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hree of America’s greatest presidents – no way am I counting Teddy Roosevelt in that group [thanks, Coop!] – were dishonored by Greenpeace today when the group defaced Mt. Rushmore with a banner portraying FDR wannabe Barack Obama.  The message is ludicrous:  “America Honors Leaders, Not Politicians. Stop Global Warming.”

The banner seems to imply that Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln were not leaders.  The Greenpeace idiots should be very, very glad we have First Amendment rights in this country.  I won’t dispute that Obama’s a leader; it’s just a disagreement with Greenpeace over the way he’s leading us.  I don’t believe “honor” should be ascribed to a person who is leading America towards socialism and economic ruin.

And as for stopping global warming, pshaw.  All Obama’s policies will do is make everything more expensive; they will do nothing to significantly alter the atmosphere or the globe’s climate.  His “leadership” on cap and tax is better described as “ruinship.”

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K, gang, let’s start prepping for the Senate showdown and, hopefully, the crashing and oh- so- carbon- emitting burning of the cap and tax lunacy.  Let’s start in a chilly place that by rights should be one of the leading proponents of global warming.  Lord knows, the weather certainly could stand to get a wee bit warmer in Scotland.

But for reasons unfathomable by rational minds, Scotland has decided its proper role as a nation is to lead the lemmings off the global warming cliff.  It hails itself, claiming it has the world’s most ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals – a 42 percent reduction by 2020 and a mind-numbingly stupid 80 percent slash by 2050. Just listen to Scotland’s Climate Minister (Climate Minister?! He should be filed on the spot! Have you seen Scotland’s climate? Disgusting!) says about it all:

Scotland can be proud of this bill, the most ambitious and comprehensive piece of climate change legislation anywhere in the world. As a country, we are leading global action and expect others to follow our lead as we look to the international summit in Copenhagen this December.

I bet it’s going to be bone-chillingly cold in Copenhagen this December – big global warming confab or not.

I bring all this up because in Scotland’s goals we see what’s ahead for a cap and tax America.

Get ready for hefty fines if your household doesn’t do its part. And heftier fines if your business doesn’t. That’s now the rule in Scotland.

Prepare yourself for the Greenshirts busting into your house in search of plastic bags, or forcing your corporation to drop its theft-resistant packaging for something more easy to steal. OK, they’re not yet breaking down doors in Scotland, but they are attacking plastic bags as heinous, anti-social tools of destruction, only slightly more acceptable than the dreaded product packaging.

To incentivize thrifty Scots to part with some of their cash to reduce their carbon footprints, the Scotish Parliament has approved a 50 pound reduction in a local tax.  That sounds exactly like Obama thinking.  Everyone who pitches in to save the planet gets a tax cut.  Never mind that you’ll spend a 500, or 1,000 or 10,000 pounds to insulate your quaint cottage or install solar – that 50-pound tax cut is exactly the sort of great incentive a big government control freak would come up with. And we have more than a few of those in DC.

Not all the Scots are buying it, of course.  Here’s university prof Dr. James Buckee attempting too late to interject some rationality into all this:

“As far as reducing emissions by 80 per cent, banning the internal combustion engine, and coal-fired power stations from Scotland would not get close to doing it. This is clearly unobtainable.

“More energy has been expended on finding ways to infringe on human activity than has gone into understanding the science.”

Heh.  Loved that.  And speaking of understanding the science, there was one heck of an article in Forbes the other day, Waxman-Markey Flunks the Math.  Math is the base of all science, so that’s bad news for the Warmies. Here we go with the basics:

In the U.S., electricity is produced from these sources. If you are reading this on a handheld and can’t read Wikipedia’s wonderful pie chart, here is the breakdown:

48.9% — Coal
20% — Natural Gas
19.3% — Nuclear
1.6% — Petroleum

Got that? A tick over 88% of U.S. electricity comes from three sources: coal, gas and nuclear. Petroleum brings the contribution of so-called “evil” energy–that is, energy that is carbon- or uranium-based–to almost 90%.

