having fewer children is tantamount to cultural suicide. Just who would we be saving the planet and its resources for?
