Heliogenic Climate Change

“The simmering conflict between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Texas officials over air quality requirements has reached the boiling point with EPA seizing control of a key permit governing the Lone Star State’s fifth-largest refinery.

In what could lead to further escalation of the row, a high-level EPA official has threatened to strip Texas of its power to issue such permits, unless the government in Austin bows to Washington’s regulatory demands.

Attention is currently focused on the Flint Hills Resources East Corpus Christi refinery. EPA says the refinery operates under a permit issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) that violates the Clean Air Act.

In a May 25 letter to Flint Hills Resources, which is owned by Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries, EPA said the company must submit a permit application to the Washington agency by September 15 or face potential fines. More ominously, the agency threatened to take similar action on more than three dozen other facilities in Texas, most along the Gulf coast where the state’s oil and gas industries are located.

The bone of contention between EPA and TCEQ is Texas’ decade-and-a-half-old practice of issuing “flexible” permits to refineries. Flexible permits place limits on emissions from an entire refinery. EPA claims emissions permits are required for each of the dozens of production units within a refinery. It is not known which of the two systems results in lower emissions, but the route preferred by EPA would undoubtedly lead to more paperwork.  …

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) blasted EPA’s move.

“The Obama administration has taken yet another step in its campaign to harm our economy and impose federal control over Texas,” he said in a press statement. “With their decision to take control of a permitting process that the Clean Air Act allows to be delegated to the states, the EPA is on the verge of killing thousands of Texas jobs and derailing a program that has cleaned Texas’ air.”  …

John Dunn, M.D., a Texas-based emergency services consultant, says there is more to the fight over air quality than meets the eye. He points out Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot is one of several state attorneys general suing EPA over the agency’s plan to regulate manmade greenhouse gases. According to Dunn, EPA may be seeking payback in its recent focus on Texas air quality.

EPA, Dunn says, has declared Texas a “rogue state” as part of a strategy to “intimidate states into submission.””  “EPA and, Texas Clash Over Air Quality Permits“

“The watchdog organisation CDM Watch has confronted the United Nations with new evidence that alleged emissions reductions from HFC-23 destruction projects under the [UN's] CDM [Clean Development Mechanism] offsetting mechanism are actually increasing global greenhouse gas emissions. The evidence was put forward in an official submission which calls for a benchmark to cut the inflated number of carbon credits generated by these projects by more than 90%.

HFC-23 is a potent greenhouse gas which is an unwanted byproduct of manufacturing the refrigerant gas HCFC-22. Under the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the destruction of HFC- 23 generates emission reduction credits that are used to fulfil commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. While all 2236 currently registered projects are estimated to generate about 1 billion credits by 2012, only 19 registered CDM HFC-23 projects would be accountable for about half of the issued credits under current rules.

Analysis of monitoring data from all registered HFC-23 destruction projects revealed that CDM HCFC-22 plants are intentionally operated in a manner to maximize the production of offset credits. The analysis indicates that because of the extra CDM revenue more HCFC-22 is produced and far more HFC-23 [is] generated than would occur without the CDM.

“The amount of HCFC-22 production and HFC-23 generation appears to be mainly driven by the possibility to generate offset credits rather than other factors”, summarizes Lambert Schneider who evaluated the data.  …

Due to the lack of action by the CDM Executive Board to address these flaws, CDM Watch has now submitted a formal proposal to revise the crediting methodology in line with UN procedures.  …

“The revision would ensure that the CDM projects achieve actual mitigation because it would remove the current financial incentive that causes plants to produce gas for the sole purpose of getting paid to destroy it …”, explains Eva Filzmoser, Director of CDM Watch.