The remaining sources of U.S. electricity, the renewables, are, by comparison, tiny players:

7.1% — Hydroelectric
2.4% — Other Renewables
0.7% — Other

Hydroelectric accounts for 70% of renewable energy in America. But, of course, hydro is mostly tapped out. Almost every dam that could be built has been built. Ironically enough, political opposition to building more dams comes from the same crowd of tree huggers who oppose coal, gas and uranium.

Waxman-Markey is all about punitively taxing the energy sources that make up 90 percent of our electrical generation, in order to subsidize the 10 percent that’s renewable.  Well, really 3 percent if you don’t count hydroelectric generation, which isn’t targeted for big Waxman-Markey subsidies. The author then reveals what the bill is all about; not stopping global warming, but good ol’ politics as usual:

In other words, Waxman-Markey is betting the future of U.S. electricity production on sources that now contribute 3% or supply 10 million Americans with electricity. That’s enough juice for the people in Waxman’s Los Angeles County. Or, if you prefer, for Nancy Pelosi’s metro San Francisco plus Markey’s metro Boston.

Well, what about electricity for the other 295 million? You can’t get there from here with Waxman-Markey. At very best, solar, wind and cellulosic ethanol will make 20% contributions by 2025. The smart money would bet on 10%.

Besides, those nasty ol’ Devil fuels are doing very well on the technology front, advancing at a clip that rivals or surpasses gains made in alternative energy.  Engines are cleaner and more efficient, fuels burn hotter and cleaner, and extraction and processing technologies are greener than ever.

There simply is no reason for Waxman-Markey … except for power-grabbing and money-sucking.  But there is a great alternative, an absolutely brilliant alternative, promoted today by Doug Ross:

We start with the most useless government agencies we can find. The Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, The Department of Health and Human Services, The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FCC and Amtrak. For the sake of argument, let’s say that together, they consume $250 billion a year.

Congress’ job? They would be required to cut spending for these ridiculous bureaucracies according to the following schedule (which I had a lot of fun creating — all numbers in billions).

2012 – $250
2013 – $210
2014 – $190
2015 – $160
2016  – $140
2017 – $120
2018 – $110
2019 – $100
2020 – $90
2021 – $75
2022 – $60
2023 – $50

Pay-cuts? Layoffs? Closing unnecessary facilities? Who gives a crap? That’s for them to figure out.

How do you like Cap-and-trade now, Democrats?

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ere they are, with an art hat-tip to Michelle Malkin, the Cap and Tax 8. Mary Bono Mack was a known commodity going in, apparently having suffered some transfer of her former husband’s fatal brain injury. Who are these other losers-to-be?

Mike Castle of Delaware doesn’t even have “energy” as in issue on his Web site, but the environment section makes it clear his green runs pretty deep and he’s a long supporter of cap and tax because he’s bought into the gloom and doom faction’s global warming myth.  He links to this story in the local rag:

Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., said several developments bode well for climate-change legislation: the arrival of a new president and new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the growing cooperation of businesses and the realization that such legislation will open up new market opportunities.

“I think all these things combined will give us the opportunity to see something happen in the course of this year,” said Castle, who supports a cap-and-trade program.

So his vote is really no surprise; just his party designation is.  He’s thinking about running for the Senate and this vote may have been calculated to shore up his green base for that statewide campaign.

Mark Kirk, who has signaled he’d like to run for gov, leads his web site with a video in which he promises to read every page of the bill before voting, saying he’s got a couple hours and a few hundred pages to go before the vote – how thorough a read was that?  Like Castle, he has no “energy” issue paper on his Web site. His environment paper notes that he has been ranked one of Congress’ top 13 environmental champions, for his work “saving” Lake Michigan – there’s that enviro-egomaniacal behavior again. He believes government must force America off it’s “addiction to oil,” was a co-sponsor of legislation for higher CAFE standards and is a big alternative energy funding proponent – including, of course since he’s from Illinois, ethanol – a fuel which makes no sense whatsoever, just like cap and trade.

