“No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” President Obama insisted in his 2015 State of the Union address. So now he wants his Environmental Protection Agency to compel drilling companies to slash methane emissions, which he says contribute to “dangerous manmade climate change.”
However, companies already control their methane emissions, and the supposed warming effect of this gas is wildly inflated, by as much as 100 times. Moreover, there is no evidence that we face dangerous manmade warming or climate change, now or in the near future. What we are really dealing with is a catechism of climate cataclysm: near-religious zealotry by an alarmist scientific-industrial-government-activist alliance – and EPA’s determination to use methane’s alleged impacts on Earth’s climate to control a highly successful fracking industry that has thus far been largely free of federal interference, because it operates mostly on state and private lands that are governed effectively by state and local regulators.
Thank you for posting my article, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.
Best regards,
Paul
Methane deceptions
Paul Driessen
Deception, agenda and folly drive latest Obama EPA anti-hydrocarbon rules. Are farmers next?
First they came for the coal mining and power plant industry, and most people did not speak out because they didn’t rely on coal, accepted Environmental Protection Agency justifications at face value, or thought EPA’s war on coal would benefit them.
In fact, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon gave the Sierra Club $26 million, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the Club $50 million, to help it wage a Beyond Coal campaign. The Sierra Club later claimed its efforts forced 142 U.S. coal-fired power plants to close, raising electricity rates, threatening grid reliability, and costing thousands of jobs in dozens of states.
Mr. McClendon apparently figured eliminating coal from America’s energy mix would improve his natural gas business. The mayor likes renewable energy and detests fossil fuels, which he blames for climate change that he tried to finger for the damages “Superstorm” Sandy inflicted on his city.
Now the Obama EPA is coming after the natural gas industry. Hopefully many will speak out this time, before more costly rules kill more jobs and damage the health and welfare of more middle class Americans. The war on coal, after all, is really a war on fossil fuels and affordable energy, and an integral component of President Obama’s determination to “fundamentally transform” the United States.
Proposed EPA regulations would compel drilling and fracking companies to reduce methane (natural gas or CH4) emissions by 40-45% by 2025, compared to 2012. Companies would have to install technologies that monitor operations and prevent inadvertent leaks. The rules would apply only to new or modified sites, not existing operations. However, Big Green activist groups are already campaigning to have EPA expand the rule to cover existing gas wells, fracking operations, gas processing facilities and pipelines.
But companies already control their emissions, to avoid polluting the air, and because natural gas is a valuable resource that they would much rather sell than waste. That’s why EPA data show methane emissions falling 17% even as gas production increased by 37% between 1990 and 2014, and why natural gas operations employing hydraulic fracturing reduced their methane emissions by 73% from 2011 to 2013. The rules are costly and unnecessary, and would bring few benefits.
The Obama Administration thus justifies them by claiming they will help prevent “dangerous manmade climate change.” Methane, EPA says, has a warming effect 50 times greater than carbon dioxide. This assertion is wildly inflated, by as much as a factor of 100, Dr. Fred Singer says. Atmospheric water vapor already absorbs nearly all the infrared radiation (heat) that methane could, and the same radiation cannot be absorbed twice. The physics of Earth’s surface infrared emission spectrum are also important.
More importantly, to borrow a favorite Obama phrase, let me make one thing perfectly clear. There is no dangerous manmade climate change, now or on the horizon. There is no evidence that methane or carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the complex, powerful, interconnected natural forces that have driven warming, cooling, climate and weather fluctuations throughout Earth and human history. There is no evidence that recent extreme weather events are more frequent or severe than over the previous 100 years.
Indeed, planetary temperatures have not budged for more than 18 years, and we are amid the longest stretch since at least 1900 (more than nine years) without a Category 3-5 hurricane hitting the United States. If CO2 and CH4 are to be blamed for every temperature change or extreme weather event, then shouldn’t they also be credited for this lack of warming and deadly storms? But climate hype continues.
