U.S. Navy Shut Down Climate Change Task Force.  The U.S. Navy shut down its Task Force Climate Change (TFCC), which was established by President Barack Obama in 2009, reported E&E News' Greenwire.  The closure was quiet and occurred in March, according to Greenwire, and "the group's tab on the Navy's energy, environment and climate change website was removed sometime between March and July."  The purpose of the TFCC was to evaluate how climate change affects or could affect Naval and national security operations.

US Navy ends Obama's climate change task force as Trump rolls back environmental initiatives.  The US Navy quietly shuttered a task force created under former President Barack Obama to prepare the military branch for the impact of global warming, reportedly saying the team was "no longer needed".  Its ending, which happened in March and was first reported on Tuesday [8/27/2019] by the environmental site E&E News, reflects a trend under Donald Trump in which federal agencies have shuttered operations designed to combat climate change nationwide and around the world.  Before the president seemingly fired former Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, the career military official wrote in 2017 to the Senate Armed Services Committee:  "Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today."

A Democrat Deflates a Trump 'Scandal'.  [Scroll down]  Here is a Democratic lawmaker, steeped in a home-state issue, calling this what it was:  an Obama administration perversion of policy and law, done to appease green donors.

Top Obama Official Stabs Him In The Back With Huge Admission About Obama's Juicy Secret.  Now, we have known for years that the Obama administration lied to the American people.  The former administration would do play the slight of hand trick to fool the masses.  When conservatives would call them out for their dirty tricks, we would be called racists.  Now the truth is finally being revealed, but what will be done about it all?  According to an Obama former aid, climate change data was faked in order to garner more backers to support his cause and rack up as many votes as possible.

Former Obama Official Says Bureaucrats Manipulate Climate Stats To Influence Policy.  A former member of the Obama administration claims Washington D.C. often uses "misleading" news releases about climate data to influence public opinion.  Former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told The Wall Street Journal Monday that bureaucrats within former President Barack Obama's administration spun scientific data to manipulate public opinion.  "What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I'd say, misleading, sometimes just wrong," Koonin said, referring to elements within the Obama administration he said were responsible for manipulating climate data.

Barack Obama takes swipe at Trump's attitude on environment.  Former U.S. President Barack Obama took a swipe at President Donald Trump's attitude to the environment Wednesday [9/26/2018], saying the world needs "political and social commitment" to achieve sustainability.

10 Ways Big Government Harms You.  [#10] Big government rewards failure and punishes success.  When the Obama administration came into power, one of its stated goals was to promote green energy.  To that end, it began a program of subsidizing various green energy businesses with taxpayer dollars.  One of those companies was Solyndra, a company whose business model revolved around the production of specialized solar power panels.  The Solyndra venture collapsed costing taxpayers nearly $500 million in lost tax money.  As Solyndra headed in to bankruptcy, the federal government then sought to reward its investors by giving them tax breaks to use when Solyndra emerged from bankruptcy.  The government was first investing in failure and then rewarding that failure.

Obama's third term: 13 times courts said Trump must continue Obama's lawless policies.  [#11] Trump must regulate drainage ditches:  In 2015, Obama declared that seasonal runoffs and ponds in your backyard are now "navigable" waters subject to federal water regulations.  Trump merely restored the commonsense policy in place since 1980, defining navigable waters as, you know, waters that transport commercial ships, not breeding grounds for mosquitos.  But Judge David Norton, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that Trump must continue Obama's policy, despite a Georgia judge finding the policy itself to be unconstitutional.

The Obama Legacy Deserves To Be Destroyed.  You'll remember the panic-stricken coverage we endured when the United States withdrew from the faux international Paris climate agreement last year.  It's true that the deal was oversold as a matter of policy (by both parties for political reasons), but it was symbolic of how the Obama administration concerned itself more with international consensus than domestic compromise.  We know this because the president would never have won ratification for a deal remotely similar to the one he entered — nor did he attempt to.

Here are 1,366 well sourced examples of Barack Obama's lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc..  [#98] In May 2008, Obama said, "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times .. and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."  However, just one week later, Obama was photographed exiting an SUV.  In addition, Obama keeps the White House thermostat turned up so high that David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, said, "He likes it warm.  You could grow orchids in there."  Environmentalists criticized Obama for eating Wagyu beef, which was called "the Hummer of beef."  Obama had a chef fly round trip from St. Louis to Washington D.C. so he could make Obama's favorite pizza.

Remember when Obama picked the 'winners' and 'losers'?  People who wanted to protect wildlife were also big losers under Obama, because while he would fine oil companies if they killed protected birds, wind and solar panel farms, killed far more wildlife were treated much more softly.  Meanwhile, the Animas River, which is a sacred waterway to Americans Indians in the Colorado region, was flooded with toxic chemicals in the Gold King Mine scandal in 2015, by Obama's Environmental Protection Agency.  Not a one of those who committed the blunder was punished, yet American Indians were left holding the bag.

Trump's First Year vs.  Obama's Eight Years.  Here are President Obama's main accomplishments over eight years:  [#3] The Paris Climate Accord:  This transferred a massive amount of money and power from the U.S. private sector to its government and in turn transferred money from the U.S. to other countries.  The policy is based on the belief that climate change/global warming exists and is the greatest threat to the world.  So does Iran sponsor terrorists because of climate change?  Does North Korea build nuclear weapons because of climate change?  Does Russia take over more territory because of climate change?  Do refugees from Syria and other countries escape because of climate change?  CO2 is a clear, innocuous, non-polluting gas that allows plants to thrive and the billions of people to be fed.  The reason Obama and other people want to regulate it is to have government control.  But this accord certainly did not have its goal to make the U.S. stronger.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is out of control and we should all be concerned.  The Obama era tradition of bureaucratic overreach is alive and well in the Fish and Wildlife Service.  Using an endangered frog, the Fish and Wildlife Service is attempting to dictate how private landowners use their land.  The saga of the dusky gopher frog is lengthy, but one perfectly illustrative of federal government overreach into the rights of the private citizenry.  Protecting endangered species is part of the function of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but a recent string of court decisions, based on a classic sue-and-settle case, has given the agency virtually unlimited power.  And it's all thanks to a frog.

Did the Obama White House Collude with a Politically Motivated Scientist?  Following allegations of impropriety over the handling of a controversial climate change report, a government watchdog group now wants to know whether there was any collaboration between the report's lead author and a key Obama adviser.

Barack Obama transfers $500m to Green Climate Fund in attempt to protect Paris deal.  Barack Obama has heeded calls to help secure the future of the historic Paris agreement by transferring a second $500m instalment to the Green Climate Fund, just three days before he leaves office.  The fund was a key aspect of the Paris agreement signed in 2015, which aims to keep global warming "well below" 2[°]C and aspires to keep warming to 1.5[°]C.  Established in 2010, it is financed by wealthy countries and used to assist developing countries with adaptation and mitigation.  It was widely seen as a key measure to bring both rich and poor countries to the negotiating table.  The US committed to transferring $3bn to the fund.  The new instalment leaves $2bn owing, with the incoming president, Donald Trump, expected to cease any further payments.

Obama Wastes Another $500 Million for UN Climate Fund.  Of course, this money will go to dictators and bad guys in many areas.  Well, the money that makes it out of the hands of the United Nations, which doesn't exactly have a great track record of competence and fiscal responsibility.  And, what money makes it beyond the greedy hands of  3rd world  developing nation leaders, will be position as being from the UN, rather than the United States.  Obama's just throwing money that taxpayers earned with hard work away, and all for nothing.

Where did he find $500 million?
Obama gives another $500 million to Green Climate Fund.  The Obama administration approved another $500 million contribution for a United Nations' climate fund on Tuesday [1/17/2017], a move that is expected to infuriate Republicans who have sought to stop the payments.  The payment to the U.N. Green Climate Fund was approved for the second year in a row.  The payments are part of the U.S.'s obligation under the Paris climate change agreement.

Obama administration announces controversial Utah and Nevada national monuments.  The Obama administration designated 1.6 million acres of Utah and Nevada as national monuments Wednesday, including one controversial area of Utah that is rankling congressional Republicans.  The White House announced the 1.35 million-acre Bear Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah and the 300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument just outside of Las Vegas.  The two desert monuments have long been discussed as possible monument designations, and President Obama said it was time to protect important Native American spaces and natural wonders.  He said the areas contain cultural artifacts, including rock art and archeological sites, and lands that Native Americans consider sacred.

Obama expected to bar drilling in swaths of Atlantic, Arctic.  President Barack Obama is expected to order wide swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans placed permanently off-limits for oil drilling, people briefed on the administration's plan said, in an 11th-hour push for environmental protection before he leaves office.

President Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic ocean.  President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.  Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia.  In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.

President Obama's Last-Minute Monument Decision Is Wrong for Utah.  Many of you have been fighting with me over the past six years to prevent President Barack Obama from designating additional national monuments in Utah.  Now, unfortunately, we are hearing that the president is planning to follow through with the threat to designate the Bears Ears National Monument.  In her confirmation hearings, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell committed to ensuring that there would be local support for a monument before recommending monument designation to the president.  There is not nearly enough local support for the Bears Ears National Monument to justify designating it.

Last Obama 'climate change' spending frenzy: $90M.  Before leaving office, President Barack Obama is sneaking in one last attempt to fund his "global warming" agenda — a move that could cost American taxpayers another $90 million if he successfully persuades Asian cities to adopt his plan when he travels there during the last month of his second and final term.  The outgoing president's push to throw millions into his exorbitant climate change initiative is a last-ditch effort to fund and keep his clean energy legacy before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in January.  However, Obama's final spending frenzy is nothing new.

The Obama administration lawlessly rewards its supporters and punishes its enemies.  The United States was born out of a revolution against, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, an "arbitrary government" that put men on trial "for pretended offences" and "abolish[ed] the Free System of English laws."  Brave men and women stood up to that oppressive government, and this, the greatest democracy of them all, one that is governed by the rule of law and not by men, is the product.  Some of our states have forgotten this founding principle and are acting less like Jefferson and Adams and more like George III.  A group of Democratic attorneys general has announced it intends to criminally investigate oil and gas companies that have disputed the science behind man-made global warming.  Backed by green-energy interests and environmentalist lobbying groups, the coalition has promised to use intrusive investigations, costly litigation, and criminal prosecutions to silence critics of its climate-change agenda.  Pretended offenses, indeed.

On his way out, Obama cedes Arctic energy control to Russia.  This isn't really the same as prying the W's off the keyboards in the Oval Office, but Barack Obama seems determined to leave some unpleasant going away presents for his successor on the domestic energy front.  Before leaving office, the President has modified the agreement for future oil exploration leases to eliminate nearly all Arctic sites.  Needless to say, the energy industry isn't exactly ecstatic over this.

Obama blocks new oil, gas drilling in Arctic Ocean.  The Obama administration is blocking new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean, handing a victory to environmentalists who say industrial activity in the icy waters will harm whales, walruses and other wildlife and exacerbate global warming.

The Editor says...
How does Mr. Obama know the environmentalists' fears have any merit?

Obama to block new Arctic drilling.  President Obama is planning in the coming days to release an offshore oil and natural gas plan that blocks new drilling leases in the Arctic Ocean through 2022, people familiar with the plan said.  The decision is part of the Interior Department's five-year plan for offshore drilling, which lays out all of the proposed auctions for drilling rights on the outer continental shelf.

The Big Bluff that Paris deal is solid: truth is Trump can axe it easily.  In a letter to John Kerry on November 3rd, fourteen US senators explained that Obama's commitment to the Paris deal is the legal equivalent of him giving a speech — the "lowest forms of commitment the United States can make...".  It's worthless.  The Senators explained that everyone knows the Paris deal was done to avoid going through Congress (it's printed in The Guardian) because Congress would never approve it.

President Obama's Final Green Spending Spree.  President Obama's administration appears to be pushing out a final hundred million dollars in grants to foreign green projects, ahead of the January 20th handover to the new Trump administration.

OPIC and Renew Power Ventures Sign Commitment for 100 Megawatt Solar Farm in India.  The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. Government's development finance institution, signed a commitment with ReNew of approximately $74 million for a 100 MW solar project in the Indian state of Telangana.  Announced during the 22nd session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP22), this project will diversify the country's power generation mix with a clean source of renewable power and help the country reduce GHG emissions.

Billionaire Tom Steyer calls on Obama to block offshore drilling.  Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer is calling on President Obama to permanently ban offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic using his executive authority. [...] The other part of this story that is interesting is that Steyer seems to be revealing the White House was quietly considering doing this anyway.  That Obama would intentionally try to make a change like this, one he hopes Trump can't undo, after this election would be a slap in the face to the president-elect and the voters who put him in office.  It would also be at odds with the conciliatory message Obama has been spreading since last Tuesday.

Obama set to green-light disputed Dakota Access pipeline.  The Obama administration said Friday that no decision has been made on the disputed easement for the Dakota Access pipeline, tamping down expectations that the project could see a green light as soon as Monday [11/14/2016].  "The process is ongoing and no decisions have been made," an administration official said.  Sources familiar with the process said earlier Friday that a go-ahead for the $3.7 billion project was expected as soon as Monday, raising concerns about nationwide protests planned against the project on Tuesday.

Obama proposes reroute of Dakota Access pipeline.  President Barack Obama has called for "peace" and "restraint" on the disputed Dakota Access oil pipeline, and says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is examining whether the four-state project can be rerouted in southern North Dakota to alleviate the concerns of American Indians.

