Julie Cart in the LA Times

Federal authorities intend to remove endangered species protections for all gray wolves in the Lower 48 states, carving out an a exception for a small pocket of about 75 Mexican wolves in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico, according to a draft document obtained by The Times.

The sweeping rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would eliminate protection for wolves 18 years after the government reestablished the predators in the West, where they had been hunted to extinction. Their reintroduction was a success, with the population growing to the thousands.

Ah, the word extinction just rolls off the lips/keyboard with no thought to its meaning.

UPDATE: The author of the story emailed to say they were extinct in the lower 48.

Government run amok.

A controversial new tax for the amount of rain that falls on homes has been imposed by an environmentally-friendly governor.

The ‘storm management fee’ will be enforced in the US state of Maryland after a decree from democrat leader Martin O’Malley.

It was passed by the state legislature last year to raise revenue to comply with an order from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean-up the Chesapeake Bay estuary, according to the MarylandReporter.com

However, critics say the fees impose a financial burden on Marylanders while the state struggles to recover from recession.

They argue that it is unreasonable to expect cash-strapped citizens to pay these fees when they also have to pay more gas taxes, payroll taxes, and income taxes.

Former republican senator candidate Dan Bongino claimed the tax would be calculated ‘through satellite surveillance’.

He also criticised ‘out of touch political aristocrats in Maryland will do anything to diminish your economic liberty and starve your wallet while padding theirs’.

Fees will be calculated on the surface area of properties as the theory is that roofs, driveways and carparks create more potential for drainage problems and water contamination.

Councils are supposed to determine how much to charge per square foot, but the fee depends on the size of the building and surrounding paved surfaces.

Montgomery County democrat senator Richard Madaleno said the state could not avoid paying the expense because of deadline from the Environmental Protection Agency.

‘When I look at this amendment, I’m reminded of the saying, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later”, he said.

More here.

This video from Reason sets up the story of James Enstrom and his fight against UCLA.

David French, writes about the lastest in his legal fight at The Corner:

The first decision denied the core of the defendants’ motion to dismiss a case brought by Professor James Enstrom, a case I’ve written about before. Enstrom not only blew the whistle on junk science behind recent proposed California diesel emissions restrictions, he discovered the state’s lead “scientist” had purchased his degree from a fictitious “Thornhill University” and that many members of the state’s Scientific Review Panel had overstayed term limits by decades. While the fake scientist received only a short suspension after his fraud was discovered, UCLA not only fired Enstrom, it also looted his research account of tens of thousands of dollars and failed to pay him any salary for more than a year.

Enstrom sued, the defendants moved to dismiss the case, and yesterday a district court allowed the case to go forward on all claims and against most of the defendants.

Meanwhile, the fear of radiation caused Germany and others to radically curtail their nuclear power generation. Thus we have people with “green” sensibilities, moving away from the one reliable power source that does not emit carbon.

And they fancy themselves the “reality-based community.”

Robert Peter Gale & Eric Lax at Bloomberg News

It is two years since Japan’s 9.0- magnitude earthquake, one so powerful it shifted the position of the Earth’s figure axis by as much as 6 inches and moved Honshu, Japan’s main island, 8 feet eastward. The tsunami generated by the earthquake obliterated towns, drowned almost 20,000 people and left more than 300,000 homeless. Everyone living within 15 miles of Fukushima was evacuated; many are still in temporary housing. Some will never be able to return home.

More than 300,000 buildings were destroyed and another million damaged, including four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on the northeast coast. The earthquake caused the immediate shutdown of this and three other nuclear-power facilities.

Since the earthquake, a powerful movement gained momentum to halt Japan’s use of nuclear energy, which provided 30 percent of the country’s electricity. The last of 54 nuclear reactors was shut down in May 2012. Two facilities were restarted in June 2012; 52 remain shut. Japan has therefore had to increase its imports of natural gas, low-sulfur crude oil and fuel oil at a substantial economic and environmental cost. Seventy-five percent of the country’s electricity now comes from fossil fuels.

Accustomed to large trade surpluses, Japan, in 2012, had a record $78 billion trade deficit, thanks to increased energy imports and a drop in exports as Japanese goods became more expensive to produce.

Radiation Threat

And what of the lasting threat from radiation? Remarkably, outside the immediate area of Fukushima, this is hardly a problem at all. Although the crippled nuclear reactors themselves still pose a danger, no one, including personnel who worked in the buildings, died fromradiation exposure. Most experts agree that future health risks from the released radiation, notably radioactive iodine-131 and cesiums-134 and – 137, are extremely small and likely to be undetectable.

Even considering the upper boundary of estimated effects, there is unlikely to be any detectable increase in cancers in Japan, Asia or the world except close to the facility, according to a World Health Organization report. There will almost certainly be no increase in birth defects or genetic abnormalities from radiation.

Cue the theme from Loony Tunes.

In their desperation to block Gov. Cuomo from giving the okay for fracking in New York, die-hard opponents of the natural gas drilling technology are floating laugh-out-loud-funny health and environmental threats.