“It’s completely unacceptable for the UN to keep issuing an inflated number of bogus credits that create vast profits for carbon trading groups and chemical companies. If the UN wishes to avoid irreparable damage to its reputation and show that is truly serious about climate mitigation, it must take action now. The CDM Executive Board must put the current methodology on hold with immediate effect and halt issuing credits until the methodology is revised,” [said] Eva Filzmoser.”  “UN Under Pressure to Halt Gaming and Abuse of CDM“

“Steve McIntyre turned out to be a key example of a “climate pacifist”. Many people in the audience [of the fourth Heartland climate conference in Chicago] were disappointed to hear that Steve McIntyre doesn’t want the hockey stick graph to be described as “fraud” and the players in the ClimateGate should only be treated as people who are wrong about something, not as evil people who did something bad.

Needless to say, a vast majority of participants disagreed with this statement much like I did (although they were almost certainly more surprised than I was because they don’t follow every detail of these events in the same detail as your humble correspondent: Steve has been consistent about these attitudes at least for a few years, although arguably not from the beginning). But McIntyre has also offered the political explanation of his attitudes:

As a Canadian, he said, he was brought up to believe that governments should govern on behalf of the people – so if CO2 were reckoned to be dangerous, it would be the duty of politicians to make laws to cut emissions.

I completely disagree with this “straightforward” conclusion, too. Even if CO2 were found to be dangerous for the global mean temperature, a rational comparison of costs and benefits would still have to take place, and a competition between possible ways how to attack the problem would have to follow.

In my opinion, it is extremely unlikely that the result of this analysis would be that there should exist laws to cut the production of CO2. Even if one CO2 doubling led to 5 °C of warming, as the insane upper ends of the IPCC intervals suggest, it would still be counterproductive for the industry to be regulated away in the coming decades. The problems caused by this warming would still be smaller than the costs of the elimination of the appropriate portion of the industries.

Moreover, there would almost certainly exist geoengineering methods to compensate for the impact of CO2 that would be vastly cheaper than the CO2 regulation. And a task for sane governments would be to help these methods to materialize – and to fight against anti-civilization tendencies that want to undermine the economy and the sources of income for the government itself.

In this sense the debate is not a “left vs right” debate. The suppression of the industry would be a bad decision for the capitalist economies much like the socialist economies – and all the grey hybrids in between. This is about a careful evaluation of costs and benefits and an impartial comparison of the alternatives – and Steve McIntyre is simply not doing that.

Because of all these reasons, Steve may be viewed as a part of the irrational and pro-government problem who just happened to discover that something is seriously wrong with the basic pillars of the system but who failed to deduce the appropriate conclusions. His not-so-right-wing politics is arguably the main cause behind this failure.”  “BBC:  Roger Harrabin about types of AGW skeptics“

“Canada’s oil sands will become the largest single source of imported oil to the United States this year, and could supply more than a third of America’s foreign oil by 2030, under an aggressive growth scenario that would have to overcome labour shortages and environmental concerns, an influential U.S. think tank said Wednesday.

The growing volume of Canadian oil sands imports “emphasizes the importance they have attained as a supply source for the United States,” Daniel Yergin, Cambridge, Mass.-based chairman of energy research firm IHS CERA, said in releasing a new report on the controversial Alberta oil projects.

Canada is already the largest source of imports for the U.S. market. But as conventional Canadian production declines and oil sands volumes grow, those non-conventional supplies are becoming increasingly critical.

In the third quarter of 2009, oil sands imports to the United States hit one million barrels a day for the first time, of total Canadian exports of 1.9 million. This year, IHS CERA expects oil sands producers to average 1.08 million barrels a day in sales to the U.S., eclipsing imports from both Mexico and Saudi Arabia, which will be declining or flat.