The Editor says...
Since when is the routing of pipelines -- or any other aspect of a private company's operation -- any of the president's business?

White House targets financial disclosure of climate risk.  A White House climate official is scheduled to speak Monday [10/31/2016] about a new plan to disclose the financial risk associated with climate change, following work with a Group of 20 task force.  Ali Zaidi, associate director for natural resources, energy and science at the Office of Management and Budget, is scheduled to speak at the Atlantic Council following a meeting of the G-20 Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure.  The task force is planning to recommend voluntary measures for companies to disclose climate-related financial risk to consumers and investors.

Obama says Paris climate agreement almost complete.  President Obama said Monday night [10/3/2016] the Paris climate change agreement will take effect within a few weeks, now that India has signed on to the U.N.-sponsored deal aimed at reducing carbon emissions.  During an event on the South Lawn of the White House, Mr. Obama said the agreement "will actually go into force in the next few weeks."  India signed the pact on Sunday.  "Officially this agreement will be into force much faster" than expected, the president said, adding that global leaders also are beginning talks to curb aviation emissions and the production of hydrofluorocarbons often used in refrigeration.

Democrats Urge Obama to Bypass Congress to Set Aside 6,261 Acres on California Coast.  California Democrats introduced legislation earlier this year that would have expanded the California Coastal National Monument some 6,261 acres covering five coastal sites.  The bill did not advance, and in February those lawmakers urged President Barack Obama to use his authority under the Antiquities Act to make the land off limits for everything except tourism.

Obama orders climate change be considered in military planning.  President Obama issued a new policy directive Wednesday to consider the effects of climate change in developing national security policy and planning across all major security agencies and the military.  "Today, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum on Climate Change and National Security, establishing a policy that the impacts of climate change must be considered in the development of national security-related doctrine, policies, and plans," the White House said.  "To achieve this, 20 federal agencies and offices with climate science, intelligence analysis, and national security policy development missions and responsibilities will collaborate to ensure the best information on climate impacts is available to strengthen our national security." White House special assistant to the president, Alice Hill, told reporters that the presidential memo will "prioritize climate threats" to identify the most significant risks to the nation's security and drive full consideration of climate change effects into national security plans and policies.

Obama Directs Federal Agencies to Consider Climate Change As a National Security Issue.  In a Sept. 21 memo to his department heads, President Obama instructed all federal departments and agencies to consider the impact of climate change on national security.  Obama states that it is the policy of the U.S. government to ensure that current and anticipated impacts of climate change be "identified and considered" in developing national security doctrine, policies and plans.  "Climate change poses a significant and growing threat to national security, both at home and abroad," the memo says.  Those threats, according to Obama, include flooding, drought, heat waves, intense precipitation, pest outbreaks, disease, and electricity problems, all of which can "affect economic prosperity, public health and safety, and international stability."

Kerry to reach key milestone in air-conditioning phase-out.  Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to reach a milestone Thursday [9/22/2016] in finalizing a key part of President Obama's climate change agenda on phasing out refrigerants used in air conditioners that are blamed for raising the Earth's temperature.  The White House said Kerry will meet with nearly 100 nations on Thursday to hash out an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, first created to fix the ozone layer in the 1980s, to phase out refrigerants to combat global warming.  The deal would reduce the Earth's temperature by 0.5 degrees, Brian Deese, the president's climate change adviser, told reporters on a call Wednesday.  Observers said the deal on Thursday is the prelude to a big push by the administration to finalize the deal on limiting hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, during an international gathering in Kigali, Rwanda, next month.

The Editor says...
The Obama administration, as mentioned above, claims the deal would reduce the Earth's temperature by one-half degree.  Is that imperceptible change worth doing away with air conditioning -- or making it prohibitively expensive?  If today is one-half degree warmer than yesterday, would you even notice?  Mr. Kerry, acting on behalf of President Valerie Jarrett and her commie sock puppet Barry Soetoro, is pretending to solve a problem that does not exist.

Study: US Cost To Cut Emissions = $5+ Trillion.  President Barack Obama's pledge to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 2005 levels by 2050 might cost more than $5 trillion over three decades, according to a new analysis.  More than 190 countries announced similarly ambitious targets in Paris in December, but none included estimates of the costs.  For the U.S., they're huge:  up to $176 billion a year, or $5.28 trillion over 30, according to Columbia Business School economist Geoffrey Heal.  His new paper breaks down the costs of the most important prerequisite for achieving the target:  making electricity generation carbon-free.  The costs aren't a line item in the federal budget, but would largely be picked up by utilities, which would pass on the capital costs to consumers.

Obama Will Set Aside 5,000 Square Miles Off New England, Ban Commercial Fishing.  The State Department is hosting a two-day conference on the world's oceans, beginning today [9/15/2016], and it's expected to produce a raft of announcements and initiatives, including new marine protected areas — one off the coast of New England — as well as a ban on single-use plastic bags.  Ahead of the conference, press reports said President Obama on Thursday will establish the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean to permanently protect nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the coast of New England.  The White House said the designation will lead to a ban on commercial fishing — an industry that made New England famous — but a 7-year exception will be granted for the lobster and red crab industries.  Recreational fishing will be allowed within the monument.  Mining and drilling will be banned in the protected area.

Obama to announce first Atlantic Ocean monument.  President Obama on Thursday [9/15/2016] will designate the first national marine monument off the Atlantic Coast as part of a broad conservation push to fight the effects of climate change on sea life.  The announcement comes just two weeks after he designated the largest marine national monument off the coast of Hawaii.  Obama will make the announcement at the third annual Our Oceans Conference being held in Washington with leaders from around the world.

Obama Will Set Aside 5,000 Square Miles Off New England, Ban Commercial Fishing.  The State Department is hosting a two-day conference on the world's oceans, beginning today [9/15/2016], and it's expected to produce a raft of announcements and initiatives, including new marine protected areas — one off the coast of New England — as well as a ban on single-use plastic bags.  Ahead of the conference, press reports said President Obama on Thursday will establish the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean to permanently protect nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the coast of New England.  The White House said the designation will lead to a ban on commercial fishing — an industry that made New England famous — but a 7-year exception will be granted for the lobster and red crab industries.  Recreational fishing will be allowed within the monument.  Mining and drilling will be banned in the protected area.

Obama: Oceans key to protecting planet from climate change.  Creating the Atlantic Ocean's first marine national monument is a needed response to dangerous climate change, oceanic dead zones and unsustainable fishing practices, President Barack Obama said Thursday [9/15/2016].  The new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the New England coast.  It's the 27th time that Obama has created or enlarged a national monument.

The Editor says...
These national monuments are established for the purpose of crippling the fishing and petroleum industries.  There is no other reason to create these forbidden areas.

DOD Is Leasing Land To Green Energy Companies For Free.  The Department of Defense (DOD) allowed private companies to build green energy projects on federal lands for little or no compensation, according to an audit of the Pentagon's green energy efforts.  Government Accountability Office (GAO) auditors reviewed 17 green energy projects on DOD land and found 14 of those projects were, "not always clear about the value of the land used and the compensation DOD received for granting such use."  "Specifically, for 8 projects, DOD received little or no financial compensation for the use of its land, but the documentation did not clearly compare the value for granting use of DOD land to the value of what DOD received for it," GAO found.  "As a result, DOD contributed potentially valuable land — in some cases, over 100 acres — for the development of a project without including this as a cost in project documentation."

Is Obama Worried About a Global Warming Apocalypse?  The New York Times' multi-part series profiling President Barack Obama's legacy on global warming reveals the president is a fan of a book on how "climate change and overpopulation" could cause modern civilization to collapse.  Obama was apparently a fan of Jared Diamond's 2005 book "Collapse:  How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," which "explored the environmental changes that wiped out ancient societies like Easter Island and discussed how modern equivalents like climate change and overpopulation could yield the same destruction," according to NYT.

GOP Lawmaker Calls Obama's Climate Agreement A Work Of 'Science Fiction'.  Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith told reporters that President Barack Obama's decision to ratify the climate agreement Saturday [9/3/2016] in China was a strategic move to stifle public scrutiny.  The decision to join the climate agreement was based on "science fiction," not solid science, Smith said, adding that forging it without the consent of Congress is "all pain and no gain."  "In committing the United States to the United Nations' Paris climate agreement, the president is wrongly trying to make law by his own executive action," Smith said.  "His agreement bypasses Congress, puts our nation at an economic disadvantage and imposes undue and unsustainable burdens on American families."

Obama Celebrates Slave Labor Day in Red China.  The old joke, "He'll do anything for the worker except become one," may apply to the Democratic Party and its modern-day leaders.  The days when Democrats represented the working man are gone.  Today, Democrats are more likely to preserve fish than jobs.  A case in point is President Obama's unilateral designation of 600,000 square miles of water around Hawaii as a national monument.  The rationale for destroying jobs and devastating fishing communities is global warming.  "It's a good time to be a fish" says the website of Global Citizen.  Human beings aren't faring so well.

Obama: 'One of the Most Urgent Challenges of Our Time is Climate Change'.  President Barack Obama picked one of the hottest weekends in the Northeastern U.S. to discuss climate change.  "One of the most urgent challenges of our time is climate change," the vacationing president said in his Saturday radio address.  He touted his efforts to cut pollution, including from cars and trucks, assuring Americans, "we're not done yet."

When is a treaty not a treaty?
Obama and Xi Formally Commit U.S. and China to Paris Climate Accord.  President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China formally committed the world's two largest economies to the Paris climate agreement here on Saturday, cementing their partnership on climate change and offering a rare display of harmony in a relationship that has become increasingly discordant.

Feds Sued For Illegally Refusing To Sell Oil Leases.  Western Energy Alliance (WEA), an industry-aligned interest group, sued the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Thursday [8/11/2016] for failing to hold quarterly oil and natural gas lease sales on public lands.  Though the Mineral Leasing Act requires BLM to hold quarterly oil and natural gas lease sales in each state where lands are available and industry interest exists, the agency has cancelled lease sales and auctions during the Obama administration.  Environmental groups have simultaneously organized to lobby the federal government to postpone the sales so as to discourage or delay drilling on the public range.

Obama issues guidance making it tougher to build roads, bridges in name of climate change.  Building that bridge or expanding that highway just became more difficult under a rigorous standard issued Tuesday by the Obama administration that will make it easier to block a wide range of projects in the name of climate change.  The final guidance broadens the National Environmental Policy Act by requiring agencies to quantify the impact of activities that require federal permits not just on the environment but also on "projected direct and indirect GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions."

The Editor says...
Guidance?  Is that the new word for decree?

WH wants all agencies to consider climate change.  The White House said Tuesday [8/2/2016] it wants all agencies to consider climate change when conducting environmental reviews for energy projects, or anything else, that require such a review.  The White House Council on Environmental Quality issued its final guidance Tuesday, setting new standards for agencies to include climate change impacts in environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act.  "The final guidance is another big step in the administration's effort to consider how all types of federal actions will impact climate change and identify opportunities to build climate resilience," the White House environment office said.

Obama, environmentalists slammed as hypocrites over presidential library location.  President Obama's plan to bulldoze a sensitive Chicago lakefront park in order to build his presidential library is meeting with outrage — but not from environmental groups.  Even as local environmentalists say they will not challenge the library in spite of concerns, others are accusing Mr. Obama of hypocrisy, pointing to his record of aggressively blocking badly needed development elsewhere in the name of ecological protection.

Senator: Navy Evaluates Commanders Based On Climate Change Views.  Rhode Island Democratic Sen.  Sheldon Whitehouse recently told people gathered in New York City that global warming "denial" hurts U.S. soldiers in the field and that the "main problem" with the military is its reluctance to join the climate crusade.  "The problem has been that the uniformed military has been reluctant to put its voice into — or its image into this fight," Whitehouse said, according to a YouTube video posted Thursday [6/30/2016].

U.S., Canada, Mexico pledge to generate 50 percent of energy from clean sources.  The United States, Canada and Mexico have agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas industry by increasing clean energy generation to 50 percent by 2025.  The North American Climate, Clean Energy and Environment Partnership will impose new restrictions on some industries to reduce emissions following last year's United Nations climate change agreement in Paris that sought a global reduction in emissions.

The Editor says...
The article immediately above reflects an interesting increment in the media's handling of the Global Warming Hoax.  Energy sources that produce carbon dioxide when they are consumed — which would include coal, petroleum, biofuel, and natural gas — are not considered clean any more.  But there is nothing dirty about carbon dioxide.

Obama Makes An Impossible Clean Energy Promise.  At a "Three Amigos" summit in Ottawa this week, President Obama and the leaders of Canada and Mexico will pledge that in less than a decade, half of North America's energy will come from "clean" sources.  The administration calls it "ambitious."  We call it "ludicrous."

Obama warns poor nations will put planet 'under water' by using fossil fuels.  The world's richest nations have long been fueled by oil, coal and natural gas, but President Obama warned Friday that less affluent countries trying to take the same path will put the planet "under water."  In an interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. Obama said he hoped social-media "connectivity" will help convince developing nations to eschew fossil fuels, which contribute to rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere but are also less expensive and more reliable than green energy alternatives.