The NY after John McHugh’s name is for upstate NY of course – it’s hard to elect a Republican anywhere else in the state – but he’s Obama’s designee for Sec. of the Army and this was payback time, pure and simple. His environment paper gives no hint that he’d vote for cap and tax, and his energy paper shows him to be pro-nuke and concerned about rising gas prices. So despite all that alligator-tear concern, he voted yes in return for a new gig.  Politics!

Now for the New Jersey trio, who could have turned the vote around if they’d all stayed with the GOP.  Let’s start with the man with the totally NJ name, Frank LoBiondo.  He with the head Sarah Palin could easily poke fun at … or mistake for a football and kick.  His Web site boldly leads off with a news release proclaiming his vote for cap and tax:

U.S. Congressman Frank A. LoBiondo (NJ-02) today voted in favor of H.R. 2454, the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” – comprehensive legislation that seeks to make the United States energy independent by focusing the nation’s energy policy toward clean, renewable sources such as wind, solar and nuclear.

“For South Jersey residents who lived through the energy crisis of the 1970s, the nation witnessed the rationing of gas, stations sold-out of fuel, and our country’s absolute reliance on foreign nations to save us from our increasing consumption. Jobs were lost. The economy sank further into recession. And the nation did not take action.

“Then, in the 1990s, there was a bitter debate over increasing fuel efficiency standards in automobiles, yet minimal action was taken despite the technological capabilities to go further. I have long said that if Congress had passed higher standards in the 1990s – standards I supported – then our consumption and annual fuel costs now would be half. However, the oil corporations and automobile makers were against such standards and now lose billions of dollars to foreign competitors who were forward-thinking, developed fuel efficient technologies and sell hybrid vehicles that get 40 to 50 miles per gallon.

“The ‘American Clean Energy and Security Act’ is the opportunity to break the cycle of inaction and finally move our nation towards real energy independence.

The Rep would do well to remember the oil excess profits tax, which dropped US oil production by 8 percent and increased imports by 13 percent. He’s a loon if he thinks cap and tax will have a less negative impact. His pre-election platform was almost straight party line – except he opposed opening off-shore oil leases and the construction of new oil refineries. We could easily see this vote coming.

Leonard Lance, the former NJ GOP senate leader, is not held in high regard by this commenter at New Republic:

Most people know that New Jersey is only second to California for financial trouble. First term Congressman Leonard Lance who lives in one of the most affluent areas of New Jersey, Hunterdon County was an unsuccessful lawyer in Clinton New Jersey and practiced under the wing of his father, a useless State Senator.

Like LoBiondo, Lance has a news release on his site heralding his monstrous vote as “a vote for energy independence:”

I am voting for this bill because it is time America turned the corner and took bold action to clean the environment and develop alternative energy. We cannot allow countries whose opposition to democracy and support for terrorism grow with every barrel of oil they sell to continue to dominate energy politics.

Yeah, I’m with him on that; he just picked the wrong legislative vehicle to accomplish that end. The computer didn’t become dominant because Congress put a hefty tax on typewriters. Like LoBiondo, Lance is blitheringly ignorant of basic economy, which makes him de facto not a Republican.

Rounding out da three guys from Joisey is Chris Smith of Trenton, who unlike his gang brothers, isn’t discussing his vote on his Web site.  Smith co-authored a bill with cap and trade co-author Ed Markey that would spur global investment in alternative energy (a great alternative to cap and tax!) and writes on his environment paper:

As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I believe it is equally imperative that we address environmental issues—such as climate change—on a global scale. Global warming is a real threat and an increasing danger to our environment. All major greenhouse emitting countries need to cooperate in reducing and stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of these gases, and the United States must play a leadership role in bringing nations together for a global solution to climate change.

