What’s been happening recently in North Carolina (NC) is a microcosm of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) story: politics versus science, ad-hominems versus journalism, evangelists versus pragmatists, etc.
The contentiousness is over one of the main AGW battlefields: sea-level rise (SLR). North Carolina happens to have a large amount of coastline and has become the U.S. epicenter for this issue.
Background
The brief version is that this began several years ago when a state agency, the Coastal Resources Commission (CRC), selected a 20± member “science panel” to do a scientific assessment of the NC SLR situation through 2100. This could have been a very useful project if there had been balance in the personnel selections, and the panel’s assessment adhered to scientific standards. Regrettably, neither happened and the project soon jumped the rails, landing in the political agenda ditch.…
Continue Reading“The proposed rules will have little, if any, impacts on mercury concentrations in the environment at a very high monetary and societal cost.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) newly proposed National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) from Coal- and Oil-fired Electric Utility Steam Generating Units and Standards of Performance for Fossil-Fuel-Fired Electric Utility, Industrial-Commercial-Institutional, and Small Industrial-Commercial-Institutional Steam Generating Units”1 failed to describe the scientific reality of natural processes and multi-factorial controls that govern the cycling of mercury (Hg) and the ultimate biomethylation and bioaccumulation processes for methylmercury (MeHg). As this report documents, this natural cycle has been taking place for at least the last 650,000 years.
According to a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on mercury,2 U.S. mercury emissions from all sources are indeed far lower than those of China and India.…
Continue ReadingGreenwire (Energy & Environmental News) ran a piece (excerpted below) that further portrays Obama faking hydrocarbon affection during a tough election year where jobs are scarce and natural gas is a leading job creator.
The article profiles Heather Zichal, Obama’s deputy assistant for energy and climate change, who has just started the job of building bridges between the Administration and the natural gas industry.
With the Administration’s environmental allies throwing natural gas under the bus, and going all out to stop drilling where natural economics dictates, the industry has learned its lesson about coalescing with the enemy.
OR, let’s hope so. After all, the industry holds the high ground in that