Santa Baby, Bring Me Coal

Writes Katie Kieffer in TownHall.com

I want a coal plant for Christmas, and not because I’m a naughty girl. I want lots of coal so I can power up the high-tech toys Santa is bringing me, including an electronic robot maid that cooks and cleans, a 32-meter-wide TV and a modern, coal-fired steam locomotive that allows me to bypass the TSA Grope Squad when I travel cross-country.
OK, so Santa probably won’t be sending a full-size, coal-fired train down my chimney. But, like many of you, I may be getting small electronics of Christmas (or Hanukkah). As millions of us ring in the New Year by adding new gadgets to the power grid, we need to make sure we have ample electricity to fire up our cutting-edge iPads, TVs, sound systems and smartphones. Americans get almost half of their electricity from coal. I think coal is a wonderful source of energy and we need to continue producing it.
This month, the EPA is expected to announce a set of new smog regulations that will clamp down on power companies. “Not so fast,” cautions the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NAERC)—a panel of volunteer industry experts that the government designates to ensure and improve reliability in the electric power grid.

Katie says that President Obama maintains that Americans can wean themselves from coal and oil. Environmental activists are "fighting hard for new regulations that will quickly force the coal industry out of business."

New rules from the EPA  that require coal plants to dramatically reduce emissions are causing job losses, coal plants shutting down and the loss of billions of dollars.

NAERC warns that the EPA’s strict regulations will cause up to 600 large power plants across the country to shut down for months while they adopt the new rules and will force numerous older plants to shut down indefinitely because they won’t be able to afford compliance. The result will be power blackouts across the country plus additional power grid instability in drought-prone areas like Texas due to new EPA cooling water rules.

So, the government’s own designated industry experts are warning us that the EPA’s smog rules will have big costs: Soaring energy prices, frequent blackouts and job loss. And the EPA can hardly cite the “public health dangers” of greenhouse gases with a straight face when internal government probes reveal that the EPA has altered, withheld and distorted its scientific findings in order to sell the notion that greenhouse gas emissions harm humans.

The EPA has no alternate plan for the replacement of coal. Like here in Australia the technology has got cleaner over the years.

The wealthier a country becomes, the cleaner it becomes. This month, the Global Carbon Project released a study showing that developing countries like India and China account for the majority (57 percent) of global greenhouse emissions.

Only rich economies can afford to develop the latest clean technology. Before we can afford the costs associated with developing the supposedly cleaner technology behind solar and wind, we need to revive our rapidly deteriorating economy. And by “revive,” I mean continue developing fuels like coal that will prevent power blackouts, create jobs and lower the cost of energy. Minimal smog is a small price to pay for a safe and reliable power grid and a healthy, growing economy

Santa baby, there's one thing I really do need, the deed, to a coal mine, Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.

Katie Kieffer is a conservative multimedia personality, writer and public speaker who runs KatieKieffer.com.

International Climate Science Coalition Rejects Durban Agreement to set New Greenhouse Gas Emission Targets

ICSC MEDIA RELEASE ON DURBAN CLIMATE CONFERENCE AGREEMENTS
Attention: News Editors, Political, Science and Environment Reporters

International Climate Science Coalition Rejects Durban Agreement to set New Greenhouse Gas Emission Targets

 

No “Climate Debt” is owed to developing countries

 

Ottawa, Canada, December 11, 2011: “Developed nations are not guilty of causing the climate change that developing nations claim they are suffering,” said Tom Harris, executive director of ICSC which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Climate changes all the time—both warming and cooling—due to natural causes, and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic circumstances, developed nations still have a moral obligation to devote a proportion of their foreign aid to helping the world’s most vulnerable people adapt to natural climate events.”

ICSC chief science advisor, Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, and author of the best selling book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus” says, “Science has yet to provide unambiguous evidence that problematic, or even measurable, human-caused global warming is occurring. Consequently, any agreements—Durban, Cancun, Copenhagen or Kyoto—to reduce humanity’s greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions are utterly futile. Governments need to recognize that the really dangerous climate hazards are natural events and change, and to prepare more fully to adapt to them when they occur.”

New Zealand-based Terry Dunleavy, ICSC founding chairman and strategic advisor, expands on this point: “The UN’s nonsensical attempts to ‘stop climate change’ have diverted world attention, and hundreds of billions of dollars, away from helping those already being hurt by natural climate variation and weather-related events. The health and wellbeing of people suffering today is infinitely more important than the remote possibility that our GHG emissions might threaten those yet to be born.”
"We urge citizens from across the political spectrum to take a more mature perspective, one that is based on real science, engineering and economics, not political correctness,” asserts ICSC energy issues advisor, Bryan Leyland of Auckland, New Zealand. “Whether you are socialist or capitalist, industrialist or environmentalist, no one wants to pour money down the drain. Yet, that is exactly what is happening as a result of the global warming scare. Expensive and ineffective alternative energy projects such as wind turbines and solar cells are receiving massive government support, in the belief that they will reduce GHG emissions which are wrongly blamed as a cause of dangerous global warming. Meanwhile, the conventional power sources that we rely on for our very survival, let alone the economic progress we need to create a better world, are deliberately starved of support. This is a very dangerous situation.”

ICSC science advisor Professor Ole Humlum, of the Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, explains, "Today’s climate debate is essentially about the relative influence of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO₂) versus natural climate variations. In my mind, there is no doubt that the data available clearly show that the natural variations are the dominant of these two factors, including during the last few years. The net temperature effect of our CO₂ emissions appears to be insignificant.”

Mr. Harris concluded: “As is well demonstrated by the Nongovernmental International Climate Panel on Climate Change [www.nipccreport.org], warming alarmism is a not based on a correct interpretation of the science. The climate scare has largely been fuelled by computer-generated misrepresentations that bear little relationship to modern climate or to its observed history.”
As nearly all independent observers have now concluded, a new approach is needed to address climate change. The best (indeed, self-evident) Plan B is that nations should prepare for and adapt to the onset of damaging climate-related events and change as and when they occur.

Cartoons by Josh