That sure isn’t what Waxman-Markey will accomplish.  By penalizing the US, it will only encourage cheaper, dirtier uses of energy elsewhere.  NJ conservative political blogger Chris Wysocki writes of Smith’s vote:

And Chris Smith? WTF? He’s usually a level-headed thinker. He fights the good fight for children and victims of the bureaucratic behemoth. So why in the world did he vote to escalate the power of that behemoth by a thousand fold? He just consigned hundreds, if not thousands, of his constituents to the unemployment line. Their employers won’t be able to afford to keep the lights on, never mind maintain their current staffing levels. Thanks Congressman, you screwed us, and we’ll work to screw you back.

That brings us to Dave Reichert of the Peoples Republic of Washington, whose “yes” vote was long suspected. In a news release on his Web site, he admits “this bill is not perfect.”  He should have ended it there, before the “but” that took us to the now-expected explanation that it’s all about energy independence – the standard RINO excuse for voting for this bill. He even goes so far to laud the progressive Teddy Roosevelt – you know, as in “Progressive” – for his conservation ethic, without noting that Teddy pushed America down the road to big, obtrusive government.

There was no decent excuse to be had from any of the eight.  Those that are seeking higher office obviously thought this an intelligent political play – but it’s unlikely now that any of them will survive the primaries in their states.  A couple appear to be dyed in the wool greens.  All of them certainly are going to be recipients of future earmarks – keep your eyes open for that!  And none of them deserve the honor of having an “R” after their names.

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axman-Markey, the bill that would euthanize our sick economy in a Quixotic quest to save the planet, has passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and GE/NBC honcho Jeff Immelt couldn’t be happier.

The bill, presumably watered down to secure the votes of Dems wanting to appear less than full-bore loon, proposes to radically change America’s energy infrastructure and economy. It would impose an Obama-draconian 17 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2020 – just 10 years from when it’s likely to go into effect. Then it gets much, much worse: a 42 percent cut in the next ten years, and an 83 percent cut from 2005 levels in the next ten.

The only way to accomplish that is to tax cheap, abundant fuel out of existence in favor of unproven, unreliable, more expensive alternative fuels – or to go nuke big-time. But as currently written, Waxman-Moxley includes not a single incentive for nuclear power.

Surveying this mess, frequent commenter Francis came up with a Q&A for this bill, its authors, and the 32 Dems and 1 Republican (Sunny Bono’s former wife Mary, RINO-CA):

A reduction in greenhouse gases? No.

Stable global climate? No.

Reductions in sea level rise? No.

A robust new “green” economy? That’s debatable, but I would argue “no.”

Payback to GE/NBC for all-positive news coverage of Obama? Absolutely.

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he Dems dream of a vast new IRS is still alive even as Congressional Dems back off from Obama’s concept – cap and trade as a tax – in favor of a seemingly less onorous cap and trade as a grant concept. But that darn Congressional Budget Office just keeps on pointing out the obvious: No matter how its structured, cap and trade will be an economic Katrina on the American economy.

The CBO has issued a second letter opining on the Dem scheme, WashTimes reports:

Congress’ chief scorekeeper says the global warming bill moving through Congress will either be scored as a major tax increase or a massive expansion of the federal government – and either one could give opponents substantial ammunition to complicate Democrats’ efforts to pass a bill.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in a letter sent last week to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, said Democrats’ approach of creating allowances for emitting greenhouse gases requires developing from scratch a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars. …

The six-page CBO letter also listed repeated examples of situations in which, for purposes of the federal budget, it will assume that the cap-and-trade approaches will dampen businesses’ income, meaning less revenue to the federal government.

The Dem response?  Well, they’re trying to work with CBO.  They figure that maybe if they threaten the CBO budget or start making personal attacks on its staff, they’ll be able to get the watchdogs to change a couple assumptions and come out with a rosier report. In other words, they’re not looking at the bill, seeing it for what it is and deciding to wait until the economy is back on its feet to cut its legs out from under it.  Instead, they remain intent on kicking the economy while its down and want to get fudged numbers to excuse their action.

