I’m celebrating Earth Day by heating my home (and combating climate change!) with cheap, natural gas provided by the technological wonder of hydraulic fracturing.

Long live the anti-capitalist revolution!

McClatchy has a piece up today titled, “Coastal cities ponder how to prepare for rising sea levels” that’s filled with the usual alarmist hyperbole, but what stands out is how the piece depends on the reader’s inability to do simple math to make its case:

Rising sea levels caused primarily by global warming could worsen the effects of storms such as Sandy, particularly when it comes to storm surge. Since 1992, satellites have observed a 2.25-inch rise in global sea levels.

Let’s break this down:

1992 to 2013 is 21 years. 21 years divided by the 2.25-inch total global rise in sea levels gives us an annual average rise of .11 inches. (Roughly 3 millimeters per year, as determined by NOAA)

This means, at the current rate, it would take 109 years for sea levels to rise by just one foot.

Well, with 100 years to go, I’m pretty sure cities have time to “ponder” all they like.

Yes, he went there:

FORMER US Vice-President Al Gore didn’t mince his words as he painted a vivid portrait of the worldwide devastation being caused by the invisible, tasteless and odourless greenhouse gases.

Climate change is causing devastation like that depicted in the Bible’s book of ‘Revelations’, he told delegates, including Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore, at the Hunger, Nutrition, Climate Justice international conference at Dublin Castle.

“We have to win the conversation about climate change – when you hear denial speak up,” he said.

“We cannot continue sleep walking towards the edge of history’s cliff,” he added.

I think Gore left out the part where he’s the “false prophet.”

Via the Register:

The latest ice-core analysis from the Antarctic shows that nothing unusual in terms of melting is occurring.

In research published yesterday, a large team of scientists used a deep ice core from the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide to produce records going back some 2,000 years. Their analysis shown that recent melting in that area, which has caused a good deal of hysteria* in climate alarmist circles, is in fact normal.

“If we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today,” comments Eric Steig, a senior earth-sciences boffin at the University of Washington and the lead author on the new research.

Ice loss in recent times from the Western Antarctic – considered to be one of the main places to worry about, if you worry about sea-level rises – may just “not be all that unusual”, according to Steig.

The problem, as with many climate change issues, is that conditions in the Western Antarctic vary so much over short time scales that it’s hard to work out if any long-term change is actually happening.

“The magnitude of unforced natural variability is very big in this area,” Steig comments.

The rest here.

Live Science:

The Mayan apocalypse may have been a bust, but a century-old understanding of the calendar that spawned the doomsday rumors appears to be right on.

In a new study, scientists used modern methods to double-check the match between the Mayan Long Count calendar and the modern European calendar. Understanding how the two coincide is important, because research on the rise and fall of the Maya suggests that climate change spelled their doom. To be certain of that link, however, researchers have to be able to match carved Maya historical records with dates in the modern calendar.

Linking the two calendars is no picnic. The Long Count calendar is essentially a cyclical count of days, known as k’in. The k’in are counted in 20-day cycles called winal or uinal, which in turn are catalogd in 360-day cycles called tuns. Twenty tuns make a 7,200-day k’atun (about 20 years), and 20 k’atuns then make a b’ak’tun.

The rest here.

Washington Post:

It’s official: EPA delays climate rule for new power plants

You might have been wondering whether the Obama administration was going to impose the first-ever greenhouse gas limits on new power plants, since the deadline is April 13.

We reported nearly a month ago that the Environmental Protection Agency was likely to delay the rule to bolster their legal case for imposing the new carbon restrictions.

On Friday, an EPA official who asked not to be identified confirmed that the agency would not finalize the controversial proposal on time.

“We are working on the rule and no timetable has been set,” the official wrote in an e-mail.

EPA is likely to alter the rule in some way in an effort to make sure it can withstand a legal challenge, according to sources familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the standard has not been finalized. One possibility could include establishing a separate standard for coal-fired power plants, as opposed to gas-fired ones.

The rule, which the EPA proposed a year ago, would require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

The rest here.

Quite possibly, yes. But not with its electric car.

A New York judge has just ruled in favor of Tesla allowing direct-to-consumer sales of its cars, bypassing a dealer network:

Tesla Motors Inc. says it’s won another round in its fight with established car dealers who want to stop the company from selling its electric luxury cars directly to consumers.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says, via Twitter, that a New York judge has tossed out a suit brought by New York auto dealers who challenged Tesla’s direct sales model as a violation of the state’s franchise laws.