Most hilariously, the enviro-activists have demanded that state officials explore an alleged link between fracking and — we kid you not — syphilis.

They argue that a drilling boom would draw an influx of male workers from other states who would engage in activities of a kind that would spread sexually transmitted diseases.

They also contend that a boom would trigger a housing crunch, adding to homelessness and the health ailments that go along with it.

And that increased truck traffic would not only lead to more road fatalities, but would also — again, no kidding — discourage people from getting the outdoor exercise they need to stay fit.

This is absurd. If New York starts saying no to entire industries on the grounds they might trigger population changes, rising home prices and truck traffic, it might as well turn out the lights.

Have the people pushing these theories considered the health effects of unemployment and poverty — which are all too common in the parts of New York targeted for drilling?

Have they forgotten the public health upsides of harvesting natural gas — which burns far more cleanly than other fossil fuels?

What fracking opponents really want is not a study of imagined risks, but many more months of wheel-spinning in Albany — and additional fodder for litigation.

Science professor: Kill sperm, save the planet

A renowned University of California-Riverside professor recently advised students to save Mother Earth, eat vegetarian, only have 1.5 kids - two at the most – take up social justice causes, and “lower your standard of living.”

Biology Professor Richard Cardullo – recently tapped by several federal agencies to assist with redeveloping how college students across the nation study life science – offered the advice to a room full of middle school students as part of the university’s online science lecture series, recorded on the campus earlier this year. A video of his talk is posted on YouTube.

He began his 50-minute lecture, “Is Earth Overpopulated,” by painting a picture that the planet doesn’t have the room or resources for more and more humans, yet that’s the direction in which it’s headed.

“What is the carrying capacity of the planet?” Cardullo said. “As the population goes up we are using more and more resources at a faster rate. … Most people think (Earth’s carrying capacity is) in the range of nine to 13 billion. And remember – no matter what we do – we believe we are going to be at nine billion by 2030 anyway.”

For some progressives life is just one miserable slog. The good news only like minded people are likely to heed his call.

Let Progressives become the 21st century Shakers.

Tom Gray in City Journal

California Needs a Crude Awakening

After the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, the Obama administration slapped a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf and backed away from plans to expand drilling along the eastern United States. Louisiana’s governor, Bobby Jindal, saw thousands of jobs at stake and demanded that the moratorium be lifted. But the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, responded differently: he withdrew his support for Tranquillon Ridge, an offshore drilling project that would have delivered up to $100 million in yearly revenue to the financially struggling state government.

Schwarzenegger’s reaction was a prime example of California’s animus toward oil drilling. Tranquillon Ridge wouldn’t have required a new drilling platform; it would have used an existing one. That platform stands in a safe 242 feet of water—Deepwater Horizon was drilling in about 5,000 feet—and is far from any coastal towns. Environmental activists had even cut a deal with the driller to retire the platform after 14 years. It was a deal with low risks and no losers. But news coverage from the Gulf blinded Schwarzenegger. “I see on TV the birds drenched in oil, the fishermen out of work, the massive oil spill, and the oil slick destroying our precious ecosystem,” he declared at a May 2010 news conference. “That will not happen here in California.”

California pays a high price for its aversion to oil. By refusing to tap much of the oil wealth off its shoreline, the state is forgoing a resource that could go far to revive its economy and bring state and local governments back to fiscal health. On dry land, too, California is missing an opportunity: its vast onshore oil reserves are underused, thanks to a green-energy agenda that raises the cost of oil production and refining. Policymakers have to realize that their quixotic quest to outgrow fossil fuels isn’t helping the state.

You wouldn’t know it from recent history, but the Golden State’s gold has been as much black as yellow. A century ago, California’s cities and future suburbs bristled with oil towers, especially in and around Los Angeles. At one point, in the mid-1920s, the state produced about a quarter of the world’s oil; today, this would be a bigger share than that of the largest two producers—Saudi Arabia and Russia—combined. With all this oil came plenty of money. In the words of author Eric Schlosser: “In many ways Southern California was the Kuwait of the Jazz Age.” Oil was part of the California dream.

But California’s attitude toward oil began to shift in January 1969, when a well six miles off the Santa (more…)

“Quote of the Week,” as dubbed by Kate of Canada’s Small Dead Animals blog, who found it in the comments of Richard Fernandez’s Belmont Club page here at PJM:

You can think of the Volt as the ultimate in flex-fuel. It runs 30% on coal, 40% on natural gas, 9% each for nuclear and hydropower. Of course, the overhead losses in generation, distribution, conversion, and storage are immense.

It is also worth noting that the current Administration is against coal, natural gas, nuclear power and dams.

The controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas does not pose a high risk for triggering earthquakes large enough to feel, but other types of energy-related drilling can make the ground noticeably shake, a major government science report concludes.

Even those man-made tremors large enough to be an issue are very rare, says a special report by the National Research Council. In more than 90 years of monitoring, human activity has been shown to trigger only 154 quakes, most of them moderate or small, and only 60 of them in the United States. That’s compared to a global average of about 14,450 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater every year, said the report, released Friday.