Meanwhile, the environmental lobbying machine is busy discounting the CBO:

Dan Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center, said the CBO will still have to issue a final score on the bill when it passes the committee, and NRDC hopes the letter is not the last word.

“What they have left out of their analysis is the benefit to consumers of energy efficiency – that actually lowers their bills. I don’t see anywhere in this long set of examples this accounts for that,” Mr. Lashof said.

That’s because the CBO hasn’t yet come up with the metrics to measure pipe dreams and fantasies.  There is no energy efficient replacement immediately available that would allow us to avoid the immediate impacts of cap and trade. As one commenter to the WashTimes story sarcastically put the Dem view of things,

The CBO is full of partisan hacks who want to do nothing more than destroy this once great nation. But, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center is a straight down the middle lovable group who would never do anything that might tear apart the very foundations of our economy.

The new bill gives the GOP and blue dog Dems some hope that cap and trade might be the first Obama policy initiative to fall flat on its face.  That certainly must be the goal, both to protect the economy from Warmie lunacy and to signal an end to the devastating run Obama’s enjoyed.

Do your part. Write your member of Congress and demand they tell you before they vote how the bill will impact your power bill and the price at the pump.  Keep asking; hold them to it.

Art: The Talk of the Times 

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he Center for Biological Depravity Diversity was its hyperbolic self yesterday in an email sent to its supporters (and watchers, like me):

[Interior Sec. Ken] Salazar confirmed our worst fears for his tenure as Secretary of the Interior — he announced that he will adopt Bush’s polar bear extinction plan …

You have to hand it to the folks at the CBD; they know how to gin up the language, turning a simple rule that allows the careful, ongoing use of existing oil production facilities as “Bush’s polar bear extinction plan.” Of course, it’s easier to turn a phrase like that when you don’t need to worry about facts, ethics or honesty like the rest of us.

Leaving CBD’s hyperbole aside, here’s what Salazar did, from DOI’s news release:

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced today that he will retain a special rule [a "4(d) rule"] issued in December for protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, but will closely monitor the implementation of the rule to determine if additional measures are necessary to conserve and recover the polar bear and its habitat. …

Section 4(d) of the ESA allows the Fish and Wildlife Service to tailor regulatory prohibitions for threatened species as deemed necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of the species. Hence, the special rule is referred to as a 4(d) rule. …

The rule also states that incidental take of polar bears resulting from activities outside the bear’s range, such as emission of greenhouse gases, will not be prohibited under the ESA.

“Incidental take” means harming, harrassing or killing, when done incidental to other legal activities; stated less bureaucratically, it means “not deliberate.” The polar bear is classified as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, so if you go out and just shoot one for sport, you’re in big trouble. But with Salazar’s action yesterday, it remains legal to go about the legal activities of maintaining oil production facilities and exploring for oil on oil lease land, even if by some unprovable nexus, your activities cause a chunk of ice to melt, a polar bear to tumble into the sea, somehow forget how to swim, and drown.

The greens pushed hard to get the polar bear listed as endangered, because the 4(d) rule can only be applied to threatened species, not endangered ones.  Bush was justified in not listing the polar bear at all – their populations are stable, even growing in some regions, and there’s no proof that polar icemelt is permanent; indeed, last winter’s ice build-up was record-breaking.  But in one of his weaker moves, Bush gave in and took the middle ground, listing it as threatened and writing the 4(d) to protect energy production and other activities.

I’ve lived through this myself.  In the early 1990s, Hugh Hewitt and I orchestrated the campaign to keep the California gnatcatcher from being listed under Cailfornia’s ESA, then eked out a “threatened” listing from the incoming Clinton administration, dodging the “endangered” bullet.  As a result, thousands of new homes and commercial/industrial facilities were built that otherwise would have been stopped dead by the less flexible endangered listing.

And the gnatcatcher, God bless it, is thriving.

The same will certainly be true of the polar bear, which has survived previous warming spells.  I’m not sure if the same can be said now of Obama’s cap and trade tax movement, which is already unpopular in Congress.  If you doubt the signficance of the hurdles Obama’s facing with this madcap scheme, just ask the free market: The price of CO2 credits has dropped dramatically.