We are repeatedly told, “Climate change is real, and humans are partly to blame.” The statement is utterly meaningless. Earth’s climate fluctuates frequently, and human activities undoubtedly have some influences, at least on local (especially urban) temperatures. The question is, How much of an effect? Are the temperature and other effects harmful or beneficial, especially when carbon dioxide’s enormous role in improved plant growth is factored in? Would slashing U.S. CO2 and CH4 emissions mean one iota of difference, when China, India and other countries are doing nothing to reduce their emissions?
Nevertheless, the latest NASA press release asserts that 2014 was “the hottest since the modern instrumental record began,” and again blames mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions. This deliberately deceptive, fear-inducing claim was quickly retracted, but not before it got extensive front-page coverage.
Let me make another fact perfectly clear. The alleged global temperature increase was 0.02 degrees C (0.04 degrees F). It is not even measurable by our most sensitive instruments. It is one-fifth the margin of error in these measurements. It ignores satellite data and is based on ground-level instruments that are contaminated by urban heat and cover less than 15% of Earth’s surface. Even NASA admitted it was only 38% confident of being correct – and 62% certain that it was wrong. Analyses by Dr. Tim Ball, Marc Morano, Anthony Watts and other experts provide more details eviscerating this bogus claim.
In the end, though, all these real-world facts are irrelevant. We are dealing with a catechism of climate cataclysm: near-religious zealotry by a scientific-industrial-government-activist alliance that has built a financial, political and regulatory empire. They are not about to renounce any claims of climate catastrophe, no matter how much actual evidence debunks their far-fetched computer model scenarios.
Their EPA-IPCC “science” is actively supported by most of the “mainstream media” and by the World Bank, universities, renewable energy companies and even some churches. They will never willingly surrender the political influence and billions of dollars that CAGW claims bring them. They won’t even admit that wind and solar facilities butcher birds and bats by the millions, scar landscapes, impair human health, cannot exist without coal and natural gas, and are probably our least sustainable energy option. They want gas prices to rise again, so that heavily subsidized renewable energy is competitive once more.
Meanwhile, polls reveal that regular, hard-working, middle-income Americans care most about terrorism, the economy, jobs, healthcare costs, education and job opportunities after graduation; climate change is always dead last on any list. Regular Europeans want to end the “energy poverty” that has killed countless jobs, and each winter kills thousands of elderly people who can no longer afford to eat their homes properly. The world’s poorest citizens want affordable electricity, higher living standards, and an end to the lung infections, severe diarrhea, malaria and other diseases of poverty that kill millions of children and parents year after year – largely because alarmists oppose nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants.
But federal regulators, climate chaos “ethicists” and “progressives” who loudly profess they care deeply about the poor and middle classes – all ignore these realities. They focus on methane, because they view it as a clever way to inject federal oversight and control into an energy sector that had been largely free of such interference, because the fracking revolution has thus far taken place mostly on state and private lands governed effectively by state and local regulators. (Federal lands are mostly off limits.)
The proposed methane rules would generate more delays, paperwork, costs and job losses, to comply with more federal regulations that will bring no detectable benefits – and much harm, at a time when plunging oil and gas prices are forcing drillers to reduce operations and lay people off.
President Obama devoted 15 lines of his 2015 State of the Union speech to climate fables and propaganda. His goal is steadily greater control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties, with little or no transparency or accountability for regulators, pseudo-scientists or activists.
It won’t be long before EPA and Big Green come for farmers and ranchers – to curtail “climate-wrecking” methane emissions from cattle, pig and sheep flatulence and dung, and exert greater control over agricultural water, dust and carbon dioxide. By then, there may be no one left to speak out.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.
Obama – Let me be perfectly clear
socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and by then there was no one left to speak out.,
Methane madness (revisited)
Lies, agenda and insanity drive latest Obama EPA anti-hydrocarbon drive. Are farmers next?