What makes fracking “controversial” other than the irrational objections of green extremists?

But he means well.

If the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration makes its proposed 2025 fuel economy standards official, cars are going to be more expensive, and that’s going to shut millions of buyers out, argues the National Automobile Dealers Association. “If the price of a vehicle goes up by the government estimate of almost $3,000,” says David Wagner, an analyst for the NADA Used Car Guide, “millions of people will no longer be able to finance a new vehicle.”

The proposed standard is aiming for an average of 54.5 mpg for both cars and trucks by 2025, and is predicted to add $2,000 to the cost of a vehicle. Add to that the $1,000 or so that’s going to be added to the price of vehicles as the current fuel economy requirements phase-in between now and 2016, and the $30,000 average price of a new car rises to the point where lower income buyers may not be able to qualify for financing.

Many progressive policies lead to people surrendering the freedom and convenient of cars to trains and buses. (Mass transit is fine in dense urban locations.)

Higher mileage standards also mean more traffic deaths as automakers are forced to make lighter, less safe cars.

Anthony Watts

49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it’s role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.

The text of the letter:

March 28, 2012

The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001

Dear Charlie,

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.

The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.

As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.

For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.

Thank you for considering this request.

Sincerely,

(Attached signatures)

CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science

CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center

Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.

/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years

/s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Crew Systems Div., Engineering Directorate, 32 years (more…)

No frackin’ way.

The Environmental Protection Agency has dropped its claim that an energy company contaminated drinking water in Texas, the third time in recent months that the agency has backtracked on high-profile local allegations linking natural-gas drilling and water pollution.

On Friday, the agency told a federal judge it withdrew an administrative order that alleged Range Resources Corp. had polluted water wells in a rural Texas county west of Fort Worth. Under an agreement filed in U.S. court in Dallas, the EPA will also drop the lawsuit it filed in January 2011 against Range, and Range will end its appeal of the administrative order.

In addition to dropping the case in Texas, the EPA has agreed to substantial retesting of water in Wyoming after its methods were questioned. And in Pennsylvania, it has angered state officials by conducting its own analysis of well water—only to confirm the state’s finding that water once tainted by gas was safe.

Taken together, some experts say, these misfires could hurt the agency’s credibility at a time when federal and state regulators seek ways to ensure that natural-gas drilling is done safely.

Where do I sign up to become an “expert?” I am quite gifted at stating the obvious.

E. Donald Elliot in The Atlantic

The EPA, just as large as it ever was, is now on autopilot, churning out rules and regulations without heed to cost or competing values. It spends huge sums chasing the tiniest of risks.

Most of our national environmental laws were enacted from 1970 to 1990, and have rarely been amended since. That was a time when America knew no limits: We had gone to the moon; next we were going to cure cancer and eliminate all pollution. Today, there is still a widely shared passion for sound stewardship of the Earth but achieving our goals will require amending obsolete environmental laws to adapt to our current situation.

Many of our environmental laws still command the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to eliminate pollution without regard to economic or job costs. They put the EPA on autopilot churning out one rule after another without heed to cost or competing values. Today in some (but not all) EPA rules, we spend huge sums chasing tiny risks that probably don’t actually exist and thereby kill jobs and steal from the poor.

One case in point: the rule that forbade the use of Dutch oil skimming ships from cleaning up the BP oil spill because the water returned to the Gulf wasn’t absolutely pure.

We are victims of our own success. Rivers no longer catch fire and our air is cleaner. But the EPA is just as large as it ever was, and it has developed ever more effective and intrusive regulatory techniques with the advent of computers and modeling.

Admittedly, detailed regulations were once needed to get industry to do the right thing. For example, the EPA issued a six-page, single-spaced guidance document on what industry can and cannot burn. But after industry gets the message and makes sustainability a priority, there is no way to get rid of these detailed command-and-control regulations, which can get in the way of progress.

I had to advise a distillery to stop saving energy by burning its own alcohol waste, and instead to dump it into the ocean. They had to replace the heat value with imported foreign oil. The alcohol waste was considered “hazardous waste” because it was “ignitable,” and it was illegal at that time to burn hazardous waste. In other words, it was illegal to burn it because it would burn!

There is no way in our system to declare victory and re-prioritize. We keep fighting past battles for symbolic reasons and inertia long after the war is largely won. We should be moving on to new wars, such as climate change and boosting energy efficiency. Our environmental laws were not written with these goals in mind, however, and do not give the EPA the best tools for pursuing them. So the agency struggles to adapt what it has.

Is there ever an agency that looks at the big picture, admits that its mission is largely accomplished and then voluntarily downsizes?

No.

Obama barks at the moon:

“Lately, we’ve heard a lot of professional politicians — a lot of the folks who, you know, are running for a certain office, who shall go unnamed — they’ve been talking down new sources of energy. They dismiss wind power. They dismiss solar power. They make jokes about biofuels,” Obama said. “They were against raising fuel standards because apparently they like gas guzzling cars better. We’re trying to move towards the future, and they want to be stuck in the past.”

