Right Reason

A video from 2010 recently surfaced, showing EPA Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz explaining his philosophy of enforcement, which he admitted was rather crude, but went ahead anyway to tell his audience:

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean.  They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.”

This revelation has created quite a stir in the media, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denying to the press corps that the EPA’s standard operating procedure is to crucify oil and gas producers. “Clearly, there is not an effort of the nature that you talk about,” said Carney.

The truth is, the EPA has been using these thuggish tactics and “making examples” of corporations for years.

Under the Clinton Administration, Carol M. Browner, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, initiated a law suit against seven utility companies across the country; Tampa Electric Company, American Electric Power, FirstEnergy, Illinois Power, Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Company, Cinergy, and the Southern Company. Tampa Electric Company was the first utility to enter into a settlement with the EPA and DOJ.

The Notice of Violation and Complaint against Tampa Electric Company, initiated in November 1999, charged that TECO “violated the law at their power plants by making major modifications to the plants without installing equipment required to control smog, acid rain and soot.”

As a part of the agreement, the Consent Decree states “WHEREAS, Tampa Electric has denied and continues to deny the violations alleged in the NOV and the Complaint; maintains that it has been and remains in compliance with the Clean Air Act and is not liable for civil penalties or injunctive relief; and states that it is agreeing to the obligations imposed by this Consent Decree solely to avoid the costs and uncertainties of litigation and to improve the environment in and around the Tampa Bay area of Florida…” This statement clearly proves that Tampa Electric Company settled to avoid prolonged and costly litigation by the EPA and the DOJ.

The News Release from the EPA stated “This agreement is the first to result from a national enforcement action aimed at cutting emissions from coal-fired power plants… We are hopeful that other utilities will follow Tampa Electric example, and help bring similar clean-air benefits to many other areas in this country.”

In the settlement agreement, Tampa Electric Company agreed to pay a $3.5 million dollar civil penalty and to invest between $10 and $11 million dollars on “environmentally beneficial projects in the region designed to mitigate the impact of emissions from the company’s plants.” TECO also committed to a $1.2 billion investment over a ten year period to provide cleaner energy by retro-fitting existing power plants and increasing the use of renewable energy sources to provide electricity to its customers.

As a customer of TECO, seeing advertisements on television and receiving updates in the mail, and doing further research which revealed the EPA lawsuit in 1999, I questioned a source in the industry who builds power plants if there was a connection. He flatly stated “If you are asking if a gun was put to their head…ABSOLUTELY!”

In 2004 Tampa Electric Company announced that it “voluntarily” joined the Chicago Climate Exchange.  It has also pursued clean energy development and implementation with investments such as TECO Guatemala.

Then EPA administrator Carol M. Browner grew up in Florida, and headed the Department of Environmental Regulation from 1991-1993.  In December 2008 President-elect Barack Obama named Browner to be the Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy , informally known as the “Climate” or “Energy Czar”. In 2011 she left the Obama Administration, and is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow of George Soros’ Center for American Progress and a member of the organization’s Executive Committee.

The EPA has been bullying and intimidating corporations for a long time, and their standard operating procedure is precisely what Al Armendariz was caught articulating on that video tape.

The ever-expanding and over-reaching regulatory powers of the EPA must be reined in by Congress. Common sense needs to be restored to environmental decision making, and economic impact must be considered in all environmental legislation.

Start with approving the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Cross posted on Big Government.com

 Will Tony Abbott leave us Legless and Powerless in the Global Storms?

by Viv Forbes & Helpers

A print-ready copy of this issue of “Carbon Sense” can be downloaded from:

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/legless-in-storms.pdf

2 January 2012
Climate Alarmism has clearly peaked and is sliding into oblivion.

Their “science” has collapsed and the public is losing their alarm.
But all the toxic laws passed during the mania now have to be repealed.
That is where the danger now lurks – the danger of complacency and the seductive sirens of the vested interests.

Please pass this on.

Some at the big end of town are worried that Mr Abbott may keep his solemn promise to repeal the carbon tax. No doubt they and their smart lawyers fear losing the clever green schemes that rely on ripping off tax payers, consumers and other businesses.

Australia’s wealth and jobs have always rested on three legs – mining and farming, making and processing things, and rich foreigners; in short, resources, manufacturing, and money from tourists and investors.

The Gillard carbon tax will white-ant all three legs.

Mining and farming rely on draglines, dozers, scrapers, trains, trucks, bulk carriers, tractors, generators, pumps and machines of all kinds. All need cheap reliable energy. Their energy comes from diesel fuel or coal powered electricity. A tax on carbon will sap their energy and reduce their ability to generate jobs and national wealth.

Our processing and manufacturing industries rely on cheap electricity produced from our marvellous deposits of coal and natural gas. Greens have demonised these national assets and their carbon tax will undermine all Australian industries. Investors always look ahead. Already the threat of a carbon tax has reduced the asset value of every base load power station in Australia. Already one of the biggest, running on Victorian brown coal, is reporting financial stress and may close. We cannot run steel works, refineries or big cities on sunbeams and sea breezes.

