ICECAP

Jun 18, 2012

The War On Energy And A Second Term

By Art Horn

It is strange for me to see the president of the United States actually working against making this nation stronger. I must confess I’ve never seen anything like it. It feels different and it is different. Ever since he took office, President Obama has overtly and covertly worked fastidiously to close electric generating facilities that use coal. The rhetoric in his speeches about his belief in man made global warming and his commitment to funding so called “renewable energy” projects is disconcerting. Of course it’s his operatives at the EPA that are the actual troops on the ground carrying out the mission. If he were somehow re-elected to a second term, the unreported and unprecedented war on fossil fuels will continue unabated.

Recently the New Yorker magazine published a story titled “The Second Term” by Ryan Lizza. The story speculates about what the major priorities of the current president would be if returned to the White House. Lizza says “Obama has an ambitious second-term agenda, which at least in broad ways, his campaign is beginning to highlight. The President has said that the most important policy he could address in his second term is climate change, one of the few issues he thinks could fundamentally improve the world decades from now.” One thing is for sure, President Obama, if re-elected will not change his horse in mid-stream. He has been and continues to be committed to taxing carbon dioxide one way or another. Cap and Trade failed but least we forget, shortly after that defeat he said “Cap-and-Trade was just one way of skinning the cat, it was not the only way.” You can bet the ranch that any cat inside our borders will be scurrying for their lives if he is re-elected.

On January the 1st 2013 the Bush Era Tax Cuts will come to an end. Because of this the size of the federal government will be reduced and taxes will increase. It is speculated that this could have a major negative impact on the sputtering and fragile economy. Speaking from Air Force One on June the 6th 2012 president Obama insisted that he will not extend the Bush Era tax cuts for wealthy Americans. The president forgot to mention that all Americans will see their taxes increase on January 1st, not just those earning over $250,000 a year.

So what will the President do if he is re-elected and faced with this situation? My guess is that he will continue the path he has pursued all along. He will continue his attack on the fossil fuel industry. Using fear of global warming as his weapon, he will extract capital from the economy with a so called “carbon tax.” However, it will not be a tax on carbon. The term “carbon tax” is a smoke screen. It will actually be a tax on every industry and every entity that produces carbon dioxide gas. It will be Cap-and-Trade re-formulated, re-constituted and re-marketed in the name of saving the economy and having the double benefit of saving the world from global warming, excuse me, climate change! The president believes he has that kind of power. Remember on the night he was nominated he said “Let it be known that this was the day the oceans stopped rising and the planet began to heal.”

I wonder if the President knows that carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless gas that makes up a tiny 0.038% of the atmosphere and is beneficial and essential to all living things. The re-formulating of Cap and Trade into a carbon tax makes it sound like he is actually trying to do something about carbon. Using the word carbon intentionally conjures up images of black soot and dirty miners and filthy air. The use of the term carbon, when actually referring to carbon dioxide, has been a deliberate attempt by the media and the administration to convince the scientifically illiterate people in their audience that carbon dioxide gas is dirty and is a pollutant. Using the word carbon as a substitute for carbon dioxide gas is willfully and knowingly deceptive.

The story in the New Yorker speculates that a new carbon tax might not be so far fetched. The article says “Early discussions on Capital Hill suggest that, in a wide-ranging deal, a carbon tax (sic) might be part of a grand bargain to settle Taxmageddon.” Taxmageddon is the term used by some to describe the negative impacts of the ending of the Bush Era tax cuts in early January 2013.

The Obama administrations war on carbon dioxide and those that produce it is a multifaceted battle front. Piloted by Lisa Jackson, the EPA will continue to be the lead tank rumbling over industries that get in the way, squashing them out of existence with crushing regulations. If Obama is re-elected this massive, unchecked government juggernaut will be fully armed to destroy one of our most abundant resources. Lisa Jackson’s has focused the barrel of the EPA cannon squarely on coal. On April 1st 2010 Jackson’s EPA issued “Interim Guidance on Clean Water Act (CWA) Procedures for Appalachian Surface Mines.” There was no warning this was coming and no period for public comment as is traditionally the case.

Measuring the electrical conductivity of water in streams is an indirect measure of the total dissolved solids (TDS) in the stream. The conductivity is measured in micro-siemens per centimeter. Drinking water typically has a conductivity level of 500 to 800 micro-siemens per centimeter. In the EPA’s April 1st 2010 issuance of “guidance on water quality requirements for coal mines in Appalachia” the standard set for streams was 300 to 500 micro-siemens. This is a level below that of drinking water and is virtually unattainable in Appalachia. On July 21st 2011 the EPA put out its “final guidance on issuance of the CWA and lowered the conductivity standard to no more than 300 micro-siemens in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.”