In the report, IHS CERA director Jackie Forrest projects production in the oil sands will grow from 1.35 million barrels a day last year, to as many as 5.7 million barrels a day by 2030 – a figure that would represent 36 per cent of anticipated American imports.  …

The IHS CERA report comes as environmental groups continue their campaign against the oil sands. Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council argued in a report released Wednesday that the development of Alberta’s “tar sands” represents … a “global disaster” because it will “all but guarantee the failure of efforts to combat global warming.”  …

The U.S. State Department has approved pipeline expansion from the oil sands into the U.S. market, saying the Alberta source was critical to U.S. energy security and its efforts to reduce dependence on Middle East oil, Mr. Pumphrey noted. However, the administration also backs climate change legislation that could impose significant additional costs on refiners that process heavy-oil imports which produce more emissions when processed.”  “Oil sands on track to be biggest source of U.S. oil imports“

“President Barack Obama today issued a memorandum directing federal agencies to develop tougher new fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks beginning in the 2017 model year and to develop fuel economy standards for medium and big trucks for the first time. This follows the new standards announced in April that will begin with the 2012 model year.  It’s not clear to me that consumers are going to want to buy the models that the Congress and the Obama Administration have decreed will be offered in 2012, but the automakers are now resigned to taking orders from their federal masters rather than their customers. My prediction is that another massive bailout of the automakers is inevitable.”  “Obama Wants To Raise CAFE Again”  Cooler Heads Digest 21 May.

“A federal judge has struck a blow for California’s water-deprived Central Valley, ruling that draconian federal water cutbacks violate human rights because — surprise! — people also belong in the ecosystem.  …

Based on a judicial ruling [in lawsuits brought by enviros], some of the most prized and productive agricultural land in the country was turned into a wasteland after its water was shut off.

The ruling was derived from an 800-page “biological opinion” put out by regulators enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act, ostensibly to protect a finger-sized fish called the delta smelt and some other wildlife. Regulators complained that smelt were getting ground up in pumping stations that brought river water from California’s north to its south, so the water had to stop.

Even the judge was appalled at being forced into the ruling but had no choice, given the law, and tried to cushion the impact.

Tuesday, that same judge, District Judge Oliver Wanger declared to federal regulators that they must consider the impact of their “draconian” actions on human communities, something they’ve never done up until now.

“Federal defendants completely abdicated their responsibility to consider alternative remedies,” Wanger wrote.

He also ripped into the environmental regulators for their junk science “guesstimates,” stating that their shut-off “lacked factual and scientific justification, while effectively ignoring the irreparable harm (their regulations) have inflicted on humans and the human environment,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.  …

It can’t happen too soon. The water shut-off has been a nightmare for California. Huge farms growing the world’s finest grapes, peaches, almonds, pistachios, plums and walnuts — as well as cotton, carrots, cantaloupe and the other lush truck crops that come out of California’s temperate weather and rich soil — have gone fallow.  …

But the worst part of these decisions is the high human cost. California’s communities have suffered terrible disruption, with unemployment as high as 45% in some towns and farm workers forced to stand in food lines for bags of Chinese-grown carrots near fields they once harvested.  …

Judge Wanger is a hero for ruling that federal water regulators must consider the impact of their rulings on human communities along with the fish they seek to protect. Americans’ rights have been trampled by out-of-control environmentalism, which at times seems to grant more rights to fish and other creatures than humans.

No community should have to bear the entire brunt of a man-made water shortage because of heartless, ignorant bureaucrats.

The judge’s ruling has restored some sanity into what has up until now been an atrocious out-of-control bureaucracy.”  “Water Sanity For Central California“

“Pressure from the British government and energy companies has encouraged the European Uniion to drop new regulations that could have led to the closure of Drax and other … coal-fired power stations within six years.

The sector was facing tougher emissions targets but has been given an extra three years’ grace period to 2019 after Britain argued it faced an “energy crunch” …

The decision follows a vote on the industrial emissions directive in the European parliament’s committee on environment, public health and food safety in Brussels. This has to be endorsed by the parliament in July but is unlikely to be rejected.”  “EU drops energy regulations that could have shut Drax“

“So about two weeks ago Sen. John Kerry, a lead author of the looming Kerry-Graham-Lieberman global warming/cap-and-trade legislation said about his bill, to disassociate from Earth Day loopiness: This is not an environment bill.