Paul Driessen
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and by then there was no one left to speak out. Martin Niemoeller,
Washington Times editorial 1/19, Steve Moore op-ed in WT 1/19, Caruba op-ed online 1/17 – WSJ too Meth heads in White House http://www.wsj.com/articles/meth-heads-in-the-white-house-1420412043?autologin=y (NRDC and EDF claim the Journal has its facts wrong)
First they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out – Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy, Michael Bloomberg and Sierra Club on attacking coal, then methane, next farmers – all based on bogus, biased, boondoggle catastrophic climate change claims – Beyond Coal campaign – we warned you
McClendon $26 million to Sierra Club – Bloomberg $50 million more
Reprise of CFACT “methane madness” campaign – farting cows – don’t laugh: it’s coming soon – Big Green and Big Government are absolutely wedded to catastrophic climate change as means to ensuring massive control over our energy systems, economy, lives, living standards, liberties, health and welfare
human health and welfare impacts – environmental harm too – see GWPF study and my articles
congressional responsibilities – hearings, defund, examine BS claims with utmost scrutiny
industry also has responsibility to demand and foster scientific method further threat to existence of wind and solar power wind and solar have been exempted from environmental laws – but cannot exist without coal and gas farmers, cattle, sheep, pigs will be next – already being dragooned via WOTUS 400 ppm but no climate chaos – fundamentally transform USA – Obama bragged about rising US oil and gas production, when it suited his campaign purposes, even though increase was on state, private land Dictatorial president, White House, EPA and Executive Branch – committed to fundamentally transforming USA, making energy more expensive and less accessible, lowering our living standards, to make them more sustainable – as though wind and solar are in any way sustainable – least sustainable
Immoral and unethical, destructive of the lands, habitats, wildlife and poor families that environmentalists and other “progressives” insist they care deeply about
More CO2 = faster plant growth, greening of planet earth – also fewer hurricanes, tornadoes
Channel more money and power to companies, politicians and activists that keep him and his ilk in power and getting richer – take taxpayer and consumer money, and give it to elites, who use it to exert more control over our lives and livelihoods, with no transparency or accountability – Thomas Jefferson: “To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
We don’t want or intend to ban natural gas drilling or pipelining, or gas-fired power plants. We just want them operated properly
Prices have gotten too low, with too many benefits for consumers and businesses – it’s time to force prices to go back up
Fossil fuels have gotten a bad name from green activists, but Alex Epstein, founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, says they're key to improving economic life and human development.
Over the last four decades, China increased its use of coal and oil by a factor of five. What happened? Epstein says life expectancy rose, and infant mortality dropped by 70 percent. The same thing happened in India, where the infant mortality rate fell by 58 percent. These countries are not outliers, and humans have seen progress across the board. Since 1990, malnutrition has fallen by 39 percent.
Accompanying these advances has been an increase in fossil fuel use. According to Epstein, compared to 1980, the world today uses 39 percent more oil and 107 percent more coal. Natural gas use has increased even more, at 131 percent.
What about renewable energy? Epstein explains that it's a tiny portion of overall energy use, because it's unreliable -- solar energy depends on the sun to shine, and wind energy depends on the wind to blow. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, can meet high energy demands with cost efficiencies that renewable energy lacks. For poor nations, fossil fuels provide cheap electricity, which allows for development and industrialization.
Notably, the spending bill passed by Congress right before Christmas prevents the United States from denying financing to the construction of coal plants overseas. Previously, the Obama administration had announced plans to restrict funding for overseas coal projects except in vary narrow circumstances.
Source: Alex Epstein, "How Opposition To Fossil Fuels Hurts The Poor Most Of All," Forbes.com, January 14, 2015.
Unintended consequences make climate policies unethical
Mitigation policies have brought pain & chaos in their wake
London, 19 January 2015: A new paper by Andrew Montford and published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation examines the unintended consequences of climate change policy around the world.
We are constantly told about the risks of what climate change might bring in the distant future. In response, governments have adopted a series of policy measures that have been largely ineffective but have brought with them a bewildering array of unintended consequences.
From the destruction of the landscape wrought by windfarms, to the graft and corruption that has been introduced by the carbon markets, to the disastrous promotion of biofuels, carbon mitigation policies have brought chaos in their wake.
The new paper surveys some of the key policy measures, reviewing the unintended consequences for both the UK and the rest of the world. Mr Montford is a prominent writer on climate change and energy policy and has appeared many times in the media.
