Greens: Replace dams with wind, gas

The New York Times reports to day that the Sierra Club wants to raze dams in the Northwest and replace them with

… wind turbines in more places, to help balance power generation by ensuring that some are always in an area where the wind is blowing, or relying more on the Northwest’s natural gas plants in combination with energy-saving measures.

This is, of course, another half-baked, hare-brained idea designed more to cause energy chaos and shortages than to provide “clean energy” and help the “endangered salmon.”

The erratic nature of wind power cannot be remedied by more windmills in more places because… well… wind power is erratic. Just because the wind isn’t blowing here doesn’t mean it’s blowing there. Then there are the problems of all those expensive transmission lines that would need to be installed for the extra windmills, the eyesore nature of windmills, their large footprint, the migratory bird-Cuisinart controversy, additional taxpayer subsidies and more.

And what’s this, the Sierra Club wants to replace low greenhouse gas emitting hydropower with fossil fuels? Are they serious? What about the planetary emergency? Is saving salmon more important than saving the world from the dreaded global warming? Didn’t Kofi Oil-for-Food Annan just say that global warming kills 300,000 people every year? And WWAGS?

Energy-saving measures? Now we get to the nut-cutting, as Lyndon Johnson used to say. “Energy-saving” is green-speak for rationing — and isn’t that what the greens really want?

San Francisco: The recycling police state

San Franciscans will soon be fined unless they dispose of trash and recycle precisely according to the scheme below:

SFTRASH

San Francisco’s idea has some merit — but we recommend the following improvements to the scheme:

SFTRASH1

Click here for the San Francisco Chronicle report.

Green lawsuit in California seen as warm-up for future climate litigation

Carbon Control News reports that two “environmental justice” groups (Communities for a Better Environment and California Communities Against Toxics) sued the state of California on June 10 alleging the state’s climate change program violates its 2006 global warming law. [Click here for the summary].

Carbon Control News rightly pointed out that the lawsuit

… could foreshadow similar legal challenges facing a federal GHG cap-and-trade program, because the California groups, who question the effectiveness of emissions trading, are also opposed to the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation.

The lesson here — especially for USCAP’s business members — is that while businesses may feel like they can deal with seemingly “mainstream” green groups (like USCAP’s Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council) in crafting a survivable climate bill, in the end the more extreme green groups will come along and try to scuttle the deal in favor of more extreme regulation.

Buffet: Waxman-Markey a consumer rip-off

Carbon Control News reports that in a June 9 hearing before the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee,

[David Sokol, the chairman of Warren Buffet’s utility subsidiary MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, said] utilities, and by extension consumers, will be charged twice under the trading provisions of the legislation, “first to pay for emission allowances, which will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one ounce, and then for the construction of new low- and zero-carbon power plants and other actions that will actually do the job of reducing these emissions… This bill will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and we think it is wrong to saddle customers with these unnecessary and duplicative costs that provide them with absolutely no benefits.”

Brookings: Waxman-Markey a $9 trillion tax!

The Waxman-Markey climate bill amounts to a $9 trillion tax that will reduce personal consumption by up to $2 trillion by mid-century, according to an analysis presented yesterday by the left-leaning Brookings Institution.

No effort was made to estimate the benefits of Waxman-Markey, apparently because of the difficulty of such an estimation, according to a report in Carbon Control News.

To summarize: We know Waxman-Markey will hurt taxpayers, consumers and the economy, and it’s too difficult to determine whether the bill will provide any benefits — so let’s hurry up and enact the Mother of All Taxes?

Click here for Brookings’ “Fact Sheet.”

Click here for Brookings’ Powerpoint presentation.

UN green chief: Ban plastic bags

UN environmental chief Achim Steiner said yesterday that,

“Single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere.”

The notion that plastic bags pose some special hazard to marine life, however is a myth. As reported in the Times (UK) on March 8, 2008,

Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds…

Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals…

Double Whopper w/ Guts: Burger King franchisee defies alarmists, franchisor

Please patronize the 40 Burger Kings in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi owned by Mirabile Investment Corporation. Here’s why…

Click here for the story….

Call/write Burger King in support of the Mirabile Investment Corporation’s valiant effort to fight global warming baloney!

Burger King Holdings, Inc.
5505 Blue Lagoon Drive
Miami, FL 33126
Main number:(305) 378–3000
Consumer relations: (305) 378-3535

Poor countries: Tax international air travel for global welfare fund

From The Guardian,

Britain and other rich countries will be asked to accept a compulsory levy on international flight tickets and shipping fuel to raise billions of dollars to help the world’s poorest countries adapt to combat climate change.

The suggestions come at the start of the second week in the latest round of UN climate talks in Bonn, where 192 countries are starting to negotiate a global agreement to limit and then reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The issue of funding for adaptation is critical to success but the hardest to agree.

The aviation levy, which is expected to increase the price of long-haul fares by less than 1%, would raise $10bn (£6.25bn) a year, it is said.

Poor countries are just cutting their own throats by siding with the greens who, if they had their way, would simply ban international air travel — except, of course, for the green elites like Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Richard Branson, the Google creeps, etc.

Moreover, if poor countries want to be richer, in addition to political reform, they should kick the anti-development, people-hating greens out of their countries, as Paul Driessen explains in his book Eco-imperialism: Green Power, Black Death.

Mass transit not so green

From AFP:

You worry a lot about the environment and do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint — the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change.

So you always prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, faithful to the belief that this inflicts less harm to the planet.

Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study…

Click here for the full article…

Obama’s new coal scare: U.S. not the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of coal

A new report from the Obama administration’s Department of Energy says we may no longer be the “Saudi Arabia of coal,” according to the Wall Street Journal, because we may only have 120, rather than 240 years years of economically accessible reserves.

I promise to worry about what people will do for energy in 120 years right after I finish worrying about free enterprise and capitalism surviving the Obama administration.

Greens vs. Al Gore?

The greens are using their chokehold on water supplies to thwart water-dependent solar projects.

This may upset Al Gore. His venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, has invested millions of dollars in the solar power firm, Ausra, which uses the water-dependent solar technology.

It’s hard to pick sides on this one. Maybe the Earth can just open up and swallow both of them.