Mr. Musk spent Wednesday in Texas making the case for a legislative proposal to change the law to allow direct sales of electric vehicles by U.S.-based manufacturers.Texas car dealers have opposed the measure, saying it would open the door for other car makers to sell electric cars direct to customers –  which could undermine the value of their franchises.

There are pluses and minuses to a dealer network, but at this time a consumer can’t buy a car directly from a manufacturer. And there are savings to be had if a consumer could do so. Charles Arlinghaus writes in the Union Leader:

A recent paper by the economic analysis group of the Department of Justice found potential savings of as much as $3,000 per vehicle from the currently prohibited direct-to-consumer sales of vehicles. In recent years, direct sales have been promoted by groups as diverse as the libertarian Cato Institute, the moderate Democratic Progressive Policy Institute, and the liberal Consumer Federation of America.

I’d, at the very least, like the option to purchase a car directly from the manufacturer and then use my own mechanic for its regular maintenance. 

Kimberley Strassel writes in today’s WSJ (no paywall):

Running for governor of Virginia, the Democrat’s main business credential is fast turning into a crony-capitalist embarrassment.

 

Turn over any green-energy rock, and wiggling underneath will be the usual creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts. Add to this the Clintons, Mississippi and a murky visa program, and you’ve got a particularly ripe political embarrassment for Terry McAuliffe.

Everyone remember The Macker? Best Friend of Bill. Chairman of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Famed money-tree shaker. Former Democratic Party chief. Failed 2009 contender for the Virginia governorship but now back as the party’s nominee for that position in this fall’s election. Oh—and in Mr. McAuliffe’s words—”a Virginia businessman” intent on “creating jobs.”

Or at least that was the image Mr. McAuliffe sought to portray in 2009, when he became chairman of a car company called GreenTech Automotive, with plans to produce golf-cart sized electric vehicles. The former DNC chief is no stranger to moneymaking, having once used a friendly union pension fund to spin a $100 investment in a Florida land deal into $2.45 million. GreenTech, however, was designed to shed the moneyman image and to reposition Mr. McAuliffe as a (clean) job creator the way Mark Warner and Bob McDonnell used their pro-business credentials to win office in Virginia.

To this end, Mr. McAuliffe got out the political Rolodex and went on the money hunt. By October 2009, GreenTech announced it would build a plant in Tunica, Miss., after the state (under Republican then-Gov. Haley Barbour) promised at least $5 million in public loans and grants to aid the company moving in.

 

GreenTech bragged that in its first phase alone it would invest $1 billion, employ 1,500 and produce 150,000 cars annually. Mr. McAuliffe grandly unveiled his signature MyCar last July at a rock-star event attended by Messrs. Clinton and Barbour. Business creds in hand, he then announced his run for governor—and the problems began.

Here’s what I don’t get: where do you put the pizzas in the wonder-car? (Not to mention that the Dominos’s Pizza model is based on delivery personnel having their own cars and I doubt any franchise could be profitable if it had to have the capital expense of owning and maintaining its own delivery fleet.)

The rest here.

More taxpayer funded loses:

Fisker Automotive — the electric-car maker that was granted a half-billion-dollar federal loan and on Friday dismissed about 75 percent of its remaining workforce — is purportedly facing a lawsuit from the same firm that sued the government-funded Solyndra company.

Fisker laid off 160 of its roughly 210 employees Friday morning from its Anaheim, Calif., location, according to Automotive News.

Employees told the publication they were given no severance pay besides compensation for unused vacation days.

According to the class action suit filed by Outten & Golden, in a California district court, Fisker failed to notify the employees 60 days in advance, violating the federal U.S. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and a similar state WARN Act.

Outten & Golden won a $3.5 million settlement in a similar case against Solyndra, according to Reuters. The solar-panel maker received $535 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration before falling into bankruptcy in 2011. 

But not by much. Gallup:

Democrats and Republicans retain markedly different views about global warming, with 75% of Democrats versus 40% of Republicans saying they personally worry about it a “great deal” or “fair amount.” Both groups’ levels of concern about global warming have fluctuated in recent years. Republicans — as well as independents, at 59% — show slightly increased levels of worry in 2013, following 10-year lows in 2010 and 2011. Concern has held steady at a high level among Democrats throughout the past decade.