Now Obama must defend the urgency of imposing cap and trade on a crippled, job-shedding economy even while admitting through Salazar’s action that things really aren’t all that urgent.  If global warming were the immediate threat the hysterics Obama campaigned to say it is, Salazar would have suspended the 4(d) rule at a minimum and could have even re-opened the process to go for an endangered listing.

That  he didn’t is solid evidence that the Obama administration is watching gas prices, which are beginning to creep up again.  They know that a repeat of last year’s run-up in gas costs will spell doom to cap and trade, and cost any politician who’s anti-drilling points in the polls.  So to keep his numbers up and the changes of cap and trade alive, Obama approved the continuation of the 4(d) in spite of howling opposition from the environmentalists.

That he could make so politic a trade at the expense of the polar bear (at least that’s how the Greenies put it) can only be read as proof that Obama doesn’t view global warming and cap and trade to be issues as important as his own popularity.  Smart opponents of cap and trade just got some powerful new ammunition, and I hope they’re loading their legislative and rhetorical weapons as I write.

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e are told by the environmental movement that America must take the lead on carbon economic suicide, and pass cap and trade legislation pronto, so the rest of the world will follow:

“Unless we show that we are capable and willing to regulate and limit our emissions, we are not going to get an international agreement.” David Bookbinder, Sierra Club chief climate counsel.

I’m sure you recall Bookbinder at the forefront of the pro-war in Iraq movement, saying that if we go into Iraq, all our allies will follow and Islamist extremism will soon be on the run. Not. However, given his position, we can be assured that Bookbinder is well aware of the position of other nations on cap and trade. He just chooses to ignore what they’re saying.

“If the question is whether India will take on binding emission reduction commitments, the answer is no. It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce when 40 percent of Indians do not have access to electricity.” — Member of the Indian delegation to the recent UN climate conference in Bonn

So, to recap for the environmentally and economically adrift: We put a loaded cap and trade pistol to the head of our economy and pull the trigger because, you know, it’s the right thing to do so high priced alternative power can become falsely competitive. As a result, an insignificant change in global weather occurs, which may or may not be related to our action.

Meanwhile, China and India and everyone else with their heads screwed on right gain economic advantage over us, so we have less money to spend on high priced alternative energy systems, and continue to generate greenhouse gases to their hearts content.

But these are mere facts. They will not sway the fundamentalist faith of the global warming religion, which must sacrifice others to protect Gaea.

Hat-tip: Inhofe

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t’s as if the economy were robust, spewing out money to burn.  It’s like everyone agreed there was an imminent threat of global environmental collapse because of human activity.  It’s as if everyone was eagerly awaiting higher costs to everything.

It’s as if the Dems didn’t have a brain in their heads:

House Democratic leaders unveiled a sweeping plan to fight climate change and boost renewable energy this morning, including mandates for renewable electricity nationwide and a market-based system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The plan … is a “discussion draft” authored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D- Beverly Hills), the committee chairman, and Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming. Among the bill’s provisions:

* A nationwide mandate for renewable energy — such as wind, solar and biomass — in electric power generation, starting at 6% in 2012 and rising to 25% by 2025.

Shall we discuss the cost of developing that infrastructure out of thin air?  Or the plausibility of the entire concept?  Or the need, considering our coal, oil and natural gas reserves, our hydroelectric capabilities and potential, a nuclear industry just waiting to re-emerge?  (All quotes from the LA Times, BTW.)

* A “cap-and-trade” program to restrict greenhouse gas emissions by requiring utilities and other emitters to hold “allowances” for the carbon dioxide they send into the atmosphere. The level of allowances would shrink annually to reduce carbon emissions to 3% below 2005 levels by 2012, to 20% below 2005 levels by 2020 and to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050.