Professional politician?

Would that be someone who never worked in the private sector, never held a 9-5 job, never did one thing that created wealth, never did anything but yap, yap, yap?

Those same people, Obama said, would’ve thought the Earth was flat, that television wouldn’t last, that the automobile was only a passing fad.

“If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society,” he said. “They would not have believed that the world was round.”

Not one serious analyst believes that wind and solar will ever comprise more than 10% of our energy. So Obama’s the clown dreaming the impossible dream.

On our dime.

Russell Gold in WSJ

Some energy companies, state regulators, academics and environmentalists are reaching consensus that natural-gas drilling has led to several incidents of water pollution—but not because of fracking.

The energy officials and some environmentalists agree that poorly built wells are to blame for some cases of water contamination. In those cases, they say, wells weren’t properly sealed with subterranean cement, which allowed contaminants to travel up the well bore from deep underground into shallow aquifers that provide drinking water.

Many community activists have said that hydraulic fracturing itself—a process that uses water, sand and chemicals to break up shale rocks and release gas—can pollute drinking water. The energy industry has countered that the technique, which it has used for decades, isn’t to blame for water contamination.

The energy industry has been struggling to convince critics that fracking is safe. If the industry can persuade them that the chief pollution risk is poorly constructed wells—and that risk can be minimized—it might encounter less resistance from the public to expanding oil-and-gas production.

Mark Boling, executive vice president and general counsel of Southwestern Energy Co., a major natural-gas producer, said he has examined several incidents in Colorado and Pennsylvania where gas drilling appears to have caused gas to get into drinking water. “Every one we identified was caused by a failure of the integrity of the well, and almost always it was the cement job,” he said…

…I’m intrigued by the proposal from the group Madison Mounted to close a section of outbound John Nolen Drive and turn it over to Mr. and Mrs. Ed as part of a broader city horseback riding event in August.

I’m not likely to saddle up, but the proposal fits with this entirely laudable notion that streets don’t have to be the sole province of gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting cars and trucks.

Charles Lane in the Washington Post

President Obama boasted at a United Auto Workers conference last week that General Motors was back in business, producing cutting-edge vehicles like the plug-in electric Chevrolet Volt. He even promised to buy one when his time in office ends “five years from now.”

Whoops! Just three days later, GM announced that it would suspend Volt production for five weeks this spring, idling 1,300 workers at a Hamtramck, Mich., factory.

Alas, Obama’s endorsements notwithstanding, there’s not much of a market for this little bitty car, at least not at the price of almost $32,000 — after a $7,500 federal tax rebate.

GM fell 2,300 units short of its sales target (10,000) for 2011. It is not on pace to hit 2012’s goal of 45,000 units.

So much for Obama’s goal of 1 million all-electrics and plug-ins on the road by 2015.

A123 Systems, a maker of electric-car batteries that has received $374 million in state and federal loans, announced 125 layoffs last fall. The cause: problems at its main customer, Fisker Automotive, which builds expensive plug-in electric cars. Fisker got a half-billion in loans from the Energy Department, though the money was recently frozen because of the company’s failure to meet production targets.

These events confirm the wasteful folly of allocating capital according to the dictates of politicians, such as when Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared in November 2008: “A business model based on gas — a gas-guzzling past — is unacceptable. We need a business model based on cars of the future, and we already know what that future is: the plug-in hybrid electric car.”

The electric vehicle flop also illuminates a point about science — or the politics of science.

Democrats and liberals are fond of calling their conservative and Republican adversaries “anti-science.” To the extent that the right espouses “creation science,” or disputes established facts about environmental degradation, it’s an appropriate label.

But progressives’ fascination with electric cars and other alternative-energy schemes reflects their own refusal to face the practical limitations of alternative energy — limitations that themselves reflect stubborn scientific facts.

Stubborn Scientific Fact No. 1: Petroleum packs a lot of energy per unit of volume. (Each liter contains 34 megajoules.) Consequently, gasoline makes a cheap, portable and convenient motor fuel.

By contrast, even state-of-the-art batteries deliver far less energy than gas, in a far bigger package. A Volt can go 35 miles on a single charge of its 435-pound battery. This sounds like a big deal until you realize that a gas-engine Chevy Cruze gets 42 miles per gallon — and costs half as much as a Volt.

It costs a fortune to pump, refine and ship crude oil. Yet even accounting for all that, gas-powered cars are a better value than electric vehicles and will be for some time. Gas savings on the Volt would take nine years at $5 per gallon to offset its higher price over the Cruze, an Edmunds.com analysis found last month.

Gas consumption creates “negative externalities” — instability in the Middle East, carbon emissions — not fully reflected in its price. But another fact about electric vehicles is that their juice comes from the fossil-fuel-burning grid in the first place…

And let’s not forget windmills. FRom the WSJ “Notable and Quotable”

Author Matt Ridley at the Global Warming Policy Foundation website, March 4:

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine—despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.