No kidding. No one on the planet claims it would change the climate in any way our most sophisticated instrumentation could discern. It’s about power.  …

Today we read in E&E Daily, from another co-sponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham: “It’s not a global warming bill to me. Because global warming as a reason to pass legislation doesn’t exist anymore. ”

Oddly, both remarkable statements have been ignored by the establishment press, slavish as they are to also seeing this agenda through to the end because, as Sen. Tim Wirth said in 1988 and Barack Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address, even if you don’t buy the excuse, their agenda is still “the right thing to do.”

[T]he issue is not the issue. The global warming then climate change then, uh, it’s jobs, that’s it, jobs, or maybe national security or…I dunno, what appeals to you? … agenda for promoting the energy-scarcity list of mandates, wealth transfers and lifestyle restrictions were just excuses for doing what these people have long insisted they, as your betters, be able to do to you.”  “Global warming:  the issue is not the issue“

“Three years ago, automakers’ support was crucial for the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act which mandated massive increases in ethanol for the Nation’s gasoline . But back then automakers hadn’t gone into the abyss financially and were looking for ways to sell more flex-fuel vehicles while securing government bailouts. Detroit needed the support of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and the political support of Big Ethanol .

But how times have changed! A few days ago the auto industry urged the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to delay raising the allowable ethanol blend in gasoline from the current 10% to 15% – citing tests which indicate that more ethanol will damage many car engines. EPA signaled last year that it would probably bend to pressure from the ethanol industry and permit the higher blend rates.

Ethanol producers like ADM have been campaigning to reinforce the ethanol mandate by forcing oil companies (and the motoring public) to consume more ethanol. This pressure has been intensified by the introduction of a new association (Growth Energy headed by former general Wesley Clark) combined with existing groups like the National Corn Growers Association, Renewable Fuels Association, American Coalition for Ethanol, Governors’ Coalition for Ethanol, the Ethanol Information and Promotion Council, Corn Refiners Association, National Biodiesel Council and many others — the coalition has practically co-opted “public dialogue” on the subject. Growth Energy alone is reportedly spending more than $2.5 million on an ad campaign hyping ethanol.

As the battle royal shapes up, many drivers of older cars sit helpless on the sidelines. Others are teaming with renegade gas station owners who refuse to convert their storage tanks for ethanol. Signs are emerging along the roadside “No Ethanol in Our Gas!” But it is getting late. If the ethanolics win this round, many cars will be damaged and owners “will be walking, eventually” according to one General Motors executive, C. Coleman Jones, who happens to head GM’s biofuel implementation program. For boat enthusiasts, motorcycle riders and other recreational vehicle owners, the higher ethanol blends could prove disastrous.

Chances of mid-level auto executives blocking the ethanol juggernaut are slim. Never mind that the older cars run fine on so-called “old fashioned (non-ethanol) gas” and those cars may well be the only transport option for many workers who are barely holding on. If EPA folds to ethanol demands this time, the sounds of screeching and clunking will be heard around the world.”  “The Threat of E15“

“State tax collections plummeted unexpectedly in April, wiping out months of steady gains that legislators hoped would ease their budget troubles and restore California’s economy faster than experts predicted.  …

Revenue for April, the biggest revenue month because it is when most Californians pay their taxes, lagged projections by nearly 30% — roughly $3 billion, according to state officials. The drop was steep enough to erase improvements recorded in each of the four previous months.  …

The April collections came almost entirely from personal income taxes. Most corporate and sales taxes have not yet been reported. If they, too, come in below projections, the state’s budget problem would grow worse.

The decline sets Sacramento back as next month’s deadline for passing a budget approaches. Lawmakers face a deficit of $18.6 billion — about 20% of general fund spending — with no easy options left for addressing it, as they have already cut state services severely and temporarily raised income, sales and vehicle taxes.  …

The Legislature’s top two Democrats, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles), spent Monday in Washington, pleading for aid from congressional and Obama administration officials.”  “Plunge in state revenue dashes hopes of an easy budget fix“