Natural Gas Production Declines on Federal Lands.  Natural gas production has declined on federal lands even while increasing on private property, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.  Private lands produced 15,601 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2010.  Production has grown by 55 percent on private lands, rising to 24,143 billion cubic feet in 2015, the latest year for which data is available.  Natural gas production on federal lands has declined by 27 percent since 2010.  Private lands also produce a greater share of the total natural gas produced in the United States.  Privately held property produced 84 percent of the total natural gas produced in the entire United States in 2015, while federal lands produced only 16 percent of the total.

President Obama and the First Family Visit Yosemite National Park.  Obama said his administration has established protection for more than 265 million acres of public lands and waters, and in the past has used several other family vacations to promote national parks. [...] Obama also used the backdrop to call for more action on preventing climate change, which he has said is the greatest threat facing future generations.

The Editor says...
Innocent people are being murdered every year by Islamic zealots, the national debt is completely out of control, our international boundaries are all but completely ignored, the IRS and EPA are being used as weapons against us, and the President says "climate change" is our greatest threat.  He is either a liar or an idiot.  Quite possibly both.

Where is he getting this money?
Obama team pledges new money for clean energy.  Government officials from the United States and other nations are meeting this week as part of a search for ways to deliver energy that is cleaner and less expensive, and can help them meet the anti-pollution goals of the Paris Agreement.  In kicking off meetings in San Francisco, the Obama administration announced commitments by the United States and 20 international partners to double funding for clean energy research and development, from $15 billion to $30 billion annually by the year 2021.

Obama urges Vietnam youth to tackle climate change.  Wrapping up a historic visit to Vietnam, U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday praised the country's next generation of leaders for being more conscious of the environment than previous generations and urged them to "do something about" climate change.

White House Declares May 23-27 'Extreme Heat Week'.  As part of its efforts to address climate change the Obama administration has designated May 23-27, 2016, as Extreme Heat Week.  According to the White House, the five-day span is dedicated to having federal agencies work with communities to "enhance preparedness for extreme heat events."

Obama Raided $500M for Zika to Finance UN's Green Climate Fund.  Last week, the Senate passed legislation to address and prevent the spread of the Zika virus.  However, the Senate failed to pay for it, and instead approved a $1.1 billion "emergency" spending supplemental bill that is not subject to the budgetary caps that were agreed to last year.  While congressional inattention to the budget crisis is inexcusable, it is even more disturbing that the Obama administration already has the authority to pay for a Zika response from existing agency budgets, but chose not to.

Oops! Federal Law Prohibits Obama Funding UN Climate Bureaucracy.  Thanks to a Clinton-era statute and an obscure vote last month by the United Nations, federal law now officially makes it illegal for the Obama administration to send a single penny of your money to the UN climate bureaucracy.  That is good news for U.S. taxpayers, of course.  But it puts the UN and the Obama administration in an awkward position as they struggle desperately to convince other governments that the UN's much-touted "global-warming" regime, officially signed Friday, is not going to crumble in the face of a hostile Congress and a U.S. Constitution that has been trampled at every turn.  Now, dozens of U.S. senators, who Obama and the UN hoped to bypass in imposing the global "climate" treaty in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, are putting the UN and Obama on notice.

It used to be called global warming, then climate change, and now it's climate pollution.
Obama Declares America 'the World's Second-Largest Source of Climate Pollution'.  In an email sent yesterday [4/22/2016] as Secretary of State John Kerry was signing a global "climate change" agreement at the United Nations, President Obama, who was in Great Britain, said that the United States was "the world's second-largest source of climate pollution.  Obama's message was sent to the White House email list and posted on the White House website.  "This is important because the impact of climate change is real," Obama said in his email.

The Editor says...
There are no "impact[s] of climate change."  The climate has its day-to-day impact on us, but there are no abrupt or extraordinary changes that would have any discernable impact on anyone.

The Paris Climate Agreement is about carbon and confusion.  During an hour of earnest but boring speeches — this was the U.N. after all — noted climate expert Leonardo di Caprio called for an end to climate change (and the total transformation of the world economy), which he modestly compared to President Lincoln's call to end slavery.  Then Kerry, carrying his grand-daughter, and representatives of 170-odd other nations, who had flown in with their spouses and entourages (at great expense and generating thousands of tons of greenhouse gases) formally signed an agreement that they or other representatives of their nations had already agreed — and which has no hope of ending climate change.  Then everyone went shopping.

Paris climate accord creates turbulence for Obama administration.  The political forecast for Friday's [4/22/2016] signing of the historic Paris Agreement on climate change calls for sunshine at the White House, with lukewarm temperatures on the left and thunderstorms on the right.  The nonbinding agreement, scheduled to be signed on Earth Day by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and about 165 other world leaders at the United Nations, sets a long-term goal of keeping the increase of global average temperatures at less than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.  President Obama followed up in March by pledging to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.  Forged in December in a suburb of Paris, the agreement is seen as a cornerstone of Mr. Obama's environmental legacy even though free market and climate change advocates have expressed serious concerns about its necessity and viability.

U.S. joins 170 nations to sign hard-won climate pact.  At least 171 world leaders gathered Friday at the United Nations to sign a sweeping climate agreement negotiated last year and aimed at slowing global warming and helping poorer nations affected most by it.  The "Paris Agreement" was hammered out in Le Bourget, France, in December, at a summit of diplomats and leaders including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who flew back from Saudi Arabia Thursday night [4/21/2016] in time to take part in Friday's signing ceremony.  To resounding applause, Kerry said,"It's fair to say that all of us could feel an extraordinary sweep of emotion and joy at the moment in Paris when 196 nations simultaneously said a resounding yes, we will do our part, we will live up to the responsibility to future generations and together citizens of the world, we will work to save our planet from ourselves."

The climate change boondoggle hits a wall.  Representatives from more than 130 countries will gather at the United Nations in New York on Friday to sign the climate change pact written in Paris last December.  They should be aware that the money the Obama administration has promised for these efforts just hit a major legal roadblock.  This week, 28 U.S. senators wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry demanding that U.S. law be followed and U.S. contributions to the climate fund cease.  The issue revolves around the U.N.'s recent embrace of the "State of Palestine" as a full member of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.  The White House unilaterally pledged $3 billion for international climate change as part of the Paris deal.  The administration wants these U.S. taxpayer funds to go to the Green Climate Fund.

Obama's Violating the Constitution by Not Submitting Climate Treaty to Senate.  Today [4/22/2016] at United Nations Headquarters in New York City, Secretary of State John Kerry and representatives of over 130 nations will sign the Framework Convention on Climate Change agreement that was negotiated in Paris last December.  According to President Obama, this "historic agreement" will "hold every country accountable" if they fail to meet its carbon emission targets.  The White House has also acknowledged that the agreement contains "legally binding" provisions designed to create a "long-term framework" that will force the United States and signatory countries to reduce carbon emissions for decades to come.

Obama's rapid move to join the Paris climate agreement could tie up the next president.  In late March, when the United States and China jointly declared that they'd be moving to immediately sign and then join the Paris climate agreement "as early as possible this year," it was seen as the latest show of joint leadership by the two largest emitters.  But there's another possible implication that went largely unnoticed.  If the nations of the world, led by its two biggest contributors to climate change, jump through all the hoops needed to bring this agreement into force before President Obama leaves office, the next U.S. president could have a difficult time — or at least, a long wait — if he or she wanted to get out of it.

Top 10 Misreported or Underreported Stories of 2015.  [#2] Global Warming Deal:  At the conclusion of the COP (Conference of Parties) 21 conference in Paris, the international community was reenergized to fight climate change — with calls to commit $100 billion annually to a slush fund for poorer countries.  This bribe, or ransom, money aligns well with the President's plan to boost his legacy at the expense of our country. [...] For the climate change believers in the press, nothing can contradict the religion of global warming; their theory is based on politicized science and computer models, as we have argued for decades.  This administration claims that it is the greatest national security threat we face.  But it is Islamic jihadist expansion and terrorism, not climate change, that are much greater threats.  Not to mention, a resurgent Russia and an increasingly aggressive China.

Obama: I'm more worried about climate change than the Islamic State.  Priorities that are likely to come back and bite him.

Obama: U.S. responsible for climate change.  The U.S. and Canada are responsible to a great degree for causing the Earth's temperature to rise and spurring climate change, President Obama said Thursday [3/10/2016].  "In some ways, as wealthier countries, we can probably adapt and manage better," Obama said in a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  "On the other hand, we're also those responsible for a lot of the carbon pollution that is causing climate change."

'Slush Fund': Senator Slams State Dept. for $500M Payment to Green Climate Fund.  Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) on Tuesday [3/8/2016] slammed the administration's handover of $500 million to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, asking a State Department official how the "handout to foreign bureaucrats" could be justified at a time when there were "real problems" that need to be addressed at home.  Barrasso told Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom he viewed the payment to the "new international climate change slush fund" — the first installment of a $3 billion pledge — as both a misuse of taxpayer dollars and a violation of legislation that prohibits federal agencies from spending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.  "It appears to be latest example of the administration going around Congress because the American people don't really support what the president is doing with this initiative," he said.

Obama Vows To Sign UN Global Warming Deal Without Senate Approval.  The Obama administration has vowed to sign a United Nations global warming deal in April despite intense opposition from the Senate and a Supreme Court ruling derailing the government's green regulatory scheme.  "We're going to go ahead and sign the agreement this year," Todd Stern, the U.S.'s climate envoy told reporters Tuesday [2/16/2016], brushing aside questions about last week's Supreme Court ruling against the Environmental Protection Agency's key climate regulation.

America's Energy Outlook Is Bright — and Obama Hates It.  Most importantly, Obama's outlook ignores market realities and assumes that governments can force their way on acquiescent populations.  It doesn't seem to occur to the president that the world's seven billion people might not wish to pay double for their energy needs.  That is one reason China and India and the rest of the developing nations refused to accept a binding agreement in Paris.  Even developed nations in Europe and Asia were secretly relieved at the non-binding result.  That leaves the Obama administration on its own, driving energy producers in the U.S. out of business while the rest of the world continues on a path to a more prosperous 2040.  New regulations restricting methane release at drill sites will make U.S. oil production just that much less competitive.  Not just oil and gas, but coal in particular has been a target.  The administration's latest decision to suspend coal leasing on federal lands is one more blow against this once great industry — and one more impediment on the nation's economy.

Obama orders creation of new national monuments in California.  President Barack Obama on Friday [2/12/2016] set aside 1.8 million acres of Southern California desert for protection, using his sometimes controversial executive power to designate three new national monuments.  In a long-anticipated decision, Obama designated the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains national monuments in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.  "The California desert is a cherished and irreplaceable resource for the people of Southern California," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said.  The federal government already owns the affected lands, and Jewell noted that "valid existing" uses, including by the U.S. military, can continue.

The Editor says...
How does this action offer any protection to the land?  And since it is already government property, from whom is the land being protected?  Obviously this Obama's means of impeding the production of coal, oil, and gas in the area.  Only those who look below the surface of this story know what it really means.

Feds Hold Meeting on Border 'Concerns' About the Environment.  The federal government is holding a meeting to discuss concerns it has over the U.S.-Mexico border, focusing solely on climate change.  The Environmental Protection Agency announced the two-day meeting with the "Good Neighbor Environmental Board," an independent federal advisory committee, to talk about "climate change resilience" along the southwestern border.

Obama: My Budget 'Will Double Funding for Clean Energy Research and Development by 2020'.  "One of the greatest challenges of our time is climate change," President Obama said in his Saturday [2/6/2016] radio address.  "That's why the budget I will send to Congress this Tuesday will double funding for clean energy research and development by 2020.  This will include new investments to help the private sector create more jobs faster, lower the cost of clean energy faster, and help clean, renewable power outcompete dirty fuels in every state."  Obama noted that Republicans went along with the boost in clean energy R&D in last year's budget agreement.  "And I hope they support my plan to double that kind of investment."

The Editor says...
As usual, Mr. Obama is meddling in an area that is none of the government's concern:  Basic research and development is for private companies and individuals to carry out, if they choose, when motivated by the free market.

Obama wants to buy a green legacy with taxpayer money.  Beware of politicians looking for a legacy — especially when they try to buy it with your tax dollars.  President Obama will soon head to Paris for a climate change confab, where he hopes to get a standing ovation for leading the fight against fossil fuels — and he might just get it.  He will argue that he has imposed countless new regulations to handcuff the energy industry — "regulations" instead of new laws because he has little congressional support for his environmental agenda, even among Democrats.

Obama to seek $10-a-barrel oil tax.  President Obama plans to seek a $10-a-barrel oil tax to overhaul the nation's transportation system toward reducing carbon emissions.  In a statement from the White House Thursday [2/4/2016], the administration expressed plans to spend more than $300 billion over the next decade, expanding rail and mass transit networks, modernizing freight transportation and expanding research into self-driving cars.

The Editor says...
As usual, Mr. Obama is proposing to spend the taxpayers' money on projects that are not authorized by the Constitution. Railroads will expand and freight lines will modernize when the demand materializes and competition requires such improvements. The demand for self-driving cars will probably never be much more than about a hundred vehicles per year, and even so, the research and development for such products is not the proper role of government.  Moreover, the President does not have the authority to levy taxes.

Obama proposes carbon tax on oil.  The White House on Thursday [2/4/2016] announced its latest plan to address climate change by levying a $10 per-barrel tax on crude oil.  The Obama administration announced its plans while rolling out a comprehensive transportation strategy that will be the focus of the Department of Transportation's budget request to Congress when it is issued next week.  "For too long, bipartisan support for innovative and expansive transportation investment has not been accompanied by a long-term plan for paying for it," a White House fact sheet reads.  "We need a sustainable funding solution that takes into account the integrated, interdependent nature of our transportation system.