If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now.

The Oscars are an exercise in vanity, so why not double down with some Green vanity?

…at the Academy Awards, Missi Pyle, part of the ensemble cast of”The Artist,” will walk the red carpet in a flowing blue gown made from organic silk, hand-dyed with natural mineral pigments and lined with recycled polyester.

The gown was designed by Valentina Delfino, one of hundreds of designers around the world who submitted sketches to the third annual sustainable couture competition known as Red Carpet Green Dress in the hopes of presenting their creations on the most glamorous — and watched — red carpet in the world.

Pyle is the first actress in an Oscar-nominated film to wear the annual competition’s winning design. She was selected for her willowy, 5-foot-11-inch frame, her interest in sustainability — and all the attention surrounding “The Artist,” which is up for 10 awards.

David Martosko at the Daily Caller

A Powerpoint presentation obtained by The Daily Caller shows that during a July 2008 meeting, the $789 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund proposed to coordinate and fund a dozen environmental and anti-corporate activist groups’ efforts to scuttle pipelines carrying tar sands oil from Canada to the United States.

The most recent incarnation of that pipeline plan, the Keystone XL project, was the subject of intense public controversy until the Obama administration rejected it in January.

The 2008 meeting consisted of presentations from Rockefeller Brothers Fund program officer Michael Northrop, Corporate Ethics International Executive Director Michael Marx, Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Susan Casey-Lefkowitz and the director of a Canadian activist group called the Pembina Institute.

Northrop’s presentation described the extraction of oil from Canada’s vast tar sands oil deposits as a threat to environmentalists’ efforts to curb global warming. He outlined a ”globally significant response” consisting of a “network of leading US and Canadian NGOs” engaged in a “coordinated campaign structure.”

TheDC made repeated requests for comments from Northrup, Marx and Casey-Lefkowitz. None of them responded.

The subject of U.S. interests raining money on environmental organizations north of the border is a front-burner issue in Canada…

Indeed it is, as the LAT notes in its lead story today.

Reporting from Fort St. James, Canada—The prime minister is talking about being “held hostage” by U.S. interests. Radio ads blare, “Stand up to this foreign bully.” ATwitter account tells of a “secret plan to target Canada: exposed!”

Could this be Canada? The cheerful northern neighbor: supplier of troops to unpleasant U.S.-led foreign conflicts, reliable trade partner, ally in holding terrorism back from North America’s shores, not to mention the No. 1 supplier of America’s oil?

Canada’s recent push for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the nation’s West Coast, where it would be sent to China, has been marked by uncharacteristic defiance. And it first flared in the brouhaha over the bananas.

Responding to urgings from U.S. environmentalists, Ohio-based Chiquita Brands International Inc. announced in November that it would join a growing number of companies trying to avoid fuel derived from Canada’s tar sands, whose production is blamed for accelerating climate change and leveling boreal forests…

Obama has to go.

ScienceNow:

A controversial method of drilling for natural gas, called fracking, has boomed in recent years—as have concerns over its potential to cause environmental contamination and harm human health. But a major review of the practice, released today, uncovered no signs that it is causing trouble below ground. “We found no direct evidence that fracking itself has contaminated groundwater,” said Charles Groat of the University of Texas (UT), Austin, who led the study.

The report, released here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW), doesn’t give this form of natural gas extraction a clean bill of health. Rather, it suggests that problems aren’t directly caused by fracking, a process in which water, sand, and chemicals are pumped into wells to break up deep layers of shale and release natural gas. Instead, the report concludes, contamination tends to happen closer to the surface when gas and drilling fluid escapes from poorly lined wells or storage ponds.

Groat, a former director of the U.S. Geological Survey, emphasized that the $380,000 report was independent from the natural gas industry and conducted only with university funds. Underlying white papers were peer-reviewed, he told ScienceNOW, and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) was consulted on the overall scope and design of the study…

So why continue to refer to it as “controversial?” Is man-made global warming ever dubbed that?

LA Times

The Supreme Court gave a sympathetic hearing Monday to an Idaho couple who were threatened with fines of up to $75,000 a day from the Environmental Protection Agency for starting to build a home near a pristine mountain lake.

If an ordinary homeowner received such a threat from the government, they would say “this kind of thing can’t happen in the United States,” said Justice Samuel A. Alito.

All the justices who spoke during Monday’s argument sounded critical of the EPA. The property-rights case could give landowners and developers a new right to challenge the agency’s orders at early stage.

Mike and Chantell Sackett bought a residential lot across the road from Priest Lake in northern Idaho. But a few days after they laid gravel in 2007, three EPA officials gave them a compliance order saying their land included wetlands. If they failed to restore the land to its natural state, they were told, they faced fines of up to $37,500 a day for violating the Clean Water Act and another $37,500 a day for violating the EPA order…

See our post from last week for the video of the couple explaining their harassment by Obama’s dogs.

Liberals should pay attention: if the feds can dictate without recourse, the game is over for everyone.