See: http://www.theage.com.au/national/carbon-tax-puts-heat-on-loy-yang-20111219-1p2kf.html

Australia is remote from most of the world, and tourists must travel vast distances to get here. They need planes, trains, ships, buses and cars, all powered by carbon energy from petrol, diesel or gas. The carbon tax will strike at the heart of this industry. Harassed by the carbon footprint harpies, tourists may choose to stay home and go camping in their own backyards.

Finally, Australia is leading the world with the most onerous and widely applied carbon tax. This is already deterring the foreign investors who for generations have risked their savings to create businesses and jobs in Australia. Even now, the threat of a carbon tax is increasing capital shortage and debt stress in Australia.

There is no good news in the carbon tax story – no climate benefits, no real jobs and more costs for consumers. And it is white-anting the three legs supporting the Australian economy.

Unlike the big end of town, thinking Australians are worried that Mr Abbott may renege on his solemn promise to repeal the carbon tax.

That would really leave Australia powerless and legless in the global storms. 

Saving the Suckers of the South Pacific -  withdraw from Kyoto

Australia and New Zealand should follow Canada and immediately withdraw from the failed Kyoto Protocol.

With Canada deciding to cut and run, no country in the Americas bears Kyoto liabilities. And with the announcement by Japan that it will not renew its membership, there will be no Kyoto bunnies in Asia. It is time for the two lonely suckers in the South Pacific to also withdraw.

Kyoto has achieved nothing useful. Some countries such as Russia achieved fraudulent cuts by retrospectively choosing their base year to take advantage of the plant closures that followed the Soviet collapse. Others evaded real cuts by paying for often phantom cuts in other countries. Australia used larceny to seize carbon credits by banning regrowth clearing on private farmland. New Zealand is sacrificing their forestry industry on the Kyoto altar.

Europe’s worship of Kyoto has led them into their current fiscal mess. Believing they are gods who can control the climate by demonising carbon, they have spent a fortune on green energy, carbon trading and international junkets that has exacerbated their deficits and now condemns their industry and consumers to expensive and unreliable energy.

The future for Australia and New Zealand lies around the vibrant Pacific, not in the backwater of Old Europe.  We should immediately abandon Kyoto, cease wasting money on the IPCC, abolish all climate change bureaucracies and repeal all carbon tax and trade legislation.

The money saved should be used to develop appropriate infrastructure to cope with the inevitable natural disasters whenever they occur.

First Successful Low Emissions Economy.

Alexander Downer’s portrayal of North Korea lacks perspective (“A bit of a joke lost on long-suffering people”, 20/12). North Korea is the first country to move voluntarily and successfully to a low emissions economy.

William Kininmonth, Kew, Vic.                                                The Australian, December 22, 2011

Wind Energy Lights Up

Wind energy has created another fire season in the Northern Hemisphere as the wind blows and the turbines burn.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyQD83NLDc&feature=player_embedded

The Victorian government is planning to bury power lines to reduce bushfire risk. Wind farms pose a far greater bushfire risk than power lines. Maybe we should bury the wind turbines too? That is the best place for them.

Swindle Power

Wind energy is a great con:

• Not Clean
• Not Green
• Not Cheap

Each turbine requires large amounts of steel and concrete, plus a spiderweb of roads and transmission lines to connect each turbine to the grid. And because wind energy is so dilute, large areas of countryside are plastered and disfigured by bird-killing whirling sabres. What little power is produced is unreliable, unpredictable and nowhere near the capacity of the turbine. This is an enormous waste of community resources for a lot of environmental damage and no climate benefits.

The only thing SWindle Power does efficiently is harvest subsidies from taxpayers and electricity consumers.

See: http://youtu.be/XxfKe6tT_FI

Climatism failed in 2011, but the big battles are ahead in 2012

Peaks and turning points are only obvious to most people in retrospect. Looking back from December 2011 we can see clearly that climate alarmism peaked at the Copenhagen Climate.

Cockup in late 2009. The nails were driven into the coffin by India, China and others at the more subdued Climate Wake in Durban in late 2011. These sensible countries got settlement on a vacuous statement that agrees to keep holding the Climate Parties for a few more years as long as nothing onerous is actually agreed. Last week Canada put the last shot into the dead horse by announcing its withdrawal from the Kyoto Foolishness.

But the real war in Australia will now intensify, mainly in back rooms as the plotters scheme to keep carbon tax, green energy subsidies and all the climate bureaucracies alive and on the law books.

Their main strategy in Australia will be to keep the carbon tax out of the headlines. They will try to maintain the myth that “the debate is over”. Our strategy is “never let people forget”.

We will be helped by the gathering scandal in UK about the BBC bias in acting as the megaphone for the climate alarmists and the apparent connivance of the US Department of Energy in hiding data to prevent sceptics from discovering dodgy climate research. The ABC will be watching the exposure of their ideological brothers in the BBC and they and their fellow alarmists may start to give token platforms to sceptical ideas. Non- government media are certainly awake to the extent and cost of the fraud.