Obama to call for $10-per-barrel oil tax to fund clean transport.  President Obama will propose a $10 fee for every barrel of oil to be paid by oil companies in order to fund clean energy transport system, the White House announced Thursday [2/4/2016] — although Republicans were quick to declare the plan "dead on arrival" in Congress.  The fee would be phased in over five years and would provide $20 billion per year for traffic reduction, investment in transit systems and other modes of transport such as high-speed rail, the White House said.  It would also offer $10 billion to encourage investment in clean transport at the regional level.

The Editor says...
What is clean transport?  And what do you suppose the price of gas will do when Obama's $10/barrel tax is applied?

Obama to propose $10-a-barrel oil tax.  Obama aides told POLITICO that when he releases his final budget request next week, the president will propose more than $300 billion worth of investments over the next decade in mass transit, high-speed rail, self-driving cars, and other transportation approaches designed to reduce carbon emissions and congestion.  To pay for it all, Obama will call for a $10 "fee" on every barrel of oil, a surcharge that would be paid by oil companies but would presumably be passed along to consumers. [...] But by raising the specter of new taxes on fossil fuels, it could create a political quandary for Democrats.  The fee could add as much as 25 cents a gallon to the cost of gasoline, and even with petroleum prices at historic lows, the proposal could be particularly awkward for Hillary Clinton, who has embraced most of Obama's policies but has also vowed to oppose any tax hikes on families earning less than $250,000 a year.

US pledges $97M to combat Ethiopia's drought.  The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development has announced $97 million dollars in emergency assistance to Ethiopia to combat the devastating effects of a drought brought on by the El Nino climate phenomenon.

The Editor says...
Why is Ethiopia's weather our problem?  How is fighting the weather (in any part of the world) anything other than futility?  El Nino is not a permanent weather condition, nor is it anything new.  And above all, what part of the Constitution authorizes this expenditure?

Paris Agreement: Recycled Socialism.  At the Paris climate conference, President Obama got exactly what he wanted:  the framework for a multi-decade, global campaign of political pressure directed chiefly against Republicans and their fossil-fuel industry allies.  The Paris Agreement does not directly impose "legally binding" emission-reduction and "climate finance" commitments on the United States.  But both conservative gloating and green grousing about the treaty being "toothless" overlook what matters most in climate policy:  politics.

Republicans furious over Obama move on coal leases.  Congressional Republicans are slamming the Obama administration's decision to halt new coal mining leases on federal land.  Administration officials said Friday [1/15/2016] they would hold off on new lease sales while overhauling the coal leasing program to account for climate change costs.  Republicans, who have badgered Obama for energy and environment policies they say constitute a "war on coal," let loose on the decision Friday.

Obama halts new federal coal mining.  The Obama administration is halting major new leases to mine coal on federal land for about three years as it works to reform the controversial program.  Obama officials want to hold off on the new sales while they figure out how to account for climate change caused when the coal mined on federal land is burned, which could include higher fees and royalties for the private companies that extract the coal.

Like CO2, The Paris Agreement Is Vapid.  One wonders why this president would unilaterally pursue a Paris agreement that does nothing more than hurt the country he took an oath to protect.

Don't let the White House blame Congress — or you — for its bad climate deal.  As John Kerry is learning, it is not easy to defend the just-signed Paris climate accord.  On Fox News Sunday this week, the Secretary of State, for example, did his best to misrepresent the deal.  Pressed on its actual contents, Kerry argued the deal had to be weak because anything stronger would require congressional approval and Congress would not approve.  In other words, President Obama lacked popular support to pursue a climate deal, so he had to do a deal even worse than the one for which there was no support.  How absurd.

Obama: A Legacy of Fakery.  Last Saturday [12/12/2015], Barack Obama gained the second jewel in his foreign-policy triple crown: the Paris climate accord.  It follows his Iran nuclear deal and awaits but the closing of Guantánamo to complete his glittering legacy.  To be sure, Obama will not be submitting the climate agreement for Senate ratification.  It would have no chance of passing — as with the Iranian nuclear deal, also never submitted for the Senate ratification Obama knew he'd never get. [...] Yet the climate deal brought back from Paris by Secretary of State John Kerry turns out to be no deal at all.  It is, instead, a series of carbon-reducing promises made individually and unilaterally by the world's nations.  No enforcement, no sanctions, nothing legally binding.

Our Superstitious President.  Obama's view of science is reductionist.  It relies on count-em-up numbers:  if more university professors (not known to be an especially independent or courageous cohort) believe in dangerous man-caused climate change than doubt it or its seriousness, and if climate change fits a larger progressive agenda, then it becomes factual.  Would we assume thereby that Newton, Galileo, and Darwin were all exemplars of groupthink, and worked through consensus and collegiality, especially with the support of status-quo institutions and universities, in advancing majority-held theories? [...] In short, Obama is the most anti-science, anti-factual president in modern memory.

The Rembrandt of Overstatement.  [Scroll down]  Consider that this is the president who drew that "red line" concerning Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons; promised that you could keep your doctor if you wanted to; and declared just before the Paris massacres that ISIS had been "contained."  This same president wants the world to swallow his baited hook on climate change, discarding, in the process, cavils, questions, and contrasting ideas.

Apparently Barack H. Obama wants to hamstring the next president, whoever it is, in order to make himself look better.
Obama says parts of climate deal must be legally binding.  President Barack Obama said Tuesday [12/1/2015] that parts of the global warming deal being negotiated in Paris should be legally binding on the countries that sign on, setting up a potential fight with Republicans at home.

Obama says world climate deal would legally bind next president.  President Obama vowed Tuesday [12/1/2015] that the U.S. will provide leadership on global warming, then left the Paris talks and flew back to Washington to leave it to his lieutenants to try to strike a deal that he hopes will be "legally binding" on his successor.  Even as congressional leaders balked at his plans, Mr. Obama tried to assure other world leaders that the U.S. will live up to any commitments he makes during the next two weeks of negotiations.  He also predicted that the next president, even a Republican, will have to bow to the world's wishes when it comes to climate change.

Obama urges world action on climate change: No nation 'immune' to global warming.  President Obama joined leaders from 150 nations on Monday [11/30/2015] in pledging action against climate change, kicking off a historic two-week gathering that Obama called a "turning point" in the battle against one of humanity's gravest threats.  Heads of state from industrial powers and tiny island nations assembled in a heavily guarded conference center north of Paris, where negotiators hope to forge a treaty to dramatically reduce emissions of greenhouse-gas pollution blamed for warming the planet.

The Editor says...
As usual, when Barack H. Obama (or the Washington Post) makes a rash pronouncement, you can safely bet the farm that the exact opposite is true.  Obama says no nation is immune to global warming, but the fact is that every nation is immune to global warming if it does not exist.  The Washington Post says climate change is "one of humanity's gravest threats."  If that is true, and it isn't, then why is climate change a serious threat now, when it wasn't a threat 50 years ago?  Was the climate not changing 50 years ago, or 150 years ago, or 1,050 years ago?

Congress Can Cool Off Obama's Climate Plans.  When the U.N. climate-change talks convene in Paris next week, the risks will be high for American taxpayers.  President Obama wants a climate deal and is willing to pay dearly to get it.  The inevitable outcome is a plan with unproven benefits and unreachable goals, but very real costs.  It will be up to Congress to check the president's ambition of committing the U.S. to an international green scheme that will produce little or no return.

KERRY: Hey, that UN Global Warming Treaty we signed is legally binding and the Senate gets no say in the matter.  Now, apparently, there's a United Nations global warming initiative that Congress won't even get the chance to vote on.  Secretary of State John Kerry walked back remarks that a future United Nations global warming treaty would not be legally binding.  Now Kerry says a climate treaty would, in fact, be legally binding and not require Senate approval.

France to Kerry: Yes, climate deal will be 'legally binding'.  Leaders in France and the European Union are sparring with Secretary of State John Kerry, saying that an upcoming United Nations climate change agreement should be "legally binding."  Laurent Fabius, France's foreign minister, responded Thursday [11/12/2015] to Kerry's insistence that the agreement is not a treaty and should not have legal force, saying Kerry might have been "confused."  "Jurists will discuss the legal nature of an accord on whether it should be termed as a treaty or an international agreement," Fabius told reporters in Paris, according to Reuters.

Obama Launches Facebook Page; Calls For 'Real Conversation' On Climate Change.  "I hope you'll join me in speaking out on climate change and educating your friends about why this issue is so important," he said.

The Editor says...
Here's why this issue is NOT important:  There is no global warming.

Obama's road to Paris is paved with pretentious hypocrisy.  After failing at almost every foreign policy challenge he has been confronted with, perhaps there is now something on the horizon that actually sets up nicely for President Obama.  The Paris Conference on Climate Change, which will be held from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, could be an event that perfectly matches his skills and interests.  The U.N.-sponsored Paris festival lends itself to unrealistic giveaways and meaningless rhetoric — the more self-righteous and pretentious, the better.  The meeting won't produce any particular result, and the day of reckoning where we find out it was all for naught won't be scientifically determined until many years in the future.  It seems well-suited for this president.

Obama: My Idea Of World Leadership Is Fighting Climate Change.  President Obama indicates that when it comes to world leadership, he has mostly disdain for people who compare him to Russian President Vladimir Putin.  When challenged by "60 Minutes" interviewer Steve Kroft about ceding leadership in the Middle East to Putin, Obama argued that leadership on climate change was more important than leadership to combat terrorism.

Obama's Global Warming, Syria Push at United Nations Skips Congress.  The Paris accord, like the Iran deal before it, will be strictly an executive agreement, given that Obama wouldn't have the votes to pass anything in either chamber.  Prospects seem to have improved for getting a deal after last week's agreement with China, which has announced plans to implement a cap-and-trade scheme and push for a global accord in France.  Congress, if it gets a chance to weigh in at all, will be via an effort to disapprove Obama's carbon regulations.

EPA Ignores Science to Propose Most Expensive Regulation in History.  Next month, the Obama administration may roll out the most expensive regulation in history, ignoring scientific data that cutting ozone rates will not improve public health.  In the name of fighting asthma, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested permission to decrease the ozone standard — the amount of ozone allowed in the atmosphere — to a level some scientists say is physically impossible to achieve.  One organization estimates the cost to implement these new rules will be $1.1 trillion.  Even worse, data shows that as ozone levels in the U.S. have decreased, asthma cases have increased.  This regulation may be the most expensive in history, and bring absolutely no health benefits.

Obama To Rolling Stone: Climate Change Is So Terrible I Dare Not Tell You The Full Truth.  [Scroll down]  But the thing that ought to scare us all far more than any of the above is the insight it offers into the terrifyingly desperate lengths to which President Obama and his fellow travellers are now prepared to go in order to advance the green agenda.  One of these fellow travellers is Rolling Stone editor Jeff Goodell, who was granted an exclusive audience with the President in order to promote what the video calls "Obama's Climate Crusade".  Crusade?  I thought that word was on the presidential banned list on account of its being offensive to followers of the Religion of Peace (TM).  Apparently, though, climate change is so incredibly important that it trumps any of that minor-league rape, crucifixion and enslavement stuff going on in Syria and Iraq right now.

None Dare Call It Conspiracy: Obama's Coordinated Climate Campaign.  This massive effort is laid out in a new report — "Private Interests and Public Office" — by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute.  For the past year, E&E Legal used state and federal public-records requests to uncover whom the White House worked with to promote its environmental agenda, especially its newly unveiled "Clean Power Plan."  Unveiled in August, this sweeping regulation will force states to slash their carbon dioxide emissions by between 7% and 48%, potentially costing families and businesses some $366 billion in higher electricity costs over the next 15 years.  Yet EPA-funded models show that it will have no detectable impact on climate, if it has any impact at all.  E&E Legal unearthed documents showing systemic collusion to promote this scheme.  The coordination involves the White House, state governors and attorneys general, and a host of nongovernmental organizations affiliated with "major environmental donors" — especially billionaire Tom Steyer.

No More Denali Commissions.  The answer is climate change — at least if the question is "why should we keep a costly and ineffective government agency."  The Obama Administration's recent repurposing of a heretofore moribund government agency as a tool to soften the impact of climate change — a move heralded in a recent Washington Post article — is more than just a political master stroke:  It represents the logical progression of strategy for climate change warriors who won't let congressional inaction stop them in their quest to save the earth.  The Denali Commission's corrupt inception, ineffective existence, spastic death throes and eventual salvation at the hands of the president is more than just a metaphor for government run amuck:  It also happens to perfectly encapsulate what the fight over global warming has morphed into — an all-encompassing excuse for the expansion of government.

The Fraud Factor of Obama's New Climate Agenda.  Recently, President Obama visited Alaska to scare up support for his climate agenda.  But it's becoming clear that this agenda is not, in fact, about climate.  Instead, it's the typical Washington story of power and money — other people's money.  Alaska provided the apparent novelty of ice that melts in the summer, which was used as a theatrical prop for the president.  His photo op in front of the retreating Exit Glacier glossed over another bit of reality:  The Exit Glacier started retreating more than 100 years before the start of significant man-made carbon dioxide emissions.  In a bit of bonus irony, the climate research center at the University of Alaska shows that there has been no warming trend in Alaska since 1977.  In fact, the trend is slightly negative.

