The EPA's Planned Destruction of the U.S. Economy

 

By Alan Caruba

If there was no other reason to defeat President Obama in November, it would be the planned destruction of what is left of the U.S. economy by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2012” the minority staff (Republican) of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has issued a chilling review of a massive rise in the costs of living for all Americans, massive layoffs in all sectors of the economy, and the destruction of the nation’s energy and manufacturing sectors.

The report provides a nightmarish look at the regulations that EPA plans to initiate, having put them under cover prior to Election Day in order to hide President Obama’s agenda of attacking the energy sector and businesses large and small.

Here’s a list of the regulations:

Greenhouse gas regulation via the Clean Air Act

An Ozone rule

Hydraulic Fracturing

Florida’s Numeric Nutrient Criteria

EPA’s water guidance under the Clean Water Act

Stormwater regulation

Tier II Gas regulations

Boiler MACT rule

Cement MACT rule

316(b) Cooling Tower rule

Coal ash

Farm dust regulation

Spill prevention control and Countermeasure rule

These proposed regulations in aggregate, if enacted—that is to say if not stopped by congressional action based on Republican control of both the House and Senate—would prove disastrous, starting in 2013.

For example, the utterly bogus greenhouse gas regulations are based on the debunked global warming theory that says too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is causing the Earth to heat when, in fact, the Earth has been cooling since 1998 and there is zero evidence that CO2 has any impact on the temperature of the planet.

The greenhouse gas regulations would, the report estimates, “cost more than $300 to $400 billion a year, and significantly raise the price of gas at the pump and energy in the home. It’s not just coal plants that will be affected: Under the Clean Air Act, churches, schools, restaurants, hospitals and farms will eventually be regulated.”

If you love poverty, you will love what the EPA intends to impose on the nation.

One astonishingly stupid aspect of greenhouse gas regulation is called the “cow tax” in which ranchers will be required to pay a cost-per-animal permitting fee. More than 37,000 farms and ranches would be subject to greenhouse gas permits at an average cost of $23,000 per permit annually. It would affect more than 90% of the livestock production in America and drive the cost of meat and pork out of sight.

As to regulating ozone, the EPA itself “estimated that its ozone standard would cost $90 billion a year, while other studies have projected that the rule would cost upwards of a trillion dollars and destroy 7.4 million jobs.” Ozone is created and destroyed naturally in the atmosphere by the sun. It is most noticeable over the poles where it has waxed and waned for billions of years. So-called ozone holes show up over active volcanoes. Apparently the EPA wants to regulate the sun and volcanoes.

The technology of hydraulic fracturing occurs well below the water levels and frees up access to natural gas and oil. Naturally, many agencies in the Obama administration are doing whatever they can to shut it down with costly permit and efforts to link it to water contamination. It holds the promise of driving down energy costs nationwide.

If President Obama is reelected, billions of dollars would be imposed on virtually every aspect of life in America, either directly or through the rise of the cost of everything. This reflects the Greens obsession with destroying the greatest economy the world has ever seen, our standards of living and the quality of life for every man, woman and child in America.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Great Ethanol Scam

By Alan Caruba

The rocketing costs of gasoline and the price of corn being paid worldwide are the result of U.S. government mandates requiring the inclusion of ethanol in the gasoline all Americans must use. The time has long since passed to eliminate ethanol from this primary fuel.

A recent report by ActionAid USA, “Fueling the Food Crisis: The Cost to Developing Countries of U.S. Corn Ethanol Expansion” is based on work by researchers at Tufts University. ActionAid USA is an anti-poverty group. The study found that the corn-importing countries of Central America and North Africa are at the highest risk from ethanol expansion—the requirement to include ethanol with gasoline.

“Strong policy should not be based on prayers for good weather, especially when the stakes are so high. From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the G20, it is time to recognize that current biofuel mandates are unsustainable,” said Kristin Sundell, a policy analyst for ActionAid USA.

The group is calling on G20 leaders who are meeting on World Food Day, October 16, to eliminate incentives that encourage unsustainable biofuels production.

The idea behind ethanol is that it reduces carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and, in doing so, it saves the Earth from global warming/climate change, but CO2 plays no role in climate change, and shows up well after any increase or decrease of temperatures. Ethanol is bad science. It is bad for the engines of cars that must use such a gasoline blend. It increases the cost of gasoline and all other corn-based products. It actually increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And it reduces the mileage a car can achieve with pure gasoline.