Shall we discuss this a bit?  I did with the American Petroleum Institute earlier today, and here’s what the good folks there told me:

API hasn’t taken a position on the topic of cap-and-trade per se, but we have been very outspoken about the potential costs of the cap-and-trade proposal in the administration’s 2010 budget.

Based on the administration’s initial estimate, it appeared the proposal would generate $646 billion in revenues.  Our calculations indicate that about 60% of that would come from oil and natural gas, which equates to about $400 billion. Later administration estimates indicated that the revenues could be three times the $646 billion figure, so it appears the burden on this industry – and on consumers – could be much higher than originally anticipated.

You’d think that before madcap schemes are introduced for discussion, someone somewhere might have a handle on how much destruction the proposal will cause family budgets across America.  But really – $646 billion or three times that amount; do we really need either?

* A national standard, akin to California’s, limiting carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles and a new low-carbon fuel standard to further support bio-fuels and low-emission alternatives to gasoline.

Can we discuss this?  Is this really what the automobile industry needs right now?  Perhaps it would be better to get them back on their feet again before cutting them off at the ankles.

Remember, no alternative technologies are ready for market without cap and trade to penalize existing technologies.  They cannot produce enough energy, and they cannot produce it cheaply enough. Cap and trade is just a fancy name for government tromping all over the free market in the name of “saving the planet.”

The planet doesn’t need saving.  The economy does.  And the free market’s on life support.

P.S.: The LA Times report quoted several environmentalist, most of whom were positively giddy about the day’s development.  I sent the reporter this email:

Just read your story and was amazed to find that apparently there wasn’t a single source from industry anywhere for you to get a quote from. Really? Just representatives of environmental groups?

Guess what?  No response.

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Environmental fanaticism comes at a price.  When you start trying to eliminate hydrocarbon byproducts from the atmosphere, it’s messy, costly, and it puts people out of business.  There’s no need to wait for Obama to impose a $2 trillion cap and trade dead weight on the economy – it’s happening right now.

By April 1, the California Air Resources Board (that’s CARB to you folks who like clever acronyms) wants every single gas nozzle in the state replaced with an $11,000 nozzle that’s reportedly cleaner than the costly vapor recovery nozzles they mandated a few years back.  When you figure most stations have six to eight pumps, the cost of fitting the new nozzles on is $66,000 to $88,000.  And that spells trouble, according to the OC Watchdog:

At least 51 independently owned gas stations in Orange County are in danger of closing next month because of costly new regulations implemented by the state. …

“We’re not talking about Chevron. We’re not talking about BP,” said Tom Kise, spokesman for the Responsible Clean Air Coalition. “It could be the guy, or gal, who owns just one gas station,” he said. …

“I think it’s going to be pretty bad,” said David Berri, who figures only three or four of his family’s 22 SoCal gas stations will be ready by April 1.

The rest of the stations might close, he said, putting a tragic end to a rough stretch that’s seen the family lay off employees and lose as much as 50 percent of their revenues.

Even worse, Berri predicted that so many other stations will have to close that gas prices could go up. At the very least, he said it’ll be more difficult to find a place to fill up.

In all, some 3,400 of the 11,000 affected gas stations in California have yet to comply with the regulations. One hundred fifty of them have formed the Responsible Clean Air Coalition to beg the state to delay implementation.

According to the Coalition, the best and most cost-effective of three systems that meet the CARB regs was not approved until just five months ago, so there’s been little time to comply, especially since the credit crunch has made it hard for many small operators to get the capital for the change-over.  Most gas stations are small operations, since the big oil companies have gotten out of the retail business.

Worse, says the Coalition, the manufacturers of compliant equipment know they’re the only CARB-blessed game in town and have been raising their prices.

California already has vapor-retrieving nozzles on its pumps. Californians already pay more than most other Americans because of CARB-mandated refining requirements.  Our air is far, far cleaner than it was at the peak of our air pollution problems, but remains non-compliant primarily because CARB and the feds keep setting higher standards, so this kind of nonsense can be imposed on us.