Wake up Obama, climate change has been happening forever.  President Obama hiked to Exit Glacier in Alaska last week, with photographers in tow, to send the world a message:  The glacier is melting.  Obama blames it on the increasing use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, which he wants to restrict not only in the United States but worldwide.  The photo op was designed to build support for an international climate agreement he's pushing hard to sell, so far with little success.  Trouble is, the president needs to get his facts straight.  Exit Glacier has been shrinking for 200 years — since 1815 — long before widespread industrialization and automobiles.  As the president ended his trip, he sounded the alarm again:  "This state's climate is changing before our eyes."

Obama's 'extreme climate-change agenda' blasted.  Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, threw cold water Wednesday [9/2/2015] on President Obama's Alaska climate-change tour, saying the president's proposed regulatory fixes have put him on "thin ice."  "The president is on thin ice to claim his costly plan will address climate change or benefit Americans," said the Texas Republican in a statement. [...] "The president and his EPA have become traveling salesmen, touring the world to push their extreme climate change agenda," Mr. Smith said.  "But the science doesn't support the president's exaggerated claims linking climate change to severe weather events."

President Obama issues stern warning on climate change ahead of hike on melting Alaskan glacier.  President Barack Obama is painting a doomsday scenario for the Arctic and beyond if climate change isn't dealt with fast: entire nations submerged underwater, cities abandoned and refugees fleeing in droves as conflict breaks out across the globe.

Obama Fixates On Climate, Ignores Faltering Economy.  Obama's in Alaska for three days not to celebrate the state's massive storehouse of vital energy resources but to close them off and shut them down.  He's there for a cynical photo op in front of massive and magnificent glaciers that he claims are melting due to greenhouse gas emissions.  Could his timing possibly be worse?  In the midst of a financial minipanic of recent weeks with wild stock market fluctuations, huge losses in retirement savings and an economy that continues to underperform, Obama's message is that climate change is destroying the planet.  Only Obama would go to one of the most frigid places in the world, where temperatures can reach minus 50 degrees, to complain about too much warming.

Obama: $12 billion new federal loan guarantees for renewables.  The Obama administration has just announced $12 billion in new Federal loan guarantees for renewables businesses. [...] Federal renewable loan guarantee schemes have attracted significant criticism in the past, for example when Solyndra went spectacularly bust in 2012, a bankruptcy which cost US taxpayers $535 million in lost federal loan guarantees.

The folly of Obama's Clean Power Plan.  Before any rational discussion of the economic or scientific merits of President Obama's Clean Power Plan can begin (it will be announced Monday), it is necessary to take his rhetoric about its benefits off the table.  The president stated Sunday that his plan is "protecting the world we leave to our children."  To be generous to the president, that is a gross exaggeration.  By the Environmental Protection Agency's own calculations, the plan will reduce U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide by about 10% from what they are now projected to be in 2030.  Since by that time the U.S. will be producing less than 20 percent of global CO2 emissions, the result is at most 2 percent less growth in global emissions.

The Tragic and Complete Collapse of Racial Relations.  Overregulating and overtaxing are fine for elites, who have enough money to either pay or find ways to avoid higher taxes.  They don't care much if their power, gas, or health costs go up — at least if they are led to believe that is the proper green atonement to pay for cooling the planet, putting a bait fish back into a delta, or shutting down a coal plant.

Obama Summer Book List Includes Doomsday Climate Change Extinction Book.  The White House has released a list of books that President Obama is expected to read during his two week vacation with family members.  The list includes the Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Sixth Extinction" by Elizabeth Kolbert.  It predicts an upcoming devastating extinction like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.  This disaster, the book asserts, would be partially because of global warming and climate change.

Mission creep:  HHS cross-promotes EPA program.
HHS pitches 'clean power' for kids with claims it will cut asthma, pollen, and Lyme disease.  It's nothing but a Stalinist propaganda campaign, taking over every aspect of intellectual life.  It has no tether to any legitimate exercise of government power — which would start, if nowhere else, with executive departments staying in their lanes and not advertising each other's programs with heavy-breathing flourishes.

Obama Targets GOP States With Costly CO2 Regulations.  "Americans across the country are already paying the price of inaction," Obama said in one of his multiple speeches on global warming.  And cutting carbon dioxide emissions is "exactly the kind of challenge that's big enough to remind us that we're all in this together."  Yet Obama's "clean power plan" — which the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled last week — lets some states largely off the hook while imposing deep cuts on others.  And three states — Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska — are exempt.

Burning the Constitution: Obama's 'clean power' plan.  President Obama is hailing his Clean Power Plan as "the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change."  Obama is posing as the environment's savior, just as he did in 2008, when he promised his presidency would mark "the moment when ... the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."  Seven years later, that messianic claim is unmet, and Obama is scrambling for an environmental legacy.  Obama's Clean Power Plan never had legislative support, even when his own party controlled both houses of Congress.  Now he's trying to impose it without Congress, an audacious ploy his old Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe condemns as "burning the Constitution."

Crushing the Poor & Middle Class with the EPA.  President Obama is surreptitiously colluding with radical anti-growth environmentalists to force ideologically driven carbon-emission controls on the energy industry that will devastate the U.S. economy, congressional investigators have discovered.  As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drew up rules aimed at limiting carbon emissions from power-generation plants, "key stakeholders — including the American public — had little to no influence over the debate while powerful environmental activist groups were given unprecedented access to and influence over administration officials," the Washington Times reported yesterday [8/4/2015].

Sure glad we're crippling the economy for this "reduction" in global CO2!  The Cloward-Piven strategy is continuing apace and, according to Mitch McConnell, nothing will permit GOP leadership to shut down the government.  Not a debt-fueled economic catastrophe for our children, not a patently unlawful executive order to "legalize" millions of illegal aliens, not the weaponization of the IRS against political opponents, not the shipment of thousands of assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels, and certainly not the taxpayers subsidizing an entire industry revolving around the sale of valuable baby parts.

The new climate plan and China.  President Barack Obama has announced more regulation in the name of climate, requiring a 32% reduction in carbon emissions from power plants by 2030.  Economic conservatives and those who believe in separation of powers are opposed.  Given the role China has played in climate debates in the past, it is worth noting that the country should not be important to American policy now.  Some liberals simultaneously believe that more government regulation is welcome and needed, and that America faces a mysterious new normal of slow growth.  There is little mystery — restricting choices available to and raising costs for small and large businesses mean less growth, including less wage growth.

Environmentalist: Clean Power Plan Is 'A Great Start,' But 'I Think We Can Do More'.  First coal, then natural gas?  Apparently so.  A spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund defended the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan on Wednesday [8/5/2015], saying the benefits of carbon-reduction are "important" and "real" — and hinting that they are just a start:  methane emissions from natural gas may be targeted next.  "I think we can do more," EDF's Jeremy Symons told CSPAN's morning call-in show.  "I think once we get on this path, we will find that we can do more faster.  But it's a great start."  Under the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, each state must decide how to rearrange their energy mix to achieve EPA-mandated, pollution-reduction targets.  Basically, the plan will force states to abandon coal as an energy source in favor of the wind and solar industries, which are not as cost-effective or desirable in a free market.

The trouble with Obama's Clean Power Plan.  In unveiling the final details of his Clean Power Plan on Monday [8/3/2015], President Barack Obama laid out the three main objectives of this federal action: Mitigate dangerous climate change, protect the public health, and provide international leadership.  For good measure, he also threw in a fourth aspiration:  Protect the planet for our children.  How could one object to such unassailable goals?  Unfortunately, upon close inspection, the plan's actual impact on climate turns out to be largely undetectable and the public health benefits tenuous, at best.  It's tough to leave the world better for future generations by deliberately slowing the rate of human development, which is what this plan unfortunately calls for.

Obama: Everybody's going to die without my 'clean power' plan, so ignore the fear mongers.  How will middle class Americans feel about paying higher prices for energy just for the privilege of being pawns in Obama's heroic battle against an imaginary opponent so he can get even with industries he dislikes while further enriching Democrat cronies and adding a room to his presidential library?  We might find out soon enough[.]

Why doesn't President Obama address the nation about the climate change crisis?  Let me make this suggestion to President Obama:  [#1] Address the nation, and tell us about the threat of climate change, in much the same way as previous presidents have spoken about problems.  Climate change is either a crisis or a lot of hot air.  Obama should treat it like a crisis if he believes that it is one.  [#2] Tell us how a failure to act will devastate our economy and national security and affect people all over the world.  [#3] Send Congress a proposal that he can eventually sign into law.  Why won't he do any of this?

Five governors to defy Obama's executive order?  As President Obama prepares to complete sweeping climate regulations, at least five Republican governors say they may refuse to carry out the rules in their states.

White House to agencies: Consider climate costs in next budget.  White House budgeteers want federal agencies to consider the costs of climate change when they submit their fiscal 2017 spending plans.  It's the first time the White House Office of Management and Budget has officially asked agencies to bake climate change costs into its projections.  The directive applies to federal facilities, as the Obama administration said it wants buildings and other operations to be resilient to extreme weather, flooding and other events scientists have linked to a warming planet.

Obama to headline fundraiser hosted by climate-change activist.  President Obama on Friday [6/19/2015] will speak at a fundraiser hosted by climate-change activist Tom Steyer, a vocal opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline and a prominent supporter of Democratic donors in his home state of California and national Democratic candidates.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is also expected to attend the San Francisco fundraiser.  White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he believes Steyer sought to host Obama because of their common interests in environmental issues.

Obama expected to golf at water-guzzling Palm Springs links amid record drought.  President Obama is expected to spend the weekend golfing in the lush environs of Southern California's verdant desert resorts near Palm Springs — resorts that are among the state's top guzzlers of water.  If he does indeed hit the links, the outing would take place during California's record drought, on the heels of a Democratic fundraiser at the home of billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer, and just days after Obama welcomed Pope Francis' encyclical warning about the dangers of human-caused climate change.

Also posted under The hypocrisy of eco-celebrities.

WH Science Adviser: 'Cars, Trucks and Planes Are Going to Have to Run on Electricity, Biofuels or Hydrogen'.  John Holdren, President Barack Obama's top science and technology advisor, said at a White House summit on clean energy on Tuesday [6/16/2015] that a "global low-carbon economy" by the year 2050 means that "cars, trucks and planes" will be powered by "electricity, biofuels or hydrogen."  "As we all know, a global low-carbon economy in 2050 is going to have to meet the energy needs of 9 or 10 billion people using technologies that will have to be more advanced than the technologies that are in place today," he said.  "Buildings, agriculture, machines must be dramatically more energy-efficient."

The Editor says...
Utopia comes at a very high cost.  Why not just stick with what works?  The left's idea of utopia also includes complete government control of everything.

Obama Prepares More 'Executive Actions' On Global Warming.  President Barack Obama is preparing to unleash a series of "executive actions" aimed at boosting the green energy industry as part of the president's global warming agenda.  Obama is launching a "Clean Energy Impact Investment Center" at the Energy Department to "make information about energy and climate programs ... accessible and more understandable to the public, including to mission-driven investors."  The White House is also ordering the IRS to come out with guidance and rules to get nonprofits to invest in green energy technologies, along with creating more government financing options for small businesses looking to go green.

Obama's 'Growth' Agenda — $110 Billion In New Regs This Year.  The EPA is already responsible for the two costliest rules planned for this year.  Its greenhouse gas emission standards for existing power plants will run $21.7 billion, and new smog standards will cost $15 billion.  And for what?  The controls on power plant emissions will effectively make zero difference in whatever warming is going to occur over the next 100 years.  And smog levels are already so low that in most communities they're close to background levels.  Other new regulations should raise eyebrows among consumers — like the $7.1 billion efficiency standards for dishwashers, or the $12.3 billion for CO2 emission standards on gas furnaces.

Obama defends plan, links hurricanes to climate change.  President Obama on Thursday [5/28/2015] linked hurricanes and other extreme weather events to climate change — the latest move by this White House to keep the issue at the forefront of domestic politics while also pursuing a landmark international agreement to save the planet.  After touring the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the president defended his controversial plan to combat climate change, which centers on new restrictions on power-plant emissions, increased auto fuel efficiency standards and a host of other steps.

New Energy vs. the Birds.  Greenies were elated when one of their own, Barack Obama, was twice elected to the Oval Office and with his full-fledged commitments to crush the coal industry, drive up the costs of petroleum-based energy sources and spend hundreds of billions on the development of alternative fuel sources.  Obama is fulfilling his 2008 promise to bankrupt coal power plant operators and introduce policies that would make American household's electricity costs "skyrocket."  None of these measures could be passed through Congress so they're being implemented via federal agencies like the EPA and BLM and/or through executive order.  So damaging are Obama's actions that on May 5th several state attorneys general testified before a Senate panel that the latest Obama EPA proposals will have a "devastating impact" on their states.

Obama: Climate deniers endangering national security.  President Obama in a speech on Wednesday [5/20/2015] cast climate change as a growing national security threat, accusing Republican skeptics of harming military readiness by denying its effects.  Obama argued in his address to graduates at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that rising sea levels and higher global temperatures endanger military bases and could force personnel to respond to conflicts around the world that are fueled by their effects.  "Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country," Obama told new Coast Guard officers at the academy's New London, Conn., campus.  "And so we need to act — and we need to act now."