An authority on the U.S. oil industry is Sel Graham, the author of “Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High”. He is a man with more than fifty year’s experience, first as a petroleum reservoir engineer and later as an oil and gas attorney. He is also a graduate of West Point.

Here’s what Graham has to say about the current gas prices:

“Gasoline prices could be decreased instantly by President Obama if he wanted to do so. Republicans have not yet picked up on this issue.”

“Abolishing the ethanol mandate requiring ethanol to be blended with gasoline at the pump or waiving the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) would: (1) lower gasoline prices by millions of dollars; (2) result in billions of miles of free travel annually; (3) prevent millions of tons of additional carbon dioxide from being emitted into the air; and (4) improve national security and the energy picture since it is impossible for US ethanol to ever replace foreign oil imports.”

“The following is reference data for skeptics. Gasoline prices can be lowered instantly by either abolishing the ethanol mandate which requires that ethanol be blended with gasoline at the pump or waiving the RFS. This would eliminate the millions of dollars in waivers which refineries are required to purchase because there is no cellulosic ethanol production, thereby decreasing the price of gasoline."

"The 2012 RFS for cellulosic ethanol is 8.65 million gallons. Cellulosic ethanol production through August 2012 has been only 20,069 gallons, a shortage of 8.63 million gallons requiring $0.78 per gallon waivers.”

An essential truth that few Americans are aware of is that“The price of U.S. oil is always lower than the price of foreign oil. Last year, U.S. oil averaged $95.73 per barrel, $7.25 cheaper than foreign oil imports at $102.98 per barrel. If U.S. oil replaced the 3,261 million barrels of foreign oil imports, it would be a savings to Americans of $23.6 billion annually.”

Given the enormous oil reserves in America, both domestic and offshore, there is no reason why they should not be extracted, but the environmental movement in combination with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior and Energy Departments, has restricted access to our own oil.

The ethanol mandates are not just robbing Americans at the gas pump, they are endangering the cost of food prices worldwide

Current government energy policies are a definition of insanity.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Oceans Are Neither Rising, Nor Turning to Acid

 

By Alan Caruba

When you consider how deeply in debt the nation is, you might think that scientists from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) would want to avoid wasting taxpayer dollars studying “ocean acidification in the Arctic and what this means for the future survival of marine and terrestrial organisms.” You would be wrong.

Like so many government agencies that were originally established for legitimate reasons, the USGS has been corrupted to advance the greatest hoax of the modern era, global warming, aka climate change. A visit to its website shows that its major concerns these days include “climate and land use change”, “ecosystems”, along with “energy and minerals, and environmental health.”

My dictionary defines geology as “1. Scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of the earth. 2. Structure of a specific region of the earth’s surface.” It says nothing about “environmental health” or “ecosystems.” One might also expect the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to be more interested in the alleged ocean acidification than the USGS geologists.

We have arrived at the sad and dangerous point in our history when our government’s agencies are just as likely to be used to advance the global warming./climate change hoax as to be engaged in the original and actual functions for which they were established.

It gets worse. There is no scientific justification for a bunch of geologists to be studying ocean acidification. According to USGS Director, Marcia McNutt, “Ocean acidification is a particularly vexing problem associated with the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels because it interferes with the ability of marine organisms to build hard shells of calcium carbonate.” Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Why is the USGS worried about “marine organisms”? If the object of geology is to study the structures of the earth’s surface, why are they collecting samples of Arctic water to study the utterly bogus claim that marine creatures are endangered?

The answer lies in aspects of the biggest collection of lies and predictions about the earth, the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations vehicle for the dissemination of the global warming/climate change hoax.

In its Forth Assessment Report (AR4) it pushed the lie that the oceans were rising and would swamp everything by 2100. The rate of sea rise since AR4 has actually decreased by about 25%. Ocean acidification is just another one of its lies.

A team of scientists recently released a report debunking the IPCC prediction that there would be a massive die-off of ocean plankton due to ocean acidification. That's not happening either.

As for acidification, the alleged increase in the pH factor—the measurement of the amount of hydrogen ion concentration in a solution—has long since been debunked because for at least the last 600 million years, if it were true it would have dissolved the ocean’s limestone deposits, none of which have been dissolved through all of that time.

In fact, as Cliff Ollier, an emeritus professor of geology, has noted, “Marine life flourishes where CO2 is abundant. Over geological time enormous amounts of CO2 have been sequestered by living things, so that today there is far more CO2 in limestone than in the atmosphere or ocean. This sequestration of CO2 by living things is far more important than trivial additions to the atmosphere caused by human activity.”