“The most shameful aspect of the developed world’s rush to implement climate change mitigation policies is that they have often been justified by reference to ethics. Yet the results have been the very opposite of ethical.” said Mr Montford.
“Andrew Montford has reviewed the sad truth about various schemes to ‘save the planet’ from the demonized but life-giving gas CO2: from bird-killing windmills, native peoples expelled from their ancestral lands, to fraud in the trading of carbon credits. Every thinking citizen of the planet should read this,” said William Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton University.
Unintended Consequences of Climate Change Policy
Summary
At the heart of much policy to deal with climate change lies an ethical approach to the question of intergenerational equity, namely that current generations should avoid passing costs onto future ones, who can play no part in the decisions. In fact it has been said that this is the only ethical way to deal with global warming, although this is not true – professional economists have identified several alternatives.
Working within this ethical framework, governments have taken expensive policy steps to prevent the costs of climate change falling on future generations, for example by fixing energy markets in favour of renewables or by instituting schemes to cap and trade carbon emissions. There has been an unfortunate and bewildering array of unintended consequences that refute the ‘ethical’ label for the framework:
• clearing of rainforests
• human rights abuses
• hunger and starvation
• destruction of valued landscapes
• slaughter of wildlife
• waste
• transfers of wealth from poor to rich
• fuel poverty and death
• pollution
• destruction of jobs
• higher-than-necessary carbon emissions.
In view of the damage done by this ‘ethical’ approach this report calls for a public debate on alternative approaches to intergenerational equity and for an end to the measures that are currently being used to address it.
Full paper (pdf)
Exclusive: How the Sierra Club Took Millions From the ...
science.time.com/.../exclusive-how-the-sierra-club-took-millions-fr...
Feb 2, 2012 - Gas has a much smaller carbon footprint than coal—according to most ... in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO ... involved in fracking—to help fund the Club's Beyond Coal campaign. ... as millions of dollars of McClendon's money was flowing to Sierra Club anonymously.
Chesapeake Energy Sends Mixed Signals on Future Mega ...
www.nationalcenter.org/PR-Chesapeake_Energy_Results_060812.html
Jun 8, 2012 - CEO Aubrey McClendon Called $26 Million Gift to Sierra Club a Great Investment ... Aubrey McClendon defended his decision to give the anti-energy Sierra Club $26 million in gifts to fund a "Beyond Coal" campaign attack on ...
? Bloomberg Donates $50 Million to Sierra Club Coal ...
www.nytimes.com/.../bloomberg-donates-50-millio... The New York Times
Jul 21, 2011 - Mayor Gives $50 Million to Anti-Coal Campaign ... Bloomberg appeared with the Sierra Club's executive director, Michael Brune, near a coal ...
? Beyond Coal - Sierra Club
content.sierraclub.org/coal/ Sierra Club
Our campaign is uniting grassroots activists across the country, to move America Beyond Coal. ... Every year, the nation's coal plants produce 140 million tons of coal ash pollution, the toxic ... 2014 Grassroots Anti-Coal Movements To Watch.
? Mike Bloomberg: Beyond Coal Campaign
www.mikebloomberg.com/index.cfm?objectid... Michael Bloomberg
With a $50 million commitment over four years, Bloomberg Philanthropies is ... Sierra Club in its effort to effectively retire one third of the nation's aging coal fleet ...
? Sierra Club Says 142 Coal-Fired Plants Shut During Drive ...
www.bloomberg.com/.../sierra-club-says-142-u-s-coal-fi... Bloomberg L.P.
Mar 1, 2013 - The Sierra Club said 142 U.S. coal- fired power plants have closed during its campaign against the fuel, representing ... New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg donated $50 million to the Sierra Club 18 months ago to fund the anti-coal efforts. ... The Sierra Club's approach of using millions of dollars in donations, …
Morano, 1/19/15 – on Fox Business Channel with Stuart Varney, re NASA claim that 2014 was hottest year on record: they are talking about statically meaningless temperature records that the instrument record can’t even measure. It’s way within the margin of error. It’s statistical nonsense. You asked, can we poke holes in this? This is a house of cards, it’s collapsed on its own weight.