EPA knew from the beginning that these levels are unattainable by the coal industry. Any activity upstream such as salting of roads in winter, highway construction, agricultural activities or a storm can cause increased in conductivity levels unrelated to mining. The intent of the EPA is clearly to shut down the permitting of coal mining operations by using unrealistic water standards under the Clean Water Act.

If President Obama is re-elected this obstructive standard, now being used in Appalachia, could be spread across the nation with devastating effects on the coal industry, its employees and ultimately the United States economy and its people. If they are successful in shutting down coal with this regulatory firepower they would be free to turn the cannon around and target their next enemy, natural gas.

Jun 16, 2012

Money corrupts peer-review process

Bob Carter, Special to Financial Post

Government cash influences the process

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has referred to its work as the gold standard, based on its oft-made claim that it only surveys work published in peer-reviewed professional research papers.

Interestingly, Albert Einstein’s famous 1905 paper on relativity was not peer-reviewed. It is therefore quite clear that peer-review is not a precondition for excellent, indeed epoch-making, scientific research.

So what is a peer-reviewed (also termed refereed) research paper?

Peer-review is a technique of quality control for scientific papers that emerged slowly through the 20th century, only achieving a dominant influence in science after the Second World War. The process works like this. A potential scientific author conducts research, writes a paper on his or her results and submits the paper to a professional journal that represents the specialist field of science in question.

The editor of the journal then scan-reads the paper. Based upon his knowledge of the contents of the paper, and of the activities of other scientists in the same research field, the editor selects (usually) two persons, termed referees, to whom he sends the draft manuscript of the paper for review.

Referees, who are unpaid, differ in the amount of time and effort that they devote to their task of review. At one extreme a referee will criticize and correct the writing of a paper in detail, including making comments on the scientific content; at the other extreme, a referee may merely skim-read a paper, ignoring obvious mistakes in writing style or grammar, and make some general comments to the editor about the scientific accuracy, or otherwise, of the draft paper.

Neither type of referee, nor those who lie between, pretend to check either the original data or the detailed statistical calculations (or, today, complex computer modelling) that often form the kernel of a piece of modern scientific research.

Each referee makes a recommendation to the editor as to whether the paper should be published (usually with corrections) or rejected, the editor making the final decision regarding publication based on this advice.

In essence, then, peer-review is a technique of editorial quality control. That a scientific paper has been peer-reviewed is absolutely no guarantee that the science it portrays is correct. Indeed, it is the very nature of scientific research that nearly all scientific papers require later emendation, or reinterpretation, in the light of new discoveries or understanding.

Scientific knowledge, then, is always in a state of flux. Much though bureaucrats and politicians may dislike the thought, there is simply no such thing as “settled science,” peer-reviewed or otherwise During the latter part of the 20th century, Western governments started channelling large amounts of research money into favoured scientific fields, prime among them global-warming research. This money has a corrupting influence, not least on the peer-review process.

Many scientific journals, including prestigious internationally acclaimed ones, have now become captured by insider groups of leading researchers in particular fields. Researchers who act as editors of journals then select referees from within a closed circle of scientists who work in the same field and share similar views.

The Climategate email leak in 2009 revealed for all to see that this cancerous process is at an advanced stage of development in climate science. A worldwide network of leading climate researchers were revealed to be actively influencing editors and referees to approve for publication only research that supported the IPCC’s alarmist view of global warming, and to prevent the publication of alternative or opposing views.

Backed by this malfeasant system, leading researchers who support the IPCC’s red-hot view of climate change endlessly promulgate their alarmist recommendations as “based only upon peer-reviewed research papers,” as if this were some guarantee of quality or accuracy.

Peer-review, of course, guarantees neither. What matters is not whether a scientific idea or article has been peer-reviewed but whether the science described is right, i.e. accords with empirical evidence.

So what about the much-trumpeted, claimed “gold standard"of strict use of peer review papers by the IPCC? Well, this has been completely exposed by Canadian investigative journalist Donna Laframboise, who showed that an amazing 30% of the articles cited in the definitive Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC were from non-peer-reviewed sources, including such writings as student theses and environmental lobbyist reports.

Therefore, the repetition of the “we-only-use-peer-reviewed-information” mantra that is so favoured by lobbying and government-captive scientific organizations signals not just scientific immaturity but also a lack of confidence, or ability, to assess the scientific arguments about global warming on their own merits and against the empirical evidence.

Financial Post
Bob Carter is a palaeoclimatologist at James Cook University in Australia and Chief Science Advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition.

Go to page 38 for Wegman’s discussion on peer review of Mann’s papers. The alarmists have tried to discredit the report and have tried to trash Wegman. Mann never refers to it, preferring to say that the competing NAS report “exonerated” him completely. True the fix was in to get Mann out of the hole but even this report couldn’t find anything to defend in Mann’s work, except to say that Mann was probably right to say that the present global temperatures were greater than those assumed over the preceding 400 years. Convenient, since the little ice age occurred during that time.