But, hey, that’s just gas nozzles in one state.  It’s nothing compared to carbon taxes on everything you buy, from hamburgers to houses.

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all Street was down today but eked out its first positive week in quite some time – but don’t look for a continuation Monday as, first, the Congressional Budget Office said today Obamarx’s budget will produce losses $2.3 TRILLION worse than the White House predicts ($9.3 trillion worth from 2010-2019) and second, that the Obamarxists say damn the torpedoed economy, they’re not going to cut a single program.

Included in the programs they’re not about to cut is their greenhouse gas cap and trade program, which received endorsement of a Discovery Channel feature on alternative energy Incredible Wife and I watched this week.  With every single new technology they showed, someone looked earnestly into the camera and said:

“We need carbon emission cap and trade for this to work.  Without that financial incentive, this technology is just an overpriced waste of time and money.”

Or something to that effect.  Translation:  Unless the fuels you use get crazy expensive, you’d never be crazy enough to use the fuels the Greenies want you to use.  The price tag of this little incentive program for clean energy?

President Obama’s climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House’s initial estimate of the so-called “cap-and-trade” legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House.

A top economic aide to Mr. Obama told a group of Senate staffers last month that the president’s climate-change plan would surely raise more than the $646 billion over eight years the White House had estimated publicly, according to multiple a number of staffers who attended the briefing Feb. 26.

“We all looked at each other like, ‘Wow, that’s a big number,’” said a top Republican staffer who attended the meeting along with between 50 and 60 other Democratic and Republican congressional aides. (WashTimes)

How reassuring do you find it that they had no clue what the program was going to cost?  But so what? Who cares? Obamarx says larger deficits and larger than expected costs for his programs mean nothing to him.

“What we will not cut are investments that will lead to real growth and prosperity over the long term. That’s why our budget … enhances America’s competitiveness by reducing our dependence on foreign oil and building a clean energy economy.”

Enhances competitiveness by making everything we make, everything we grow, more expensive?  Please explain – without a teleprompter – how that works.

But no matter. Whether we want to do it or not, we have to do it to save the fragile planet, which without alternative energy and an end to greenhouse gas over-emitting, will soon be awash in seawater from rising oceans.  Riiiiight …

How many times have you seen the word “collapse” used lately to describe what could unfold should human-caused global warming, and more particularly warming seas, erode the West Antarctic Ice Sheet? (One metric: A Google search for “West Antarctic Ice Sheet” and “collapse” gets 29,800 hits.)

The word is used again in the headline on one of two new papers in the journal Nature focusing on past comings and goings of that huge expanse of ice. But this paper, by David Pollard at Penn State and Robert M. DeConto of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, provides an estimated time frame for the loss of ice that its authors say should be of some comfort. (If the sheet melted entirely, sea levels worldwide would rise more than 15 feet.)

Dr. Pollard and Dr. DeConto ran a five-million-year computer simulation of the ice sheet’s comings and goings, using data on past actual climate and ocean conditions gleaned from seabed samples (the subject of the other paper) to validate the resulting patterns.

The bottom line? In this simulation, the ice sheet does collapse when waters beneath fringing ice shelves warm 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit or so, but the process — at its fastest — takes thousands of years. Over all, the pace of sea-level rise from the resulting ice loss doesn’t go beyond about 1.5 feet per century, Dr. Pollard said …. (NYT)

That’s less than a quarter inch a year – the same amount the ocean’s been rising for the last 100,000 20,000 years or so [corrected], more than 19,800 years before human involvement (what a joke!) in our climate.  And in case you missed that attribution, folks, it says NYT, as in the New York Times – hardly a bastion of anti-Warmie journalism.

Yet Obamarx marches on with his scheme of cap and trade, despite the damage it will do to an economy that is far more stretched and fragile than he admits, despite the fact that there is no immediate threat from global warming. There’s a word for that. Demagoguery.

We may have a horrible government, but we’ve got a beautiful language.

Hat-tip: Jim. Art: Minnesotans for Global Warming

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