They said it was the hottest year on record based on statistically meaningless difference based on hundreds of a degree between hottest years and then they are saying they are only 38% sure of that. They knew the media would run with this as though the ‘hottest year’ claim meant something but it means absolutely nothing.
It means in reality that the global warming pause continues. And according to the satellite data there has been no global warming for 18 years 3 months. Every kid in high school today has not experienced global warming.
There have been fluctuations, the satellite data uses NASA satellites and has been promoted by NASA as more accurate than ground based thermometers. They constantly adjust the land based data, they cool the past, and they heat the present. There is all kinds of siting issues with land based thermometers. So the global warming establishment now wants to ignore this satellite data which shows the 18 year pause
Alleged increase is one-fifth (or less) of margin of error – all BS, but media dutifully picked it up and splashed it all over front pages – hottest year in planetary history – see Peiser 1/20 – full court press is on, orchestrated by EPA, White House, Big Green, Big Climate – ignores real question: are humans playing any noticeable or significant role in this, or are any changes driven by sun and other natural forces? And if dangerous or problematical changes are occurring, can control of CO2 (via policies that will have huge energy, economic, environmental and health impacts) make any difference vs natural components?
So-called ‘liberal’ and moderate Republicans, who comprise 30 percent of the respondents, were most likely to believe climate change was occurring — 68 percent for liberal Republicans, 62 percent for moderates. Liberal and moderate Republicans were also most supportive of the power plant regulation, at 73 percent and 62 percent, respectively.” Wash Examiner 1/13/15 Tarquinio
Just getting started? U.S. News & World Report reports: “The new greenhouse gas rules unveiled by the White House Wednesday will ignore the nation’s greatest source of methane gas: more than 1.1 million existing oil and natural gas wells, hydraulic fracturing operations, horizontal drilling sites, processing facilities, pipelines and other sites. ‘It’s a missed opportunity to regulate a large source of greenhouse gas emissions,’ says Joel Mintz, a professor at the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center and former chief attorney with the Environmental Protection Agency. ‘I imagine they’re going to rely on a voluntary approach – those don’t work out well, but in this case maybe they have a very cooperative industry that’s going to do the right thing.’”
DF's Symons says regulating existing source emissions critical to meeting White House methane targets; Former EPA climate director Kruger previews road ahead for methane regulations – both E&E 1/20
The Hill reports: “Leading congressional Republicans blasted President Obama’s plan to slash methane emissions from oil and gas as an expensive regulatory structure that would have little environmental benefit. Lawmakers responsible for environmental regulation promised that they will be tough in their oversight of the coming rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, but did not say they would try to block or overturn them. ‘This EPA mandate from the Obama administration will not only increase the cost to do business in America, but it will ultimately limit our nation’s ability to become fully energy independent,’ Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement. ‘This will impact everyday Americans, from the cost to heat their homes to the reliability of consistent electricity to keep the family business competitively operating.’”
Bloomberg reports: “The Obama administration said it will issue rules to cut leaks of climate-warming methane, a step the oil and gas industry warned could choke the U.S. energy renaissance fueled by hydraulic fracturing. The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it will propose rules this year targeting new oil-and-gas equipment, the centerpiece of an initiative to reduce methane emissions as much as 45 percent by 2025. The EPA also plans to expand voluntary programs with states and industry on equipment already in use, a move that falls short of the new mandates environmentalists sought. ‘We are outlining a comprehensive set of steps that will have a positive effect on the climate, on the economy and on public health,’ Dan Utech, a White House adviser on climate and energy, said on a conference call with reporters. By 2025, the efforts will reduce gas leaks enough to heat 2 million homes a year, he said.”
Associated Press reports: “The Obama administration says it will issue new regulations to cut down on methane emissions from oil and gas production and processing. The White House says the goal is to cut methane emissions by 40 percent to 45 percent by 2025, compared to 2012 levels. The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a proposal this summer, and then finalize it in 2016 — the last year of President Barack Obama's presidency. The Interior Department will also update its standards for drilling to reduce leakage from wells on public lands. Methane leaks during production of natural gas. The rules will only target new or modified natural gas wells, not existing ones. But the White House says it's also asking for the energy industry to voluntarily curb emissions from existing wells.”