McCaul: DHS Spending 'More Money' on Climate Change Than Combating Violent Extremists.  Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, says the current "threat environment" is as high as he's ever seen it, and although the U.S. has "done a very good job" in preventing terror attacks in the U.S., he doesn't think the Obama administration "has done enough" to counter "homegrown violent extremism."  McCaul noted that President Obama's budget "allocates zero dollars towards combating homegrown violent extremism.

Obama on Climate Change: 'I'm Not a Scientist, But I Know a Lot of Scientists'.  At a DNC fundraiser in Portland last night, President Obama mocked the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for wielding a snowball on the floor of the upper chamber to make a point about climate change. [...] "That's why we're taking actions through the EPA to make sure that we cut carbon pollution that's produced from power plants.  It's the right thing do."  Obama promised "there are jobs to be had for those countries that are first to figure out how to harness the power of the sun and the wind, and store it properly and distribute it properly."  "And I want that to be America," he added.

The Editor says...
Let's start with the last sentence first.  Obama has demonstrated two things more clearly than anything else in the last six years:  He hates America and hates capitalism.  He has also shown his inability to create "green jobs."  Now to the previous sentence:  He wants to harness the power of the sun and the wind and "store it properly and distribute it properly."  That sounds like about 3½ Manhattan Projects worth of scientific breakthroughs, which Mr. Obama apparently believes he can create by reading a teleprompter just the right way.  It would be far more feasible to rely upon the fuels and technologies we already possess and understand, such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum, rather than magic fairy dust yet to be invented.  As for the EPA, he's using bureaucracy to choke the life out of capitalism, by pretending that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, which it isn't.  All in all, the President's speech has a looser connection to reality than the average comic book.

Obama: 'I Can Understand Science'.  President Barack Obama said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Portland, Ore., yesterday [5/7/2015] that he is "not a scientist," but that:  "I can understand science."  Obama made the remark as he talked about his agenda for fighting global warming.  "That's why we're taking actions through the EPA to make sure that we cut carbon pollution that's produced from power plants," he said.  "It's the right thing to do."  "We're going to keep investing in clean energy," he said.

The Editor says...
If Mr. Obama can understand science, he should understand that (1) there is no such thing as dirty energy, and (2) carbon dioxide is not carbon, for the same reason that water is not hydrogen, and (3) carbon dioxide is an absolutely vital plant food, not a pollutant.  Mr. Obama seems to understand demagoguery better than he understands science.

Obama: They Have DROUGHTS In California?  President Obama has discovered the Higgs boson of global warming, the missing 18 minutes of climate change, the evidence that settles all disputes, the piece of information so clear and unambiguous that it must put all the denialists on the run:  Southern California has a shortage of water.

Obama urges GOP to stop denying climate change.  President Obama on Wednesday [4/22/2015] challenged Republicans to stop denying climate change and take steps to tackle severe weather and floods that are impacting many states.  "Climate change can no longer be denied.  It can't be edited out.  It can't be omitted from the conversation.  And action can no longer be delayed," the president said, speaking from Everglades National Park in Florida, a battleground state in the coming 2016 presidential elections.

The Editor says...
Nobody doubts that the climate changes from day to day, or from one century to another.  But there is considerable doubt and debate about the role of industrial activity in climate change; and even if carbon dioxide causes global warming, (a) such warming might be quite welcome, (b) the warming is so gradual nobody will ever notice, and (c) we're not going to give up the use of electric power to stop it.

More Than 9,000 Gallons Of Fuel To Be Used On Air Force One For Obama's Trip To Everglades On Earth Day.  According to CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller, Obama's Earth Day trip to the Everglades will cover 1,836  miles roundtrip and consume 9,180 gallons of fuel on Air Force One.

Democrats Raise Money By Lying About the Climate.  I suppose it was Earth Day that prompted a mass email on climate from the Democratic Party.  What is striking about the Democrats' fundraising pitch is its mendacity.

Obama urges GOP to stop denying climate change.  President Obama on Wednesday [4/22/2015] challenged Republicans to stop denying climate change and take steps to tackle severe weather and floods that are impacting many states.  "Climate change can no longer be denied.  It can't be edited out.  It can't be omitted from the conversation.  And action can no longer be delayed," the president said, speaking from Everglades National Park in Florida, a battleground state in the coming 2016 presidential elections.

Obama's global warming distraction.  Incredibly, in Sunday's [4/19/2015] weekly video address, President Obama said, "Today, there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change."  I say "incredibly" because that just isn't true — and if President Obama really believes it is, then it is time to panic.  Given the state of the world and the urgent problems facing us that directly affect our prospects for peace and prosperity, global warming shouldn't even be in the top five on the list of problems our president should be worrying about.

Obama: Climate change is the greatest threat to America today.  President Obama's weekly remarks:  ["]Hi everybody.  Wednesday is Earth Day, a day to appreciate and protect this precious planet we call home.  And today, there's no greater threat to our planet than climate change.["]

Obama: U.S. must secure global climate-change deal 'before it's too late'.  President Obama said Saturday [4/18/2015] that with the U.S. at the helm, the world must come together later this year and strike a groundbreaking climate-change accord or the planet as we know it may cease to exist.  In his weekly address, the president raised the stakes for a key United Nations gathering in Paris later this year, where the U.S., China and other world leaders hope to strike the largest international climate change deal in history.  The U.S. contribution to the agreement is a pledge to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 26 percent percent by 2030, while China will formally promise to cap its pollution levels by 2030 and then begin gradual reductions.

Obama presents climate change as hazard to your health.  President Barack Obama will ask Americans to think of climate change as a threat not just to the environment, but also to their health.

Obama exploits the environment for his new global carbon goals.  On Monday [3/30/2015], the Obama administration formally pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent compared to 2005 levels.  This pledge comes despite agreements with China that will allow the country to emit more CO2 in one month than the $479 billion regulation under the Clean Power Plan will reduce in the United States within one year.  The Obama administration will struggle to justify the lack of environmental progress achieved from such a deal, especially when American jobs become vulnerable to global competitors who can offer cheap and reliable energy.

Obama pledges to cripple the U.S. economy to appease the United Nations' climate scam.  President Obama's proposal to cut U.S. emissions by 28% over 10 years as America's contribution to a global climate treaty will devastate our economy while doing nothing to reduce temperatures.

Rain Dances in California.  On February 14, 2014, President Barack Obama arrived on Air Force One in Fresno, California, with Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein aboard. [...] The Democratic entourage, ringed by Secret Service, posed in the fallow field for Associated Press and the television cameras.  It had no clue how to solve California's water problems.  It could have been doing rain dances, for all the good it was doing.  The fact is, the four were doing rain dances for MSM — all of them — Obama, Boxer, Feinstein, and Brown. [...] A White House that has hijacked drought to serve its ideological ends makes sound water allocation more difficult to achieve.

Rain Dances in California.  No one disputes California has a growing water crisis.  A severe, multi-year drought challenges the state's agronomy and the century-old allocation system that lies behind it.  But the White House instead is using drought to pitch Green cosmologies, not make overdue reforms.  Obama and his supporters in the environmental community hold weather events such as California's extended drought to be "canaries" of global warming, already wreaking havoc all across the planet.  More than a year after the Obama field theater, nothing water-wise has changed.

Obama to US offices: Cut carbon emissions by 40%.  President Barack Obama ordered the federal government to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 percent from 2008 levels over the next 10 years by shifting to renewable-energy sources, such as solar power.  The executive order signed by Obama on Thursday [3/19/2015] builds on a 2010 directive from the White House requiring 35 US agencies to limit their energy consumption to help combat climate change.

The Editor says...
President Obama's efforts "to help combat climate change" are really paying off:  There is no abnormal climate change, and practically all of the climate changes in the last century have been caused by the sun.  Prior to 100 years ago, you could say the same, and leave out "practically."

Gas Bag In-Chief Signs Order for Government to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions.  The progressive obsession with their climate control fantasy is disturbing.  It diverts attention from actual man-made problems like terrorism.  It's also expensive: [...] While Congress is fighting over how much to spend on defending the nation, The Idiot King is throwing cash at windmills.

Obama to sign order cutting U.S. government greenhouse gas emissions.  U.S. President Barack Obama will sign an executive order on Thursday [3/19/2015] that sets a goal for the U.S. government to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2025, the White House said.

Obama to seek 40 percent cut in federal greenhouse gases.  President Obama signed an executive order Thursday [3/19/2015] to cut the federal government's greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent over the next decade.  The effort will save taxpayers as much as $18 billion due to energy savings, the White House said.

The Editor says...
Switching to windmills and solar cells will not save $18 billion (or anything at all) on energy over the next decade, because conventional sources of energy are far cheaper.

Barack Obama's green gambit.  President Barack Obama is quietly but steadily working behind the scenes on what could become one of his signature achievements:  A global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  What he's seeking out of the December U.N. climate talks in Paris would create the broadest, farthest-reaching deal in history, reworking environmental regulations for governments and corporations around the world and creating a framework for global green policy for decades.

White House: Don't Mention Temperature When Discussing Global Warming.  First rule about global warming:  don't talk global warming.  The White House quietly released a draft guidance telling federal agencies to consider the impact more carbon dioxide emissions will have on the environment, but only in terms of how much more carbon dioxide will be emitted.  When conducting environmental impact analyses on rules and projects, federal agencies should only talk about carbon dioxide emissions increases — not things like potential increases in temperature, precipitation, storm intensity and other environmental impacts that scientists warn about.

Wind tax credits little more than corporate welfare; China is the real climate battlefield.  Had [Laura] Dorle and [Katie] Chapman and the environmental lobby actually believed in reducing global carbon emissions, we would have heard their collective outrage over President Barack Obama's climate pact with the Chinese.  Yet we heard no outrage at all.  The president recently signed — without congressional approval — a deal with China, the world No. 1 carbon-polluting country.

12 Questions Obama's Science Advisor Refuses To Answer.  Several months ago John Holdren, President Obama's chief science advisor, offered to answer the public's questions, particularly about the science behind the administration's call to make the vast majority of fossil fuel use illegal over the next several decades. [...] John Holdren and other climate catastrophists — those who believe not in some man-made climate impact but catastrophic climate impact that justifies fossil fuel famine — certainly have a lot of questions they need to answer.

WH Science Advisor: Initiative Launched With 'Goal of Ensuring Climate Smart Citizenry'.  A December 2014 White House press release announcing the effort says, "In response to an initial call to action made in October, more than 150 activities, projects, and ideas were submitted by individuals and organizations across the country, from more than 30 states.  These included a diverse array of innovative approaches being implemented in K-12 classrooms, on college and university campuses, and in zoos, parks, aquariums, and museums to educate and engage students and citizens of all ages.  Today's launch includes a number of exciting new commitments by Federal agencies and outside groups."

Rice: Climate Change, Gay Rights Part of National Security Strategy.  Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., on Friday [2/6/2015], White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice described the terrorist threat from radical Islam as "violent extremism" and said part of President Barack Obama's national security strategy is fighting "the very real threat of climate change" and promoting gay rights.  Rice's remarks followed the release on Friday of Obama's 2015 National Security Strategy, which updates a similar document released by the White House in 2010.

White House threat assessment: Climate change as dangerous as terrororism.  President Obama's new national-security strategy ranks combating climate change as a priority alongside more traditional threats such as terrorism, biological emergencies and nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue states.  The White House released an outline Friday of Mr. Obama's updated national-security strategy, the administration's first revision in five years.  Along with confronting terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and working to reverse automatic budget cuts for national defense, the administration cited climate change as a top priority.

Obama signs executive order aimed at reducing flood damage from climate change.  President Obama on Friday [1/30/2015] signed an executive director requiring all roads, buildings and other pieces of infrastructure paid for with federal money to be built in areas with less risk of flooding.  With the order, Mr. Obama established the "Federal Flood Risk Management Standard," which makes the case that climate change will make floods more common and much more destructive.

The Editor says...
Here we have an example of President Obama bypassing the Congress to spend money we don't have on a problem that doesn't exist.  If world-wide climate is warming at the rate of one or two degrees per century, flooding is not going to develop overnight, and may never develop at all.  (How much polar ice is within one degree of melting?  Divide that by the mass of the oceans, and that's how much change one degree of warming will produce.)  The predictions of environmental gloom and doom have sold a lot of books over the last 50 years, but none of it ever comes to pass. President Obama is merely attempting to accomplish something before leaving the White House; but alas, Mr. Obama has only two job skills:  He knows how to read a teleprompter and he knows how to spend other people's money.

Caribbean Joe Biden Misses His Big Opportunity.  At a Caribbean summit, Vice President Joe Biden promised oodles of wind and solar schemes as the U.S. way of helping these nations with energy needs.  Coming from the shale superpower, what a wasted opportunity.

U.S. EPA chief at the Vatican to discuss climate change with the Pope's staff.  The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday she hoped Pope Francis' upcoming message to his flock on the environment would help galvanize concern about climate change and convince sceptics that "the science is real".  EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, visiting the Vatican to discuss climate change, said U.S. President Barack Obama shared the pope's belief that it was a moral issue because its effects would be felt most by the poorest and weakest nations.  "The pope knows his own beliefs and I want him to know that the president is aligned with him on these issues," she told reporters.

Also posted under The one-sided separation of church and state.