“China’s growing appetite for imported coal has ignited coal prices …

Last week, the benchmark price at Australia’s Newcastle port for thermal coal—the type burned in power plants—hit $108 a metric ton, the highest since October 2008, according to globalCOAL, an international trading platform. Australia is one of China’s biggest coal suppliers.  …

China’s coal imports in March jumped 165% from the same month last year.  …

More than 70% of China’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, and the country’s power-generating capacity is expected to expand another 10% this year.  …

[L]ast year … China import[ed] nearly 126 million metric tons [of coal] …  China swallowed more than a fifth of the 600 million tons of total seaborne-coal trade last year …  The trend has continued this year, with coal imports in the first three months of 2010 jumping 226% from a year earlier to 44.4 million tons. That is still a fraction of China’s overall consumption, which amounted to 1.4 billion tons of coal in 2008.  …

Suppliers are scrambling to keep up. Vic Svec, head of investor relations for Peabody Energy, estimated that Asia will add enough power plants in the next three years to burn the equivalent of a billion more tons of coal annually, with most of that new demand from China.”  “China ignites global coal market“

They oppose new dams, new reservoirs, new canals, pumping from the ground, pumping from rivers, and now, with a government-imposed water shortage caused by enviro lawsuits, enviros oppose a desalination plant:

“The Surfrider Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, challenging a permit that allows Poseidon Resources to withdraw 300 million gallons of seawater a day for the state’s first large seawater desalination plant.  …

In March, the State Water Resources Control Board for the third time dismissed an appeal of Poseidon’s permit filed by Surfrider Foundation and San Diego Coastkeeper.  …

In denying the appeal, the State Board upheld the Regional’s Board’s determination that the Carlsbad Desalination Project is in compliance with California Water Code by “utilizing the best available site, design, technology, and mitigation measures feasible to minimize the intake and mortality of all forms of marine life.”  …

“Poseidon Resources is pleased the State Board has denied yet another politically-motivated attempt to stop seawater desalination from becoming a part of California’s drinking water supply,” said Poseidon Resources’ Vice President Scott Maloni in March.

“After spending the better part of the past decade successfully permitting the state’s first large-scale seawater desalination plant, construction of the Carlsbad project has started and the inevitable completion of the plant cannot be derailed by opponents of seawater desalination,” said Maloni.

Phase I of Poseidon construction started in November 2009. Maloni says that during the construction and start up, the project will create 2,100 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic stimulus. The facility is scheduled to start operating in 2012.

The $320 million seawater desalination plant is expected to produce 50 million gallons of drinking water a day, about 10 percent of the water San Diego County needs.

Drinking water has been in short supply and water restrictions are a fact of life for San Diego’s growing population, located in dry southernmost California.

The Carlsbad desalination project will provide a locally-controlled, drought-proof supply of high-quality water that meets or exceeds all state and federal drinking water standards, developed at no expense to the region’s taxpayers, Poseidon says.  …

The ruling in this Surfrider lawsuit could have importance beyond the Poseidon desalination facility planned for Carlsbad. There are approximately 20 desalination facilities proposed for California.”  “Surfrider Sues to Protect Fish from California’s First Big Desalination Plant“

“Frankfurt prosecutors said on Friday they had arrested four people in Germany and Britain in connection with suspected tax evasion in carbon permit trading and 50 more people were being investigated.  …

Apart from tax evasion, the authorities were also looking into allegations of money laundering, the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office spokesman said.

“There have been raids and other measures in Britain, Denmark, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Cyprus,” he said.

The probe in Germany, where total damage is estimated at 180 million euros ($239.7 million), follows investigations in Britain, France, Spain, Norway and the Netherlands into carbon credit fraud over the last year.  …

European police agency Europol last December put the amount of damage from fraudulent EU carbon credit trading at more than 5 billion euros in the previous 18 months.”  “Germany Arrests 4 In CO2 Probe, 50 More Suspects”

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“A major cross-border investigation into alleged fraudulent trading of carbon credits has resulted in 22 UK arrests in a case linked to raids at Deutsche Bank.  …

Criminals mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland are estimated to have pocketed €5bn (£4.5bn).”  “Tax officers arrest 22 in UK carbon fraud probe”

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“The raids come after Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, last December issued a warning that ETS fraud had resulted in around €5 billion in lost revenues.