New York Post

Never one to pass up a good redneck joke, The New York Times last week happily heaped scorn on the scraped-knuckle roughnecks who make a (good) living extracting energy from Pennsylvania shale rock — and their less-well-off upstate New York neighbors.

To wit:

HORSEHEADS, N.Y. — At the Glamour and Glow boutique in the local mall here, crystal necklaces and fake fur vests have been hot-ticket items the last year.

When the drilling workers head home between long stretches of work in this gas-rich region, explained Christy Spreng, the [Chemung County] shop’s owner, they need gifts for their wives and girlfriends. “They know what they want,” she said. “They’ll say: ‘Looks good. Wrap it up.’ ”

Would the Times ever so condescend to folks who cash government checks for a living? Of course not.

But never mind.

Those who read beyond the initial ridicule found a story that — however inadvertently — underscored the indisputable fact that natural-gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing will be a financial boon to the economically ravaged Southern Tier.

In fact, it already is — albeit indirectly.

Local Chemung County businesses are reporting surging sales. Hotels are booked solid for months at a time. The county airport is adding flights and looking to build a new runway.

And that’s without any fracking.

All the action is on the Pennsylvania side of the border, where fracking — the process by which natural gas is extracted by blasting rock with high-pressure water and chemicals — is both legal and flourishing.

And it turns out that even tiny Chemung — whose biggest city is Elmira — is a metropolis compared to sleepy Pennsylvania. So the neighboring gas workers come to Chemung to spend money.

“Places are jammed,” crowed an obviously thrilled County Executive Thomas Santulli.

At least half of Chemung’s tax-revenue growth is directly attributable to fracking in Pennsylvania.

Some two dozen companies — providing more than 1,000 jobs — have leased or bought more than a million square feet of commercial space in anticipation of future drilling in the high-gas region.

Again, that’s without any fracking under way in New York. Just think how Chemung’s success could be replicated across the Southern Tier.

But fracking’s future here remains uncertain at best: The green lobby, backed by allies within the state Department of Environmental Conservation, will be damned if it’ll allow such a thing in New York.

Gov. Cuomo appears favorably disposed toward fracking — at the very least, he’s not openly opposed to it — and the results of an environmental study of the practice that he ordered are expected soon.

But, again, opponents are throwing up one roadblock after another, apparently hoping to inflict death by a thousand cuts.

Yet New York remains in desperate need of the economic shot in the arm that fracking would provide.

And it needs the energy, too.

As one gas worker told the Times: “[Opponents] want to know why we’re up here drilling. I say, because you like to heat your home.”

Time to end the delays and speed up the approval process — now.

And that’s no joke.

The age of coal powered plants is coming to an end for market reasons, but that’s immaterial to the overreach by the EPA.

IBD:

The EPA thinks it’s worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone’s homes?

When the EPA announced its new air pollution rules this week — designed to reduce power plant emissions of mercury and other to gases — Administrator Lisa Jackson blogged that:

“Mercury is a neurotoxin that is particularly harmful to children, and emissions of mercury and other air toxics have been linked to damage to developing nervous systems, respiratory illnesses and other diseases.”

At $10 billion a year, complying with the new rules won’t come cheap, and that assumes the EPA’s low-ball estimate comes true. According to the coal industry, this is the most expensive rule the EPA’s ever imposed.

Fear not, since Jackson claims the “health and economic benefits” will be many times greater than the costs.

But here’s the curious thing: While whipping up fear about mercury in the outdoors, the EPA is actively downplaying mercury’s health risks when it comes out of fluorescent bulbs inside people’s homes.

In a pamphlet extolling the virtues of the looming federal ban on traditional incandescent light bulbs, the EPA says it’s a “myth” that the mercury used in compact fluorescent lights is “dangerous in your home.”

“There’s no evidence,” the brochure says, that “brief exposure to the mercury in a broken bulb presents a health risk to you or your family.” Just air out the room, sweep up the debris into a jar and you’re fine.

Truth is there’s no meaningful health risk from either the bulbs or the power plants. As a 2004 paper published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution noted, “mercury exposure at current levels is unlikely to be causing harm.”

What both have in common, however, is that they advance the EPA’s control of our lives.

On the one hand, it wants to decide how we light our homes to force energy savings. On the other, it wants to shove the country off coal to reduce global warming.

So what if it has to speak out of both sides of its mouth on mercury risks?

In the end, the real risk to the nation’s health isn’t from minute traces of mercury coming out of smokestacks or broken CFLs. It’s from the economy-crushing mandates pouring forth from the EPA.

The EPA marches on:

Clean up or shut down.

That’s the decision facing hundreds of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants under an Environmental Protection Agency rule announced Wednesday that will force plants to control mercury and other toxic pollutants for the first time.

The long awaited national standards rein in the largest remaining source of uncontrolled toxic pollution in the U.S. — the emissions from the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants, which have been allowed to run for decades without addressing their full environmental and public health costs.

One wonders how much the EPA firebrands thought about economic costs. Or real environmental dangers.