Adventures in Obama's Imaginary World.  It is tempting to get distracted by the cartoonishly biased framing of [a recent] Washington Post story on the Obama administration's new executive action on environmental regulation in Alaska.  But that media bias is only one of three important takeaways in the story — and in fact is the least important of the three.

A mile high lecture.  The same president who hates drilling for oil, but takes credit for lower gas prices is now lecturing us again.  This time from places like Air Force One.  The president, this weekend from that big fuel guzzling plane tells us again about the dangers of fossil fuels.

Obama Films Anti-Oil Drilling Video — From a Jet.  On Sunday, President Barack Obama released an anti-oil drilling environmental video shot aboard Air Force One — an aircraft that has a 53,611 gallon fuel capacity. [...] On Saturday, Obama flew Air Force One over 8,000+ miles to India to discuss global warming and other issues.

Obama: Climate Change is the Greatest Threat.  Not radical Muslim terrorism, not an unsecured border, not an ever-growing federal debt that now exceeds $18 trillion, not the fact that 109 million live in households on federal welfare programs.  These are not the greatest threats facing us today.  "No challenge — no challenge — poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change," President Obama declared in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night.  Although he referred to it as "climate change" and not "global warming," the president immediately followed his declaration that this was the greatest threat to future generations by stating that fourteen of the hottest fifteen years "on record" have occured since 2000.

Obama pushes new methane limits for gas drilling, industry says 'energy renaissance' at risk.  The Obama administration pushed new regulations Wednesday [1/14/2015] aimed at cutting methane emissions from the natural gas sector, calling the proposed rules a needed step to address global warming as industry groups warned the move would threaten "America's energy renaissance."  Relying once again on the Clean Air Act, the rules — the first of their kind — join a host of others that President Obama has ordered in an effort to slow global warming despite opposition in Congress that has only hardened since the midterm elections.

The Editor says...
So President Obama is making "an effort to slow global warming."  How wonderful.  I wonder if Mr. Obama knows that global warming stopped 18 years ago, all by itself.  Maybe he knows this, but is just using methane emissions as a way to tighten the screws on energy production, because he hates capitalism.  Or maybe he really doesn't know that there is no global warming, since it probably hasn't been mentioned on ESPN.

America Is Being Transformed Into Brazil.  Our dishwasher broke just after Christmas.  The timer stopped working, and a new one costs about $100.  My wife suggested that since the dishwasher is nineteen years old, we should buy a new one.  Up until now it was working very quietly and efficiently, washing and drying a full load in about an hour.  We visited the appliance shop where we had recently purchased a new clothes washing machine a few months earlier.  I mentioned to the salesman that our new washer was very slow, taking nearly two hours to finish a large load compared to our old one, which took about 35 minutes.  With a bright smile, he explained that that was because of the new federal energy efficiency standards for clothes washers enacted by the Obama administration's Department of Energy in May 2012.

Where will you be when the lights go out?  Discussion of the Obama Administration's proposal for reducing carbon emissions from power plants has mostly focused on the staggering cost of this unprecedented regulation.  But a pair of reports out this month paint an even more frightening picture.  Not only will your electricity cost more, you might not be able to get it when you need it.  The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) conducted an assessment of the U.S. grid's current reliability and concluded that parts of the country are already slipping into the danger zone.  Because of rapid shifts to renewable and natural gas generation, combined with closures of coal-fueled power plants due to Environmental Protection Agency regulations, the Midwest, New York and Texas are already reaching dangerous levels of "reserve margins" — generating capacity called upon when electricity demand is high.

White House issues climate change guide for hospitals.  Declaring climate change to be a public health hazard, the Obama administration issued suggestions Monday to help hospitals and other health care facilities cope with multiple threats of extreme weather. [...] The "guide and tool kit" is designed to help health care providers and others assure "the continuity of quality health and human care before, during and after extreme weather events," the report said.

The Editor says...
This is an important step by the White House, since hospitals have never had to deal with bad weather before.  After all, "extreme weather" started about 20 years ago, and nobody at any hospital has ever considered how to deal with it.

Fight looms over $3 billion Obama administration payment to UN-linked climate [slush] fund.  The Obama administration can expect a knock-down battle with the next Congress over its announced $3 billion contribution to the United Nations-affiliated Green Climate Fund, a centerpiece of talks over a new treaty on greenhouse gas emissions held in Lima, Peru, last week.  "If they think they are going to get all that money for the fund, they're mistaken," a senior aide to Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told Fox News.  "You're going to see us being more aggressive about not sending more money to the U.N. and elsewhere for climate change."

How Obama and His Environmental Base Are Planning to Eradicate the Oil and Gas Industry.  Why does the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory war against hydraulic fracturing look like the Natural Resources Defense Council's 2007 agenda for eliminating domestic oil and natural gas development?  Because it is.  The NRDC's unjustifiable access to such anti-fracking regulatory power — and the diversion of $8.4 million in taxpayer dollars to its coffers — is highlighted in an October report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee minority staff titled, "Setting the Record Straight: Hydraulic Fracturing and America's Energy Revolution."

Global climate aid up to $650 billion.  As much as $650 billion is being spent globally to aid countries in adjusting to climate change, according to a new United Nations report.  The report, released Wednesday at a climate change conference in Lima, Peru, said the low end of the amount being spent was $350 billion.  The report covered aid during 2011 and 2012 and noted that, due to the complexity of determining where climate funding comes from, the actual amount spent could be higher.  Climate finance is one of the major components of a deal nations hope to strike next year in Paris that would govern emissions beyond 2020.  The Lima conference is meant to set up those negotiations a year from now.

EPA hammers industry with ozone-reducing rule that could cost $270 BILLION per year.  The Obama administration took steps Wednesday to cut levels of smog-forming pollution linked to asthma, lung damage and other health problems, bringing jeers from business leaders who warn of trillions in compliance costs and millions of lost jobs.  And evidence shows that a shifting regulatory environment could drive hundreds of U.S. counties over the new limit — for no reason other than their proximity to China's out-of-control smokestack society.  Energy and industry trade groups painted the government's move as a roadblock that threatens to jeopardize manufacturing's comeback in the U.S.

Government to announce new smog restrictions.  The Environment Protection Agency will announce Wednesday a preferred range of 65-70 parts per billion to reduce the amount of smog pollution in the air.  The proposal marks a historic and controversial move by President Obama to improve the air quality in the country.  The standard is 75 parts per billion originally put in place by former President George W. Bush.  The EPA was ordered to issue a new proposal by Dec. 1.

The Editor says...
Mr. Obama is trying to make a name for himself by solving problems that we don't have.  Tightening air quality rules a little at a time will result in no discernable benefit to anyone but it will make it more difficult for businesses and industries to stay afloat.  The gradual destruction of capitalism appears to be his goal.

White House taunts GOP on climate change: 'I don't believe they can stop us'.  The White House forged ahead Monday [11/17/2014] with yet another piece of its climate change agenda and bragged that Republicans are powerless to stop it.  A presidential task force unveiled a report on how communities across the country can prepare for the effects of global warming.  In all, the recommendations on "climate preparedness and resilience" could cost the federal government more than $100 billion to protect drinking water supplies, shore up coastlines against rising sea levels and take other preventive measures.

Climate change self-delusion.  President Obama and the "green" lobby actually think China is going to honor the new U.S.-China climate-change agreement that pushes both nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions over the next 15 years.  China agreed to a "target" of deriving 20 percent of its energy needs from renewable resources "around" 2030.  In exchange, Mr. Obama agreed that American families and businesses will aim to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 26 percent by 2025 from 2005 levels.

Barack H. Obama opposes cheap and abundant energy because he hates capitalism.
Obama Touts Energy Taxes To Fight Global Warming.  [Scroll down]  "Now, oftentimes this is with the best of intentions," Obama said.  "The idea would be we want to make gasoline cheaper or electricity cheaper so that poor people can afford it.  The problem is that when you subsidize energy, there's no incentive to use less energy."  "So typically when you have a lot of fuel subsidies, those economies are very inefficient in how they use energy, and they generate more pollution," Obama said, touting Norway's high gasoline taxes.

The U.S.-China Climate Change Deal Is Terrible. Fortunately, It Doesn't Matter.  I guess when you're on the lookout for good news any morsel will do.  But there are two problems with treating the deal as big news.  1: We're not really doing anything we weren't going to do anyway.  2: Neither is China.

Obama climate change deal with China a stretch, analysts say.  President Obama's climate deal with China could be derailed easily, analysts say, with the federal government's legal authority to limit emissions very much in doubt, questions about the auto industry's ability to meet fuel economy requirements and a brutal political fight with Republicans and the fossil fuels industry awaiting the administration as it implements a surprise plan.

Obama to pledge $3 billion in climate aid.  President Obama will propose sending $3 billion in aid to help developing nations adapt to the effects of climate change, according to multiple media reports.  The anticipated contribution to the Green Climate Fund, an independent trust fund established by the United Nations, is expected to drum up support for donations from other countries ahead of climate talks next year in Paris.  It likely won't represent a net increase in U.S. foreign aid, as Republicans would block such a move — rather, the White House will probably attempt to shift money from similar programs.

What a deal! Obama vows greenhouse gas cuts now, China stops gas growth later.  The presidents of the United States and China, the world's two largest economies, announced an agreement Wednesday that they say is designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions believed by some to cause global warming.  As usual with Obama's international agreements, the United States gives away far more than does the other side.  Obama committed the U.S. to reduce such emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels in the next 11 years.  That's up considerably from Obama's 2009 goal of 17%.  China agrees to stop the growth of its emissions within the next 16 years, maybe a little sooner.  No reductions.  Just stop its increases.  Such a deal!

The U.S.-China Climate Deal Is Mostly Hot Air.  The United States and China announced new greenhouse emission targets late Tuesday night [11/11/2014].  Secretary of State John Kerry praised it as an agreement of "great consequence," while the White House called it an "ambitious" target.  Don't buy the hype.  The announcement is largely a restatement of existing American and Chinese carbon emission trajectories, topped with a new red ribbon.  Through its standards on automobile efficiency, and soon-to-be finalized EPA regulations on power plants, the Obama administration has already set the United States on a path to cutting greenhouse gases by between 26 percent and 28 percent by 2025.

China, U.S. agree to limit greenhouse gases.  China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, pledged in the far-reaching agreement to cap its rapidly growing carbon emissions by 2030, or earlier if possible.  It also set a daunting goal of increasing the share of non-fossil fuels to 20 percent of the country's energy mix by 2030.  Obama announced a target to cut U.S. emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, the first time the president has set a goal beyond the existing 17 percent target by 2020.

The coming climate onslaught.  The Obama administration is set to roll out a series of climate and pollution measures that rivals any president's environmental actions of the past quarter-century — a reality check for Republicans who think last week's election gave them a mandate to end what they call the White House's "War on Coal."  Tied to court-ordered deadlines, legal mandates and international climate talks, the efforts scheduled for the next two months show that President Barack Obama is prepared to spend the remainder of his term unleashing sweeping executive actions to combat global warming.

The Editor says...
There is no global warming.  Obama's actions are based on his hatred of industry, capitalism, and America itself.

Obama strikes deal with China to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26% by 2025... but is it all for nothing?  U.S. President Barack Obama today struck a landmark deal with China that would see both countries significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades.  Under the agreement, America pledged to cut between 26 and 28 percent of the level of its carbon emissions set in 2005 by 2025 as part of the global fight against climate change.  But Chinese President Xi Jinping simply said he would aim to cap his country's emissions by 2030 — still an unprecedented move by a nation that has been reluctant to box itself in on global warming.

The Editor says...
There is no need for a "global fight against climate change," since climate change is not abnormal, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and the environmentalists' goal is the destruction of capitalism.

Obama-Style Climate Programs Have Failed Everywhere They've Been Tried.  The deputy leader of the German Green Party in the Bundestag, Oliver Krischer, summed up the dangers of relying on green power when he said, "A few years ago the renewable sector was the job miracle in Germany; now nothing is left of all of that."  Every European economy that followed the green agenda has faltered badly.  Consequently, Germany is building coal plants to replace both failed wind power sources and even clean nuclear plants that are a casualty of irrational phobia after the Fukushima nuclear accident.  In 2013 alone, Germany built six more coal plants.  China and India build four new ones every week, rendering Ontario's coal shutdown, as well as those planned for the United States, completely irrelevant from a climate perspective no matter what one believes about the science.

POTUS Official Twitter Account Instructs Fans to 'Stick It To' Climate Change Deniers.  Have to call them out for confrontational political language.  Remember, these are the people who blame every act of violence in America on "right wing rhetoric".

Obama Believed To Have Had Endangered Species Hung On His Wall.  A circulating photograph of a young President Barack Obama and his mother appears to feature a dead endangered species that Obama vowed to protect in a presidential proclamation less than two weeks ago.  After a historical photo aggregator recently tweeted a photo of Obama and mother Ann Dunham, believed to have been taken at their Hawaii home in 1975.  The picture earned some sideways glances for the turtle hanging on the wall behind a bed in the room where the photo was taken.

No Drilling or Fishing: Obama Vastly Expanding Pacific Ocean Marine Preserve.  The revamped expanded Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument will cover 490,000 square miles — an area roughly three times the size of California — and will become the largest marine preserve in the world.