In announcing its investigations into the pan-European racket, the agency said that as much as 90 percent of the entire market volume on emissions exchanges was caused by fraudulent activity.”  “Anti-fraud investigators swoop on EU emissions traders“

We’ll find out in November whether enough voters in über-liberal California have been deprogrammed from the carbon cult:

“Leaders of a drive to suspend California’s … greenhouse gas emissions law claim they will submit enough voter signatures Monday to place the issue before voters.

The California Jobs Initiative Campaign will submit more than the required 435,000 voter signatures to qualify for the November ballot, spokeswoman Anita Mangels said.

“We’re headed to the ballot,” she said.

The campaign targets Assembly Bill 32, pushed four years ago by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders to require California to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The proposed initiative would suspend AB 32 until the state’s unemployment level drops to 5.5 percent for at least a year.  …

“Voters have a right to have a say in whether the the state is going to risk a million jobs, or more, and to spend billions of dollars on programs that will not have any impact on global warming,” Mangels said.”  “Drive to Suspend AB32 will submit voter signatures Monday“  h/t NC Media Watch

“California has created only 48,000 “green jobs” over the 13 years from 1995 to 2008. Green jobs still make up only 1 percent of California’s economy. Worse, says State Senator Bob Dutton, the high energy taxes needed to create those few green jobs are at the same time killing millions of jobs in all sorts of industries across the state. California’s unemployment has soared from less than 5 percent to more than 12 percent since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act three years ago.

The governor promised that the global warming tax would “create a whole new industry to pump up our economy, a clean-tech industry that creates jobs, sparks new cutting-edge technology and will be a model for the rest of the nation and the rest of the world.” Instead, the global warming taxes will drive up the prices of all non-renewable energy—as they were intended to do.

California taxpayers will now pay for wind turbines and solar panels made in China, while California has lost more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs. Business relocation specialist Joseph Vranich says he’s working full time to help companies flee California’s rising costs and restrictions. He warns that no one is calling about moving into the Golden State.  …

The Wall Street Journal reports the Southern California Public Power Authority is warning of a 30 percent hike in electric rates. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has told business to expect a 21 percent hike this year. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says the city must raise rates because “the State is breathing down our necks . . . where we could be looking at fines of $300 million [in 2012] and $600 million on top of that.””  “Green jobs or shale gas?  The numbers talk“

“The [New Zealand] Government said yesterday it would probably ditch the rest of the emissions trading scheme as scheduled beyond 2013 if its major trading partners did not have schemes as well.

The scheme, already passed into law, is supposed to be a comprehensive “all sectors, all gases” scheme with a phased-in entry for different sectors.

But the confirmation by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Tuesday that he would shelve his proposed scheme until at least 2013 has forced the New Zealand Government to hedge its commitment to a full scheme.  …

Environment Minister Nick Smith said yesterday “New Zealand would be unlikely to proceed with the full obligations for the energy, transport and industrial sectors and to add additional sectors to the emissions trading scheme in New Zealand if there was not progress in other countries, particularly of trading partners like Australia, Japan and the United States.”"  “Govt may ditch emissions trading scheme”

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“Frustrated by the climate change conference in December, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is quietly moving away from her goal of a binding agreement on limiting climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. She has also sent out signals at the EU level that she no longer supports the idea of Europe going it alone.  …

Merkel will no longer endeavor to contractually implement the 2-degree target — in other words, to reach a legally binding agreement with specific reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. She doesn’t want to be snubbed again because she has realized that important countries won’t lend their support the next time around either. This was confirmed two weeks ago at the nuclear summit in Washington by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.  …