The full poll here.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz and Nobel economist Gary Becker argue in today’s WSJ: (behind the paywall)

Why We Support a Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax

Coupled with the elimination of costly energy subsidies, it would encourage competition.

But their idea is a mess. Some excerpts:

. . .we should seek out the many forms of subsidy that run through the entire energy enterprise and eliminate them. In their place we propose a measure that could go a long way toward leveling the playing field: a revenue-neutral tax on carbon, a major pollutant. A carbon tax would encourage producers and consumers to shift toward energy sources that emit less carbon—such as toward gas-fired power plants and away from coal-fired plants—and generate greater demand for electric and flex-fuel cars and lesser demand for conventional gasoline-powered cars.

How exactly does demand for electric cars increase as electricity from coal-fired power plants makes their cost of ownership go up, not to mention the carbon-tax effects on mining the materials for the “green” car’s battery? And how do “flex-fuel” ethanol powered vehicles become more popular by ending corn subsidies? 

And where to place the tax? That’s to be determined:

The tax might be imposed at a variety of stages in the production and distribution of energy. You can make an argument for imposing it at the point most visible to the population at large, which would be the point of consumption such as gasoline stations and electricity bills. An administratively more efficient way of imposing the tax, however, would be to collect it at the level of production, which would reduce greatly the number of collection points.

Or how much to tax:

The tax should also further increase over time if the apparent severity of the climate effects is growing and, alternatively, the tax should fall over time if the severity appears to be decreasing. Finally, to equalize the present and future burdens, the carbon tax rate should rise over time approximately at the real interest rate (say, the real return on 10-year Treasurys), so that the present value of the burden would be the same to future consumers and producers as it is to present ones.

Who exactly gets to decide if climate effects are growing or decreasing? The above provision makes absolutely no sense. 

Finally, although subsidies will end, there’s still a role for taxpayer-funded science:

A revenue-neutral carbon tax should be supplemented by a reasonable and sustained support for research and development in the energy area. However, we would eliminate any program (loan guarantees, etc.) that tempts the government to get into commercial activities. Clearly, a revenue-neutral carbon tax would benefit all Americans by eliminating the need for costly energy subsidies while promoting a level playing field for energy producers.

“Clearly” this doesn’t make the case for a carbon tax without a whole lot of more information and thought.

Power from the Massachusetts wind project will only cost $2 billion more than from conventional power:

Nine years into the approval battles for the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, the project is now facing four new challenges in the state’s highest court.

Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the 7,000-member business group that is the state’s biggest business lobby, and three other groups asked the Supreme Judicial Court Monday to throw out a contract the Department of Public Utilities approved last month for utility giant National Grid, on behalf of its basic-service customers, to buy half of the electric output of the 130-turbine project. 

AIM general counsel Robert J. Rio says for his business members, most of whom buy power from competitive suppliers rather than from the utility directly, stand to be whacked with millions of dollars in increased costs. “They’re not receiving power from Cape Wind, yet they have to pay for Cape Wind, and we think that is fundamentally unfair,’’ Rio said.

Compared to current rates, it’s estimated that Cape Wind power — at 18.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, rising 3.5 percent annually — will cost about $2 billion more than conventional power under the National Grid contract.

But don’t worry. If things go Cape Wind’s way — meaning global economic catastrophy — the wind power will be competitive. . .

. . .supporters say it’s likely fossil-fuel prices could soar, making Cape Wind competitive or even a bargain, and it delivers many other benefits that justify the cost, including bolstering a small but growing Massachusetts wind-power sector.

Um, note to “supporters”: natural gas prices are really low right now. Please tell me the price that will make this boondoggle competitive.

Via Anthony Watts:

In a new study, James Hansen pushes nuclear power as saving more lives than it has harmed

The whole piece here.

How will this sit with Hansen’s alarmist friends? Not well, I assume, as Al Gore — the patron saint of drowning polar bears — has listed nuclear power in his latest books in a section titled “False Solutions” and writes:

There is still a distinct possibility that the research and development of a new generation of smaller and hopefully safer reactors may yet play a significant role in the world’s energy future. We should know by 2030.

But, then again, Al Gore is not known for knowing the actual science of climate science, or else he would have long ago invested his green bucks in a company that could have utilized the Earth’s internal million-degree temperatures.

The editors of the Washington Examiner write:

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s nominee to succeed Lisa Jackson as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, should be rejected for a variety of reasons, but one in particular stands out. McCarthy — who has been EPA’s assistant administrator for the office of air and radiation since 2009 — too often operates behind closed doors in an agency with such immense regulatory powers that nothing less than maximum transparency is required to assure accountability.