As we noted in September, the danger can be overblown:

Mercury has always existed naturally in Earth’s environment. A 2009 study found mercury deposits in Antarctic ice across 650,000 years. Mercury is found in air, water, rocks, soil and trees, which absorb it from the environment. This is why our bodies evolved with proteins and antioxidants that help protect us from this and other potential contaminants.

Another defense comes from selenium, which is found in fish and animals. Its strong attraction to mercury molecules protects fish and people against buildups of methylmercury, mercury’s biologically active and more toxic form. Even so, the 200,000,000 tons of mercury naturally present in seawater have never posed a danger to any living being.

How do America’s coal-burning power plants fit into the picture? They emit an estimated 41-48 tons of mercury per year. But U.S. forest fires emit at least 44 tons per year; cremation of human remains discharges 26 tons; Chinese power plants eject 400 tons; and volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year.

All these emissions enter the global atmospheric system and become part of the U.S. air mass. Since our power plants account for less than 0.5% of all the mercury in the air we breathe, eliminating every milligram of it will do nothing about the other 99.5% in our atmosphere.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the Skeptical Environmentalist and founder of the Copenhagen Consensus.

The Durban pit-stop in the endless array of climate summits has just ended, and predictably it reaffirmed the United Nations’ strong belief that the most important response to global warming is to secure a strong deal to cut carbon emissions.

What is almost universally ignored, however, is that if we want to help real people overcome real problems we need to focus first on adaptation.

The Durban agreement is being hailed as a diplomatic victory. Yet it essentially concedes defeat, leaving any hard decisions to the far end of the decade when other politicians will have to deal with it. For nearly 20 years, the international community has tried to negotiate commitments to carbon cuts, with almost nothing to show for it.

Even most rich countries don’t want to cut fossil fuels, because the alternatives are considerably more expensive. China, India and other emerging economies certainly do not want to, because putting the brakes on growth means consigning millions to poverty.

But even if such intractable issues could be magically resolved, any deal would have a negligible impact on climate. Even if we were to cut emissions by 50% below 1990-levels by 2050—an extremely unrealistic scenario—the difference in temperature would be less than 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit in 2050.

This goes against everything that carbon campaigners tell us. When Hurricane Katrina or other weather disasters devastate communities, we’re told by advocates such as Al Gore that the effects of climate change are already being felt and it’s time to commit to drastic carbon cuts.

It is worth noting that often these arguments are exaggerated for effect. Since Hurricane Katrina, the global accumulated cyclone energy index has declined to almost the lowest level since we started measuring such phenomena in the early 1970s. Global warming will probably make hurricanes slightly stronger but slightly less frequent, leaving the overall impact murky.

What we can say clearly is that if we want to help New Orleans or other at-risk areas, cutting emissions will have virtually no impact for many decades. Bolstering hurricane defenses through improved levees and wetlands could, however, make a world of difference.

This is even more true for hurricane impacts in Third World countries. When Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, it cost 10% of the state’s GDP and killed 41 people. But when the similar-sized Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras, it cost the country two-thirds of its GDP and killed more than 10,000. Tackling hurricane impacts in developing countries is not about cutting carbon but about adaptation and economic growth to improve resilience.

This is true whether we look at hurricanes or at other problems exacerbated by global warming. It is often—correctly—pointed out that global warming will hit developing countries hardest. Malaria cases, for instance, will increase along with mosquito populations, while food production in many developing countries will decrease.

But getting an emissions deal in any of the future Durban meetings will do nothing to help either of these problems. Even if we halted global warming by the end of the century, we could expect to avoid only about 3% of world-wide malaria cases by 2100. What the billions afflicted by malaria in the world today need is access to treatment and better prevention through bed-nets and indoor spraying. This is adaptation.

When it comes to access to food, global warming is expected to be responsible for a 7% yield decrease in the developing world and a 3% yield increase in the developed world over this century. Yet this needs to be seen in the context of total developing world food production rising by about 270% over the same period.

Do we better help the developing world by making drastic carbon cuts today that (more…)

Oh, never mind. Obama kills up to 200,000 jobs.

President Obama’s United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.

“Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed,” announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. “The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan.” The study will take up to six months to complete. The WNF study reportedly “will focus solely on how it could affect forest land,” despite the significance of hydraulic fracturing to united proponents of the delay, “and not how it could affect groundwater.”

Speaking of the WNF gas drilling, one environmentalist group spokesman suggested that moving forward with drilling “could turn the Ohio Valley into Ozone Alley,”  even though Wayne National Forest already has nearly 1300 oil and gas wells in operation.

The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP) recently estimated that drilling in the Utica shale, which is affected by the suspension of the mineral lease auctions, would produce up 204,500 jobs by 2015.

The company “goes green” for business and ethical reasons, and drags Chinese suppliers along with it. (Grain of salt: Schell is an activist journalist and former dean of the UC Berkeley School of Journalism.)