After having dreamt of achieving the great objective, now it’s time for realpolitik. Merkel and [German environment minister] Röttgen had to admit that countries like China and India will not submit to a mandatory target that others have contrived. They are continuing to pursue their climate policies, but are focusing strictly on domestic issues — and neither is willing to relinquish any of their sovereignty.”  “Merkel Abandons Aim of Binding Climate Agreement“

EPA’s proposed tailoring rule originally had a threshold of 25,000 tons of CO2 per year to trigger regulation.  EPA seems to have realized that the rule would ensnare far too many businesses in costly and futile CO2 reduction schemes.  EPA may be raising the threshold:

“The new [EPA tailoring] rules would “tailor” the emission thresholds to ensure the agency’s carbon rules would apply only to major emitters, such as power plants and factories making glass or cement. Otherwise, the Clean Air Act would require regulation of smaller businesses, overwhelming the agency’s resources.  …

The EPA has yet to finalize the emissions threshold for the rule. In the past, the agency said it would only likely consider regulating plants that emit 75,000 tonnes per year or more of carbon dioxide.”  “EPA Tailoring Rule May Slip To May“

“China said greenhouse gases from the shipping industry shouldn’t be covered by marine pollution rules because carbon dioxide isn’t a pollutant.

Emissions from ships may be better regulated by the International Maritime Organization’s council or a new international convention, said Xiaofeng Guo, a member of China’s delegation attending IMO talks in London this week.

IMO marine pollution rules are “definitely not the way because carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” he said.”  “China: Marine pollution rules shouldn’t govern ship carbon“

“One of the best-kept secrets of British politics – although it is there for all to see on a Government website – is the cost of what is by far the most expensive piece of legislation ever put through Parliament. Every year between now and 2050, acccording to Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc), the Climate Change Act is to cost us all up to £18.3 billion – £760 for every household in the country – as we reduce our carbon emissions by 80 per cent.

Last Thursday – with northern Britain again under piles of global warming – another tranche of regulations came into force, as this measure begins to take effect. New road tax rules mean that to put a larger, more CO2 -emitting car on the road will now cost £950. New “feed-in” subsidies for small-scale “renewables” mean that the installers of solar panels will be paid up to eight times the going rate for their miserable amount of electricity to be fed into the grid, with the overall bill for this scheme estimated eventually to be billions a year.

Not the least bizarre of the Government’s strategies, however, is Decc’s new Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme, requiring up to 30,000 of our largest energy users, such as ministries, councils, universities, hospitals, supermarket chains (and even “monasteries and nunneries”), to pay to register with the Environment Agency. Some 5,000 of them, using more than “6,000 megawatt hours” of electricity each year (equivalent to the needs of 1,250 homes), will then have to carry out a cumbersome audit of their carbon footprint, using “three different metrics”, in order to pay £12 for each ton of CO2 they emit – at a total initial cost estimated at £1.4 billion a year. This will eventually be contributed by all of us, either through taxes or, for instance, whenever we visit Tesco.

Even the 25,000 remaining non-participants in the scheme will still have to pay, between them, some £9.75 million to register with the Environment Agency, doubtless so they can be brought into the net at a later date. Meanwhile, as indicated by Decc’s 100-page Carbon User’s Guide, the “carbon efficiency” performance of the 5,000 participants will place them in an annual league table, with the worst performers having to pay cash penalties, to be given as bonuses to those at the top.  …

Once the scheme is established, of course, the idea is that, in future, the total amount of CO2 emitted will be capped, pushing the cost of each ton of CO2 even higher. All this and much more, such as the £100 billion the Government wants to see spent on useless wind farms, is designed to reduce Britain’s CO2 emissions within 40 years to where they were in the early 19th century.

Since we contribute less than 2 per cent of global emissions, while China continues to build a new coal-fired power station every week, these empty getures will do nothing to reduce the world’s overall “carbon footprint”. Not that this makes any difference to global warming anyway – but at least it will give the Government billions more pounds of our money, while we still have any of it left.”  “Climate Change Act has the biggest ever bill“

“Last week, a climate research centre at the University of Montreal, known by the acronym ESCER, warned that such groups are being forced to close across the country.