This from the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit,

(U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) Lisa Jackson appeared yesterday at the UN Climate Change Summit to assure the international community that the EPA will not let democracy get in the way of regulating the deadly toxic gas known as carbon dioxide at home. Her “endangerment” declaration means that CO2 will still be subject to intense regulation under the Clean Air Act, giving the White House executive power to limit CO2 emissions- even if Congress does not pass a definitive climate bill in 2010.

Cant let a little thing like democracy get in the way of policy making, now, CAN WE???

h/t: The Jawa Report

From Chronicle Energy

Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.

That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. That is the limit most countries agree is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Any bets that Obama buys into this bullshit???

H/T: The Jawa Report

The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters.

The machine was hailed as the ‘future of weather prediction’ with the ability to produce more accurate forecasts and produce climate change modelling.

However the Met Office’s HQ has now been named as one of the worst buildings in Britain for pollution – responsible for more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

It says 75 per cent of its carbon footprint is produced by the super computer meaning the machine is officially one of the country’s least green machines.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1209430/Weather-supercomputer-used-predict-climate-change-Britains-worst-polluters.html#ixzz0PUVtivSg

Source: Daily Mail

H/T: The Jawa Report

Ian Plimer has outraged the ayatollahs of purist environmentalism, the Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming, and he seems to relish the damnation they heap on him.

Plimer is a geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University,…….

Plimer, you see, is an unremitting critic of “anthropogenic global warming” — man-made climate change to you and me — and the current environmental orthodoxy that if we change our polluting ways, global warming can be reversed.

It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon with many precedents in history. Many have made the argument, too, that it is rubbish to contend human behaviour is causing the current climate change. And it has often been well argued that it is totally ridiculous to suppose that changes in human behaviour — cleaning up our act through expensive slight-of-hand taxation tricks — can reverse the trend.

But most of these scientific and academic voices have fallen silent in the face of environmental Jacobinism. Purging humankind of its supposed sins of environmental degradation has become a religion with a fanatical and often intolerant priesthood, especially among the First World urban elites.

Plimer gets especially upset about carbon dioxide, its role in Earth’s daily life and the supposed effects on climate of human manufacture of the gas. He says atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at the lowest levels it has been for 500 million years, and that atmospheric carbon dioxide is only 0.001 per cent of the total amount of the chemical held in the oceans, surface rocks, soils and various life forms. Indeed, Plimer says carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but a plant food. Plants eat carbon dioxide and excrete oxygen. Human activity, he says, contributes only the tiniest fraction to even the atmospheric presence of carbon dioxide.

Source: Vancouver Sun

General Motors is spending more money where it counts: Latin America.

The Latin American market has been generous to the struggling automaker despite struggles at home. Today, GM announced a $1 billion plan to expand its vehicle lineup in Brazil.

“We believe the Brazilian market will be very strong, will continue to grow at a rate of at least 5 percent a year and we also believe in the prospects for exports of the new models,” Jaime Ardila, GM’s chief executive for Brazil and the Mercosur region of South America, said in a statement.

Ardila added that GM showed record profits in Brazil in 2008 despite an global economic slowdown.

Reuters reports that GM will build two new compact models and expand operations at its Gravitai factory in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. The two new compacts could also be exported to African countries and other places, boosting GM’s presence elsewhere.

Thats great!

HOWEVER, the irony of it is, that Brazil ONLY ALLOWS FLEX FUEL VECHILES to be sold in their country! THEIR VEHICLES RUN ON ETHANOL ONLY!

WHY, GM, are you NOT doing this in America????

t’s a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

“If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country’s electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?” asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: “Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy.”

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely.

When did that become FUEL EFFICIENT?

So, I do some searching…… in the ’70’s, when we had the first ‘oil crunch’ the average car got about 15 MPG…. In the late 80’s, that number jumped up to about 23MPG…. AND IT HAS NOT CHANGED IN 20 YEARS!

Now, tell me… honestly… do you REALLY think they could not improve on that in TWENTY DAMN YEARS????

Doubt me? See One Decade of Innovation, Two Decades of Inaction

IT is total bullshit that the automotive industry wants us to think they can not do better than this! If they want to impress me, talk about ‘high fuel efficiency’ and 40+ MPG… THEN I’ll start believing…..

But Congress apparently has other worries. What seems to be the signature energy legislation of the 111th Congress, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, (also known as the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill) which recently emerged from the Energy & Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives, does virtually nothing to shield the economy from the devastation the coming oil crisis would no doubt cause. The bill’s renewable electricity mandate which requires utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020 would discourage the use of coal and natural gas, but since only 2% of U.S. electricity is made from petroleum it will do nothing to address our oil dependence problem. The bill’s “cash for clunkers” program which gives consumers credit for purchasing an-oh-so-slightly more fuel-efficient car – for example $3,500 for replacing a SUV or pickup truck with a model just one mile per gallon more efficient – may help drive stockpiles of unsold Detroit cars off the lots but in terms of oil dependence it is equally meaningless. Even the provisions to encourage deployment of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, while important and useful, will not affect our near-term energy security, at least until battery costs are significantly reduced.

Sadly, the one provision that could have made a difference, an Open Fuel Standard to ensure most new cars are flexible-fueled – capable of running on a variety of alcohol fuels in addition to gasoline – was watered down to meaninglessness by the Committee. Such a standard, which would add less than $100 to the cost of a new car, could have enabled drivers to choose a fuel alternative at the pump if and when gasoline prices rise to $5 a gallon.

Watch what Set America Free member Congressman Eliot Engel had to say about the bill.

A comment on GM’s bankruptcy
To see what was once a pillar of America’s industrial prowess crumbling is not a happy sight, and our hearts are with the millions of hardworking Americans that will no doubt be affected by this bankruptcy. But let’s not mince words here. Only six years ago GM promised that by 2010 it would sell 1 million hydrogen fuel cell cars. Only seven months are left before 2010 and GM hasn’t sold one. Yet, up until its last day of trading on the Dow Index the company continued to pour good money after bad and remained committed to a hopeless hydrogen vision devoid of scientific and economic merit. Time after time GM leadership came to Capitol Hill to ask for taxpayer bailout funds to keep their failing business afloat. In doing so, GM promised that it would make 50% of its cars flex-fuel vehicles by 2012. But when the moment of truth came and the House of Representatives considered including in its energy bill an Open Fuel Standard which would ensure they did just that, it was auto industry lobbyists that scuttled the move. GM is living off of our billions – $50 billion dollars of hard earned taxpayer money and counting – but refused to give Americans the minimal assurance that it would use the funds to usher us into an era of global transportation that is no longer exclusively tied to oil.

President Barack Obama’s proposed cap-and-trade system on greenhouse gas emissions is a giant economic dagger aimed at the nation’s heartland — particularly Michigan. It is a multibillion-dollar tax hike on everything that Michigan does, including making things, driving cars and burning coal.

The president is asking for a system of government limits on carbon emissions. The right to emit carbon would be auctioned off to generate revenue for more government spending programs.

Doing so will drive up the cost of nearly everything and will amount to a major tax increase for American consumers.

Such a tax will hit the Midwest particularly hard, which is why House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, told the New York Times, “let’s just be honest and call it a carbon tax that will increase taxes on all Americans who drive a car, who have a job, who turn on a light switch, pure and simple.”

MORE ‘Change we can Believe in’ propaganda…..