Jun 13, 2012

Report: UN to consider $1,300 green tax on US families and industry - Obama administration supports

Beltway Confidential

Diplomats at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Conference in Rio de Janeiro next week will consider proposals that would levy taxes on American families and energy industries in order to support international efforts to combat global warming, according to a draft agenda for the conference.

“We recognize that subsidies for non-renewable energy development should be eliminated and replaced with a global tax on the production of energy from non-renewable energy sources,” the UN draft agenda, amended by non-governmental organizations at the invitation of the UN, says. “The income of this tax should be allocated to renewable energy development.” The draft agenda was obtained by the Center for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a group skeptical of the UN’s position on global warming.

President Obama has adopted similar policy positions in his discussions of energy and tax policy over recent months. “I am writing to urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Obama said in an April 26 letter to top-ranking members of the House and Senate.

Another proposal would spread the cost of investing in other countries throughout society. “We call for the fulfilment of all official development assistance commitments, including the commitments by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product for official development assistance to developing countries by 2015,” the draft says. The proposal would provide “a target of .015 to .020 percent of gross national product for official development assistance to least developed countries.” That plan would cost $1,325 for an American family of four, according to CFACT.

“Rio+20 is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make real progress towards the sustainable economy of the future,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said at a press conference last week."We aspire to nothing less than a global movement for generational change.” The draft agenda notes that “views represented in this document do not necessarily represent the views of the Secretariat, who only aggregated the submissions.”

CFACT reported in December that negotiators at the UN conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, discussed the future implementation of “a new tax on every foreign currency transaction in the world,” that would disproportionately fall on the United States because “transactions within the Eurozone won’t have to pay this new tax.”

This tax would help pay for the Green Climate Fund, “which will eventually gather and disburse finance amounting to $100bn (£64bn) per year to help poor countries develop cleanly and adapt to climate impacts,” according to the BBC.

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Battle against Obama’s war on coal
By Phil Kerpen

As I wrote here on Fox News Opinion, the states in the Eastern region are headed for a significant spike in electricity prices thanks to Obama’s disastrous regulations, foremost among them Utility MACT. The Midwest, even more heavily reliant on coal-fired power plants, will be hit even harder. A reprieve could come in the form of Senator Jim Inhofe’s S.J. Res 37, which would overturn Obama’s most expensive anti-coal regulations.

Indeed, with the vote on the Inhofe Resolution coming any day, Democrats are deeply concerned that a centerpiece of President Obama’s regulatory War on Coal is about to go down in flames. The only apparent way Democrats can prevent that outcome is by having multiple vulnerable in-cycle Democrats join Obama’s War on Coal, against their own political interests.

The only Senate Republican who has publicly sided with Obama in support of the disastrous Utility MACT regulation that would cripple coal-fired power plants and therefore imperil our fragile economic recovery is Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, and he has been exposed to his constituents in a hard-hitting TV ad being run by my group, American Commitment.

The outcome of the vote, which is not subject to filibuster, is on a razor’s edge. But Senator Alexander, who is under the mistaken impression that this economically devastating regulation will make his mountain retreat slightly more picturesque, refuses to back down.

Instead, according to sources on Capitol Hill, Alexander is poised to make a desperate attempt to get himself off the hook politically, thwart Inhofe’s resolution and give Obama’s War on Coal a green light.

The ploy he plans to use is a phony amendment, reportedly being offered with Arkansas’s Mark Pryor that would extend the timeline for the Utility MACT rule from four years to six.

The amendment would not and could not pass the Senate, because it will surely be filibustered by California Democrat Barbara Boxer.

Inhofe’s resolution needs 50 votes and has a good chance of getting there; the phony Alexander amendment will need 60 and almost certainly be dead-on-arrival. Even if by some miracle it could pass, the Alexander amendment would accomplish little - delaying a disastrous rule is hardly a victory, and most plants will close rather than attempt expensive retrofits no matter how many years they are given.

After West Virginia, no state has been hit harder by Obama’s War on Coal than Kentucky. It’s time for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to enforce some party discipline and explain to Alexander that this vote and this issue are far too important economically for phony political amendments and games. Does he really want to pave the way for Obama to accomplish his goal of making electric prices “necessarily skyrocket” and make it so that “you can build a coal plant...but it will bankrupt you”?

If Alexander does offer the amendment, neither he nor anyone who votes for it should be let off the hook. Constituents should make clear that, regardless of any sham amendments that might be offered, senators will be held accountable for how they vote on the only real vehicle that can put the brakes on the War on Coal: the Inhofe Resolution.