Although the U.S. Interior Department has said it will update its standards to reduce leakage from wells on public lands, under President Obama there has so little leasing, drilling or fracking on these lands that the effort is meaningless.
The Wall Street Journal reports: “The U.S. economy is dominated by service work but manufacturing matters because it includes many middle-class jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that employers in manufacturing, mining and construction pay an average of $36.37 an hour in wages and benefits, compared with $31.46 paid by stores, restaurants and other service companies. The U.S. lost more than six million manufacturing jobs between 1998 and early 2010, largely to low-cost countries. Since early 2010, the number of U.S. factory jobs has recovered nearly 7% to 12.2 million, compared with about 17.5 million in 1998.”
An op-ed in The Hill by AFPM President Charles Drevna, states: “At the recent climate change talks in Lima, Peru, Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks demonstrated how far removed he is from the kitchen table conversations of everyday Americans. In referring to falling energy prices, Secretary Kerry said, ‘Coal and oil may be cheap ways to power an economy today in the near term, but I urge nations around the world – the vast majority of whom are represented here, at this conference – look further down the road. I urge you to consider the real, actual, far-reaching costs that come along with what some think is the cheaper alternative. It’s not cheaper.’ I think American families would beg to differ. Kerry’s personal net worth is slightly under $200 million, and it’s clear from his remarks that his view of falling energy prices is out of step with low- and middle-income families across the United States who benefit from this change. Talk about not connecting with the vast majority of Americans.”
The Hill reports: “Senate Republicans are planning a full-on assault against a wide range of the Obama administration’s environmental rules, with a focus on overturning them or cutting their funding. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters Wednesday that the Congressional Review Act (CRA) will be a primary tool for the GOP. The CRA, a key piece of Republicans’ Contract with America in the 1990s, allows an expedited route for Congress to vote to overturn regulations, including those from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Inhofe said he wants to challenge his colleagues who think they cannot challenge the Obama administration’s rules.”
PKD: I don’t think there is much of an issue regarding climate – virtually no effect from this US methane, judging from what I've been reading (though not from Chip or Pat thus far). I would touch on that, but more on how Obama and EPA want to use this bogus issue – and claims that (brainwashed) Americans support methane restrictions – to exert federal control over fracking, in conjunction with efforts via water quality rules, with the effect (if not the intent) of reducing oil and gas production and driving up prices. That would help make wind and solar power more competitive, once again. It’s also a sop to his rabid environmentalist allies and the renewable energy lobby, both of which give heavily to his political buddies. Are there good rebuttals to methane rules from a climate perspective (like from Knappenberger)
E&E interview with AM Nat Gas Alliance president Marty Durbin: looking at the proposal today, it's not clear exactly what the 40 to 45 percent figure covers, so it's unclear to say you know can we or can't we hit that particular number and how to do it. What we can say is that we've reduced our emissions by 17 percent since 1990 while increasing production by 37 percent, and there is no question that we're going to continue to see those kinds of dramatic decreases of methane emissions because it just makes sense for our industry …. even the White House said in their announcement that these voluntary programs hold the potential for significant reductions in a timely and cost-effective manner. Well we couldn't agree more, and frankly I think we are the poster child for working with part of the industry that's committed to making those reductions that can continue tomorrow and not have to wait for a long regulatory process to begin implementing …. By throwing in the specter of a new regulation, now you know we've got to wonder, well, what are the requirements going to be? How long is it going to take for that to happen? You know recent history shows that new regulations can run into some problems…. really the concern we're raising today isn't about cost necessarily; it's about is this the best way to do it. We believe that the industry working cooperatively with the administration can get to the shared goal of reduced methane emissions faster and in a more cost-effective way through a voluntary program on producers than to take a new Clean Air Act regulatory approach…. EPA's data shows that just from 2011 to 2013, natural gas wells alone that use hydraulic fracturing reduce their methane emissions by 73 percent;