A recent letter to McCarthy from Sens. David Vitter, R-La., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., points to an important example of McCarthy’s penchant for making major decisions out of the public eye. Vitter, who is the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sessions, the ranking minority member of the subcommittee on clear air and nuclear safety, want answers on McCarthy’s role in the EPA’s “sue and settle” deal on its “Startup, Shutdown and Malfunction” exemption rule. Essentially, the 40-year old SSM exempts emissions sources such as power plants from emissions compliance immediately after startup and shutdown and during malfunction periods.

The Sierra Club unsuccessfully sought SSM repeal for years. But then in the 2011 settlement of an entirely separate litigation, the EPA unilaterally and without public comment agreed to repeal SSM. As Vitter and Sessions explain in their letter to McCarthy, “EPA went out of its way to resolve the SSM petition in a coordinated settlement with the Sierra Club … These settlement agreements are often accomplished in a closed-door fashion that contravenes the executive branch’s solemn obligation to defend the law, avoids transparency and accountability, excludes impacted parties, and often results in the federal government paying the legal bills of these special interest groups at taxpayer expense.”

The rest here.

President Obama, scourge of the One Percent and friend of the earth, burned 230 tons of carbon dioxide aboard Air Force One (a gallon of jet fuel a second) on a six-hour commute to a Democratic fundraiser in the California home of green activist Tom Steyer — private equity billionaire and founder of Farallon Capital Management.

We’re not making this up.

From the profits of his $21 billion-in-assets hedge fund, Steyer has founded NextGen Action, a group policing global -arming issues — though apparently not the issue of presidents burning oil to raise money for his green causes. No, Steyer wants to block the Keystone Pipeline to prevent 20,000 more jobs for 99 Percenters and 700,000 more barrels a day of Canadian crude oil from coming to market.

One hundred people coughed up $5,000–$34,200 Wednesday evening for the privilege of hearing guest speakers Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Steve Israel (D., N.Y.), give an update on the president’s progress towards stopping the rise of the oceans.

The green savior-in-chief will then climb aboard his armored, gas-guzzling, limo — codenamed “The Beast” — and travel with his multi-Beast motorcade to the California spread of Ann Getty, interior designer to the rich and famous. Getty’s expensive furniture graces the 10,000 square-foot, coal-burning homes of One Percenters across the globe.

Some 75 attendees will pay $32,400 a head to sit in air-conditioned splendor to raise money for Pelosi — and her commitment to end fossil fuels.

Carbon austerity for thee, but not for me.

Good riddance.

If you frack, they will come. Here’s the Washington Post headline:

European industry flocks to cheap U.S. gas

But this picture of a plant under construction in Louisiana sums it all up in one word: jobs.

I can see why environmentalists hate fracking and natural gas. Look at all the carbon emissions this will create through increased economic output in America.

The whole piece here.

These libs don’t get the irony that it’s their political philosophy that put this bureaucratic nightmare in place to begin with.

Via the Daily Mail:

The celebrities fighting to stop their homes being swept into the sea: How LA neighborhood of the stars is struggling to survive

And. . .

Homeowners said they have spent about $5 million so far for scientific studies and regulatory approvals but they have not yet completed a formal proposal for the coastal and state lands commissions.

’We have faced a bureaucratic nightmare in attempting to accomplish this project,’ said Marshall Grossman, a lawyer with a retreat on Broad Beach. 

’One would think we were attempting to build high-rise condos on a public beach.’

Even if Broad Beach residents get their sand, such erosion-fighting measures are going to remain an issue in the future.

I guess Hollywood liberals are as clueless as President Obama in determining how fast a “shovel-ready project” can be implemented.

Reuters:

Fisker Automotive, the U.S.-backed maker of luxury plug-in hybrid sports cars, has hired law firm Kirkland & Ellis to advise it on a possible bankruptcy filing, a source said on Thursday, while executives continue their search for a strategic investor.

 The company, based in Anaheim, California, furloughed its U.S. work force this week to preserve cash.

Anup Sathy, a bankruptcy lawyer at Kirkland who handled the Chapter 11 filings of General Growth Properties and Innkeepers USA Trust, is advising Fisker, the source said.

On Wednesday, two sources said the company was considering bankruptcy while it pursued alternatives.

All of the sources declined to be named because the matter is not public.