Orville Schell in the Atlantic

…Stepping into the building’s vast, windowless interior, I have the sense of entering an oversize Fabergé egg. But instead of refined scenes of aristocratic czarist life, I encounter thousands of middle-class Chinese engaging in the newest, and already the most inalienable, right in this erstwhile “People’s Republic”: shopping. This is the Shijingshan Shanmuhui, a Sam’s Club, one of the 352 stores that Walmart now operates in 130 Chinese cities.

Just inside the doorway, a scrum of salespeople hawk everything from roasted sweet potatoes to fitness-club memberships and massage chairs. Throngs of energetic customers push overflowing carts (fitted with data screens touting the latest bargains) making that familiar sound of wobbling rubber wheels on concrete. Indeed, its familiarity makes me feel I’ve been astrally projected back to Walmart’s natal place—Bentonville, Arkansas, which the current president and CEO, Michael Duke, recently referred to as the “Lighthouse of the Ozarks.”

But the young Chinese women workers in green aprons and sanitary masks make it undeniable that we’re a long way from the Ozarks. They call out their wares in Mandarin, proffering samples of soya-bean milk, date juice, and lychee jelly. Around them are mountainous piles of fresh pig intestines; pillow-size bags of dried fungus, seaweed, and mushrooms; packages of desiccated deer tendons (still attached to hooves!); inky-black dehydrated sea slugs; glistening octopuses on nests of chopped ice; and tanks of gulping fish, dazed frogs and turtles, and hyperactive shrimp.

Although Walmart’s $7.5 billion in Chinese sales receipts account for only 2 percent of the company’s annual revenues, its sales in China have risen substantially over the past decade. Sales in the United States, by contrast, have been shrinking. And as China’s retail market—the world’s fastest-growing—expands by 18 percent a year, Walmart’s executives smell the intoxicating scent of more growth to come. Equally important, if not more so, some 20,000 Chinese suppliers, or “partners,” reportedly provide Walmart with about 70 percent of the nearly $420 billion worth of goods that it sells globally each year. (Because of the complexity of the global supply chain, the percentage from China is hard to calculate.) China has become so crucial to Walmart’s supply chain that in 2002, the retail giant moved its global sourcing headquarters across the border from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, in southern China.

…Just as Mao’s revolution elaborated an all-encompassing code of conduct and ideology, “Walmart culture,” known in Chinese as Woerma wenhua, became a set of principles that, in the words of one employee quoted in Derek J. Davies’s insightful article on “corporate cadres” in the forthcoming book Walmart in China, “are not simply rules for a style of work, but are kind of ‘a way of life.’” This notion of an all-embracing culture has created a shared contradiction: while neither organizational structure is comfortable with dissent, they both value, and depend on, innovation. Leaders are left to confront the same question: How, in such a tightly controlled and closely monitored organizational structure, can they encourage the kind of independent, creative spirit that is essential to surviving and maintaining a competitive advantage?

In that respect, if China wants to keep developing its hybrid form of authoritarian capitalism, its leaders could do worse than to learn from Walmart, a corporate entity larger in scope and logistical complexity than any other in human history: Its 9,700 stores in 28 countries, supplied by a network of more than 100,000 sources in 60 countries, are staffed by some 2.1 million employees serving 200 million customers a week. Compare Walmart’s annual revenue with the GDP of sovereign nations, and it ranks in the top quartile. In many ways, the company is like a country. Its CEO, when abroad, is treated almost like a visiting head of state. Senior executives in charge of overseas operations function like diplomats, signing agreements with governments and businesses and managing the company’s interests. The various national arms of the Walmart Foundation operate almost like a government foreign-aid program. Even Walmart’s stores, arrayed around the world, seem almost as representative of America as our consulates and embassies.

Obama voted present on the Keystone XL pipeline, postponing a decision until after the election for purely selfish, political reasons.

As he lectures Congress about the urgency for putting people back to work, he’s killed an opportunity to get some real shovel ready jobs going.

The Obama administration said Thursday it would seek to reroute a portion of a proposed Canada-U.S. oil pipeline, postponing until after the 2012 election a decision on an issue that has divided the Democratic Party’s environmental and union supporters.

While the Keystone XL pipeline could still be built in 2013 or later, environmentalists called the delay a clear victory. Industry and labor groups, which argue the pipeline would create thousands of jobs and allow the U.S. to increase its imports of oil from a friendly neighbor, issued swift denunciations.

The decision highlighted President Barack Obama’s difficult choices on environmental issues as he heads into an election where he has little margin for error. Republicans and the oil industry say his policies are hindering economic growth, while enthusiasm for the president among environmentalists waned after he put off tighter curbs on smog-forming emissions.

For once, there is agreement between labor and management.

Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, said the move would “inflict a potentially fatal delay to a project that is not just a pipeline, but is a lifeline for thousands of desperate working men and women. The administration chose to support environmentalists over jobs—job-killers win, American workers lose.”

“This is clearly about politics and keeping a radical constituency opposed to any and all oil and gas development in the president’s camp for 2012,” said Jack Gerard, director of the American Petroleum Institute.