Europe’s Green Lobby Fighting For Survival

The European carbon market continues to tumble threatening all sorts of green sacred cows from Emissions Trading schemes, green energy and Carbon Capture and Burial.

See: http://thegwpf.org/international-news/4607-europes-green-lobby-fighting-for-survival.html

White Christmas 2012

Have a look at this photo of the Northern Hemisphere snow cover. The light grey is snow cover, the white is permanent glacial ice, and the shades of purple to orange and yellow are the sea ice.

In the last Ice Age the northern ice cap covered North America down to the Great Lakes. Look at the snow cover now. Canada and Russia are almost completely frozen, as are Norway and Sweden.

See: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.004.png

From: Gabriele Steinhauser, The Associated Press Tuesday, 20 December 2011 (thanks to Gordon Fulks).

Global Temperatures? – Flat for 13 Years

Source:  http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/12/the-gross-incompetence-of-ben-santer-james-hansen-their-non-existent-global-warming.html                   See also: http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

 Have you checked your Carbon Footprint?

See here:  http://carbon-sense.com/2011/12/26/my-carbon-footprint/

What Really Happened in Durban? What the media are not telling you…

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy…Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization…One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

Ottmar Edenhoffer, high level UN-IPCC official.

Australia’s Greg Combet was played for a fool in Durban. He and the Kiwis followed the loony greens now running Old Europe. Their day is past. Old Europe has abandoned rationality and their current leaders care more for their green religion and their dreams of world government than for the welfare of their own people. The failure of their economic and energy policies is on display daily.

The European climate crazies were comprehensively outsmarted by the BASIC Group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China). The Europeans want to continue penalising their people with expensive and unreliable energy. So the Basic Group humoured them by agreeing to let the Europeans keep penalising their people. The Europhiles of the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, picked the wrong side yet again, and have also chosen to keep penalising their people.

The US, Japan and Russia were bemused bystanders, happy to allow the Europeans to flagellate themselves. Canada kept quiet and dropped their withdrawal bombshell after getting home. Australia postponed the Kyoto costs so far by dispossessing Australian farmers with scrub-clearing bans. That trick will not work twice. When we have to fork over billions of real dollars (the prospect that Canada faced), hopefully sanity or an election will occur.

If anyone has any illusions on what the UN bureaucrats have in store for us they should read the report by Christopher Monckton on their 138 page document detailing how they will govern the world. It includes plans for:

1. A new international climate court
2. Rights for Mother Earth
3. The right to survive (climate change) at our expense.
4. Total disarmament (apart from UN forces no doubt) and the end of war.
5. New dreamtime targets for world temperature, emissions and carbon dioxide content.
6. Historic responsibility ie the west will pay for everything.
7. World government with everyone reporting to the UN bureaucracy.
8. A green climate fund (supplied by us of course).
9. World-wide cap and trade.
10. Technology transfer to be aided by abolition of patents and intellectual property rights.
11. Taxes on shipping and aviation fuels (going to the UN of course).
12. Equitable access to global atmospheric space

In case you think this is all make-believe, have a look at Christopher Monckton’s report here: http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=806&Itemid=1

The Last Word for 2011

Thanks to all those who have sent information, suggestions, compliments, criticisms and Christmas Cards. We get a lift from letters like this:

“Thanks again, Viv, for giving voice to all of us out here who are not so enterprising, though still passionate about the reprehensible governmental behaviour over the “climate change” issue.”

But we also learn from critical comments, learned papers and even from the few abusive ones.

Unfortunately, although we look at everything and read most of them, we do not acknowledge or reply to many of them. If we tried to, we would do little else. So please take this as our collective “Thank You”.

Authorised by Viv Forbes

Chairman,

The Carbon Sense Coalition

Happy New Year from “The Resilient Earth”:

http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/happy-new-year-resilient-earth-0

The globalists at the United Nations are busy preparing their agenda for the Rio + 20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which will be held on June 4 – 6, 2012.  They have prepared a draft entitled “Enabling a Flourishing Earth: Challenges for the Green Economy, Opportunities for Global Governance”.  It is truly amazing that this is not being devised in Dr. Evil’s hidden lair in the depths of some inactive volcano or on a deserted island.  This has been made available for everyone to read.  It reveals the true intent; the hopes, dreams and aspirations for this new world order that they have been working on for twenty plus years.  The entire document can be viewed here. Read the rest of my article on big government.

Republican Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich is the only candidate who has said that he will sign an executive order eliminating all funding for Agenda 21 programs.  See the video below.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)  was held on June 14, 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  At this conference, referred to as the Rio Earth Summit, the participants crafted a blueprint for the world, commonly known as Agenda 21.  In its preamble, Agenda 21, Chapter 1 states “Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being.  However, integration of environment and development concerns and greater attention to them will lead to the fulfilment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future. No nation can achieve this on its own; but together we can – in a global partnership for sustainable development.” Click here to read the rest of this article on biggovernment.com.

During his campaign to become the 44^th President of the United States, then candidate Barack Obama stated in an interview that “under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Many of us remember this statement as it was played repeatedly on news programs.  Read more in my latest post in the June 2011 Edition of Smart Girl Nation here.