The USGS is not telling the truth about CO2, especially when it asserts that “mining and burning of coal, the mining and smelting of metal ores, and the use of nitrogen fertilizer are the major causes of chemical oxidation processes that generate acid in the Earth-surface environment.” It is no accident that these alleged “causes” all have to do with the provision of energy, products that use metals in their construction, and crop yields on which humans and livestock depend for food.

The USGS forgot to include the tons of CO2 that are exhaled daily by the seven billion humans on earth.

Add ocean acidification and falsely asserted rapid rise of sea levels to the list of things the IPCC, the USGS, and NOAA, among others, are lying about.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

EPA's "Science" Evokes Nazi Death Camp Memories

 

By Alan Caruba

The “EPA has admitted to a federal court that it asks human guinea pigs to sacrifice their lives for regulatory purposes—and $12 per hour.” That was a recent news item reported by JunkScience.com’s founder, Steve Milloy.

“EPA has responded to our emergency motion for a temporary restraining order against its ongoing human experiment (called ‘Captain’) involving the air pollutant” known as “fine particles.”

In a declaration to the court by an EPA clinical research studies coordinator he said that participants were provided with information about them, noting that “if you are a person that for example lives in a large city like Los Angeles or New York” where on a hot summer day one can often see a haze in the air “and you have an underlying unknown health condition, or, you may be older in age, chances are you could end up in the emergency room later on that night, wondering what’s wrong, possibly having cardiac changes that could lead to a heart attack; there is the possibility you may die from this…”

“You may die from this.” That did not, however, deter the EPA from conducting the study in which participants were exposed to such particles.

Milloy points out that “Every law, regulation and code developed since World War II strictly prohibits human sacrifice (i.e., significant injury or death) for no health benefit to the patient” and the $12 per hour payment is not deemed a benefit. “Moreover,” said Milloy, “EPA has repeatedly stated in numerous regulatory documents and public statements that there is no safe level of exposure to particulate matter”, and that any exposure can kill within hours or days.

A Wall Street Journal article on June 16th and titled “EPA Seeks Tighter Standard on Soot” reported that “The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed tighter national standards for soot pollution” deeming it “the latest chapter in a long-running battle between the Obama administration and industry over environmental restrictions.”

“Particulate matter forms in the atmosphere as a result of smokestack and tailgate emissions” and the EPA wants to set a new level of 12 to 13 micrograms per cubic meter.” The current standard is 15 micrograms. We are talking about things so small it would take an electron microscope to measure them. The notion of protecting people about anything at this level is absurd. Next thing to go would be children’s sandboxes.

In practical terms, tightening the standards would make it even more difficult for industrial facilities to get permits to operate. Milloy warns that “The EPA is a government horror story that is responsible for trillions of dollars in lost economic growth, trampled rights and liberties and perverted science.”

There is, however, something far more ominous about the EPA’s particulate study.

In an AmericanThinker.com article, Mark Musser, the author of “Nazi Oaks”, a book about the environmental zealotry of the leaders of the Nazi regime, connected the sweeping Nazi environmental legislation that preceded the racially charged anti-Semitic Nuremburg Laws that led ultimately to “the final solution”; the deliberate murder of millions of Europe’s Jews and millions, too, deemed enemies of the state.

Referencing Milloy’s exposure of the EPA human experimentation in which diesel fumes were piped from a running truck mixed with air into the lungs of participants. In his commentary Musser noted that “They even had a gas chamber set up to accommodate the environmental research project that shockingly recalls the death camps of Poland.”

“The whiff of the Jewish holocaust is thus unmistakable,” notes Musser. “When the Nazis found out how difficult it was in practice to shoot so many Jews on the Eastern Front at the outset of the war, they switched to gassing them in mass at death camps with engine fumes. Such gassing methods became infamous at Treblinka where almost one million Jews were killed.”

The commandant of Auschwitz, another death camp, was Rudolf Hoess. He belonged to the SS whom Musser describes as “the greenest faction of the Nazi Party. It was run by Heinrich Himmler who was an animal lover, vegetarian, and organic farm enthusiast” and Musser says it was the environmentalism that was “at the heart of the holocaust at death camps like Treblinka.”

There is a very thin line between the EPA’s particulate experiments and the death factories of Treblinka and Auschwitz, and it is more than just a hint of the kind of thinking at the EPA that would condone it.

Environmentalism is synonymous with a hatred of humanity, an oft-stated wish that millions must die to protect the Earth.

© Alan Caruba