Real purpose is advancing his anti-capitalist, government control, anti capitalism worldview, his energy, environment and climate agenda, warming narrative
See Tim Ball: NASA was already saying in October that 2014 was shaping up to be warmest on record http://www.galileomovement.com.au/docs/162.Global.temp.pdf -- warmest by 0.02 deg C – 38% certainty that they are correct – based on GISS readings that are almost always higher than all others – Ball says 2014 was really one of coldest years on record, since modern recordkeeping began
See WSJ of 1/5/15 – re meth heads in White House, Liz Warren veto, EPA on its CPP, etc
See comments by Morano et al in Spero news article about Pope Francis’s belief that perhaps not all, but a majority of climate change has been caused by humans -- http://www.speroforum.com/a/OQITOWBQFS32/75495-Popes-environment-stance-aligns-with-Church-enemies#.VL5sS8n0-jc
If you want to know how bogus this “hottest year” claim is, why it is phony, and how it was concocted by the Obama-NASA climate alarm community, read Tim Ball’s excellent analysis: http://www.GalileoMovement.com.au/docs/162.Global.temp.pdf
Pretty wonderful transformation of policy in NY - A potential fracking program is replaced by renewables. http://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/new-york/2015/01/19/green-jobs-competition/22023083/
Roger Downs, Conservation Director, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Albany, NY 12210
Maybe he subscribes to the notion that we should get used to having electricity when it’s available, not when we need it – except for him, Sierra Club and their friends, of course
Meth Heads in White House – WSJ 1/4/15
In his last two years in office, President Obama seems determined to leave an environmental legacy by undermining the major reason his economic legacy will be better than it deserves to be: the domestic fossil fuel boom. A surge of new federal regulation is headed for the oil and gas industry, starting as soon as this month with a crackdown on methane.
The Administration is targeting everything from offshore drilling to oil trains but the methane rule is likely to be among the worst. The noncrisis that it will purport to solve is already well in hand thanks to industry innovation. The Environmental Protection Agency is going ahead anyway.
Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though CH4 is far less prevalent than CO2 and has a much shorter atmospheric life. The real reason methane has become an obsession of the green lobby is that it sometimes leaks when extracting or transporting oil and especially natural gas. Thus methane can be a pretext for interfering with and raising the costs of drilling.
But this means willfully ignoring the plunge in U.S. methane. Overall emissions fell 4.7% between 1990 and 2008 and 6.3% between 2008 and 2012, the most recent year an estimate is available in the EPA’s greenhouse gas inventory. Natural gas is the source of less than a third of the total, the next largest being “enteric fermentation,” or livestock flatulence. Those, er, emissions rose 2.3% over 1990-2012.
Methane reduction in the drilling industry has been dramatic. Methane emissions from natural gas systems fell 14.3% from 2008-12. Since 2011 the EPA has also specifically measured methane leaks from hydraulically fractured natural gas wells. By 2013 those dove 73%, more than did any other industrial source.
These are the same years when the U.S. became the world’s natural-gas leader, with production increasing by nearly fourfold since 2008. The U.S. added 600,000 miles of gas pipeline, a 30% increase, utilities substituted gas for coal on a massive scale and the economy grew. Methane emissions nonetheless fell.
In December, engineers at the University of Texas—funded in part by the Environmental Defense Fund, which is pushing federal methane regulation—published the most extensive study to date of methane emissions and fracking. The UT team found that the leakage rate as measured in the field was not only lower than the EPA’s assumptions but had also fallen 10% year over year.
What explains these remarkable advances? Well, methane is not a byproduct of burning natural gas like CO2. The hydrocarbon mixture laymen call natural gas is primarily composed of methane itself, and leakages mean drillers and transporters are losing the valuable commodity they are trying to sell. The economic incentive to capture CH4 has translated into rapid technological progress, and emissions are declining in every significant basin from Texas to North Dakota to Appalachia as more efficient techniques spread throughout the industry.
The EPA hasn’t revealed details about its looming methane rule, but at best it will be expensive and redundant. The greens are demanding that the agency mandate CH4 reductions and impose technology performance standards like pneumatic controllers, with the inevitable result of throttling back production. Cap and trade for cows would make more environmental sense.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the save-the-Earth money machine. David R. Legates, PhD, CCM, is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, USA.