Obama to create the world's largest protected marine territory.  President Obama will expand a protected marine habitat to six times its current size, making it the largest aquatic area off limits to development in the world, the White House said Wednesday [9/24/2014].  Obama will officially sign a proclamation increasing the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in the south-central Pacific Ocean on Thursday to 490,000 square miles.  The White House said it would help revive overfished populations, such as tuna, and preserve coral reefs that support marine life.  "Expanding the Monument will more fully protect the deep coral reefs, seamounts, and marine ecosystems unique to this part of the world, which are also among the most vulnerable areas to the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification," the White House said.

The Editor says...
This action has nothing to do with fishing or marine habitat or coral reefs.  It is all about the prevention of offshore oil exploration and production.

Voters Care About Jobs, Economy, Not Green Agenda.  The world is aflame in violence and barbaric acts of terrorism, and Secretary of State John Kerry is running around warning one of the biggest problems facing the planet — ranking "right up there" with "terrorism, epidemics, poverty (and) the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" — is global warming.  Good thing almost no voters agree with him.

Plans to Turn 'Politically Binding' UN Climate Change Accord Into Federal Law.  Obama administration officials who say they intend to sign a "politically binding" agreement to drastically reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at the United Nations' (UN) climate change conference in Paris next year already have a legal strategy to turn any non-binding accord into federal law, warns Christopher Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).  Horner told CNSNews.com that the "name and shame" effort is an alternative to a new climate change treaty already being drafted by the UN that would have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Pacific pushback: Podesta, White House warned about ocean preserve expansion to combat 'climate change'.  John Podesta, the Obama administration's climate and energy czar, got a blunt warning this week that a plan to cut off all fishing in a huge, U.S.-controlled tract of the Pacific Ocean would have devastating economic effects in the region, and would cede geopolitical advantages to China and other Pacific powers.  "China is overwhelming the South Pacific with investment, and increasing its fishing fleet in the area," noted Eric Kingma, a Hawaii-based fisheries enforcement official and one of those who carried the warning.  For the U.S. not to recognize this potential for lost influence would be "incredibly naïve," he added.

John Kerry has jumped 'Jaws'.  Amid all the threats, tragedies, sufferings, violence, and ghastliness afflicting the Muslim world, Mr. Kerry makes it explicit that "climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face," the "we" resulting from the eternal truth that "our fates are inextricably linked on the environment," and "Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable."  Lest you suspect that this perspective is merely the sophomoric one-time product of some faceless speechwriter, Kerry argued last February that climate change — "the greatest challenge of our generation" — is as big a global threat as disease outbreaks, poverty, terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

In Obama Power Grab, Climate Trumps Constitution.  Apparently letting the Environmental Protection Agency run amok with regulations fulfilling candidate Obama's pledge to bankrupt the coal industry, and enact a de facto cap-and-trade regime the president couldn't get through Congress, is not enough.  The man who said his nomination was the moment the seas began to recede and the planet began to heal now plans to deal the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution yet another blow.  He's doing it by agreeing to a Kyoto-like "accord" he can use as moral cover for further destroying the U.S. economy, in lieu of an actual climate change "treaty" that must be ratified by two-thirds of a Senate that has already unanimously rejected such a pact.

Pressing the climate hoax.  President Obama is preparing to use his executive authority to impose the carbon-dioxide limitations dreamed up by the climate hysterics when they meet next year in Paris.  He intends to ignore his constitutional duty to ask the Senate's consent, and use the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments to impose the rules.  Ignoring the Constitution can be habit-forming, as Mr. Obama has shown us.

Having solved all other problems, Obama will now fix your dishwasher.  For some reason which I can't quite put my finger on, this sounds awfully familiar.  Changing regulations for everyone's benefit without taking into account the real world fallout and secondary costs which would inevitably be passed on to the consumer?  Give me a minute.  I'm sure it will come to me.

Obama pushes green standards for everything but the kitchen sink.  The Obama administration is working on new efficiency standards for seemingly every appliance but the kitchen sink.  Spurred by President Obama's climate action plan, the Department of Energy is pumping out new standards for refrigerators, dishwashers, air conditioners, ceiling fans, furnaces, boilers, water heaters, lamps and many more appliances.

Constitutional chutzpah.  There are three ways something can become what the US Constitution calls the "supreme law of the land."  It can be made part of the Constitution by amendment, it can be passed by Congress as a law or it can be ratified by the Senate as a treaty.  President Obama can't get his climate-change agreement made supreme law of the land by any of those constitutional routes.  Not even close.  The Republican House doesn't want it.  The Democratic Senate won't act.  That's because the people don't want it.

Obama Tries for Kyoto 2.0.  We can talk about the composition of the Untied Nations another time.  But when it comes to Barack Obama's cavalier treatment of the Constitution, you need look no further than this morning's New York Times.  Under the headline "Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty," the paper explains how the president, frustrated by Congress's unwillingness to barter away U.S. sovereignty by signing on to the so-called "Kyoto Protocol," the economy blighting climate standards devised by Greenies and other folks eager to hamstring the world's most productive economies, especially the Untied States, is planning to "sidestep" Congress.

A President's Global Warming Treaty Tyranny.  In yet another demonstration of contempt for the Constitution, President Obama and his administration are pursuing what the New York Times characterizes as a "sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions" — absent any input from Congress.  The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority approval by the Senate to ratify any legally binding treaty.  The Obama administration plans to sidestep that requirement by calling the agreement a "politically binding" deal that would substitute for an actual treaty.

Strategy irony: Obama declares 'National Preparedness Month,' 'PrepareAthon'.  President Obama admits to not having a strategy to deal with the terrorist crisis in Syria and appears stymied in stopping Russia's drive into Ukraine, but that doesn't mean Americans are off the hook for preparing their own disaster strategy.  On Friday [8/29/2014], the president declared September "National Preparedness Month," a time when he wants the nation to set their own strategy for dealing with a killer crisis — like climate change.

Obama Hopes to Dodge Congress on International Global Warming Accord.  The Obama administration is reportedly attempting to bypass congressional ratification for an international move called a "sweeping international climate change agreement."  According to The New York Times, Obama is preparing to hammer out this climate change agreement to "compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions" ahead of a 2015 UN summit meeting in Paris.  Calling it a "politically binding" agreement, Obama is reportedly working with foreign operatives to create a "name and shame" program that would pressure nations into conforming to the new global warming limits.  But such an agreement would not normally have any force of law on the United States unless two-thirds of the Senate vote to join the treaty.

Obama's new power grab: A climate change treaty without Senate ratification.  It's not a "new" treaty, apparently, if they're rewriting an old treaty that's already been ratified.  Maybe that's a sneak peek of Obama's Syria policy too.  Instead of asking for a new AUMF against ISIS, he could issue an "addendum" or whatever to the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda.  Come to think of it, that's his approach on immigration too.  The mega-amnesty he's getting ready to uncork isn't being presented as new policy, even though it would legalize five million people or more.  It's being presented as a discretionary application of law that's already on the books.  Turns out every bold new move Obama wants to make as president has already been authorized by statute, as if prophesied.

Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty.  The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.  In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world's largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution.

The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not carbon, nor is it pollution.

Global warming is the last refuge of scoundrels.  The president is informed, I say.  He knows his science.  Didn't you see those great chemistry and physics grades he got at Occidental and Columbia?  Oh, wait...  In reality, he probably doesn't know much of anything about climate science except what people with agendas tell him — and most of them got it second hand.  It's all received wisdom of the dullest sort and most of it dated.  Obama is about as educated on climate science, in the final analysis, as Nancy Pelosi is about Hamas.

A World In Chaos, And Kerry's Talking Climate Change.  As the world melts into chaos and threats to the U.S. homeland multiply, America's top foreign policy official seems bizarrely, even dangerously, fixated on ... global warming.  In remarks at the East-West Center in Honolulu on Wednesday, Kerry repeated his claim that climate change is "the biggest challenge ... we face right now."  To which we respond:  Can he be serious?

Government Paying $140,368 to Take 10 Students on a 'Climate Change Journey'.  The National Park Service (NPS) is spending $140,368 to fly 10 students to Sydney, Australia so they can experience a "climate change journey."  The government announced last week they are paying for the group to attend the International Union for Conservation of Nature's World Parks Congress (WPC), a global conference on conservation this Fall.

Executive actions on climate change include partnerships, gas fixes.  Keeping with his year of action, President Obama on Tuesday [7/29/2014] will announce more initiatives his administration will implement to tackle climate change. [...] The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report Tuesday, which details the economic costs of inaction on climate change.  The report, which estimates that if the global temperature increases to 3 degrees celsius, it would cost the U.S. $150 billion per year, is a shift in messaging by the administration on the climate change front.

White House: No choice but to act now on climate change.  The Obama administration released a comprehensive new report Tuesday [7/29/2014] in an attempt to justify its controversial actions on climate change, and also will roll out new executive moves to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.  The study shows the potential damages to the planet by delaying steps — such as harsh new limits on carbon emissions from power plants — to tackle global warming.  "First of all, we know way more than enough to justify acting today.  Second, delaying action will increase the costs," said Jason Furman, chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, which produced the report.

The Editor says...
In case you have just tuned in to politics and you recently attended a public school, let me tell you what's wrong with the opinions asserted in the article immediately above:  There has been no global warming since about 1997 or 1998, thus there is no problem to solve.  Perhaps we should wait until there is a problem before addressing it.  Second, carbon dioxide is not the primary component in the atmospheric "greenhouse effect."  Water vapor is, and water vapor comes from the oceans and lakes, so it can't be regulated out of the air.  Third, China and India — with whom we share the atmosphere — are building coal-fired power plants like there's no tomorrow — or rather, like there's no down side to carbon dioxide.  Fourth, to eliminate carbon dioxide production in this or any other country, it would be necessary to stop burning coal and stop using the internal combustion engine.  That would bring worldwide starvation and chaos, which would lead to political upheaval.  This latest plan by Barack H. Obama to bypass the Congress and take unilateral actions "to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions" is nothing more or less than a brazen power grab.  The assertion by the White House that we have "no choice but to act now" is a lie.

Obama to attend United Nations climate summit.  President Obama will attend the United Nations climate summit in New York in September, a move that would put a stamp on his administration's agenda ahead of pivotal international negotiations next year in Paris.  A White House aide confirmed Obama's planned attendance in an email to the Washington Examiner.

Obama announces funds to prepare country for climate change.  The president has made it a second-term priority to tackle climate change, as Republicans routinely deny that the Earth's temperature is warming and dramatically altering weather patterns.  Last month, he announced an Environment Protection Agency ruling that would curb carbon emissions by a third over the next 16 years.  The Supreme Court struck down parts of the ruling, but the cuts largely remained in place.  The vast majority of the funds announced today — 236.3 million [dollars] — will go towards improving a nation's rural electric system in eight states.

The Editor says...
Really?  The rural electric system is so faulty that it is affecting the climate?

Congressman Asks: How Many Migrants Crossing Through Designated Environmental Areas to Avoid Border Patrol?  Oklahoma Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R) wants to know if federal environmental protection laws are making it easier for illegal immigrants to unlawfully enter the country.  After touring a detention center on Saturday where illegal immigrant children are being housed in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Rep. Bridenstine asked the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) if Border Patrol agents are banned from lands protected by environmental protection laws — lands that illegal immigrants may be using to enter the United States.

How environmentalists were allowed to draft Obama's White House energy policy.  President Barack Obama's aggressive and controversial Climate Action Plan grew out of a draft proposal from one of America's richest environmental activist groups, it emerged Monday [7/7/2014].  The Natural Resources Defense Council, which spent $41 million of its $210 million nest egg last year pushing for changes in energy policy, circulated a 110-page document in 2012 that outlined what would become the president's latest salvo in the global-warming wars.

Obama will play up his climate change agenda.  With congressional elections looming, President Obama increasingly is catering to a staunch part of his political base:  environmental groups, hard-core opponents of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline and others who share the administration's lofty goals surrounding climate change.  White House officials will meet Wednesday with billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who is poised to pour $100 million into campaigns of congressional Democrats to help pursue the climate change agenda that he and the president share.  Mr. Obama is scheduled to address the powerful League of Conservation Voters on Wednesday night [6/25/2014], one year to the day after laying out his ambitious climate change agenda during a speech at Georgetown University.

Obama moves to protect vast Pacific Ocean areas.  The White House on Tuesday [6/17/2014] unveiled efforts to expand protection of vast areas of the Pacific Ocean controlled by the United States from over fishing and environmental damage.

The Editor says...
Mr. Obama seems to specialize in solving problems that nobody has, especially if his solutions will take a bite out of capitalism.

Obama Uses Sick Children To Push His Climate Agenda.  President Obama went to a children's hospital to tape his weekly address.  The subject this week was his climate agenda, and who better to use to push that agenda than sick kids? [...] Notice how he talked about "carbon pollution" and not carbon dioxide?

Obama to claim credit for economy-killing EPA plan.  President Obama will personally drive the next nail into the coffin of America's economy next week, proudly announcing harsh new Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on energy.  It won't just be power plants that feel the new Clean Air Act restrictions expected Monday.  Expect the president to brag about "flexibility," which is a bureaucratic way of spreading the burdens so they will fall on consumers all across the country. [...] Why?  For the salvation of mankind.  On something simpler, like deciding if there's wrongdoing within the Veterans Administration, Mr. Obama insists on more study.  But on supposed man-made climate destruction of Planet Earth a hundred years from now, he claims the debate is over:  New regulations must dictate that we kill America's economy now, lest our economy kill the planet in a century or so.

Obama: My new EPA regs will prevent 'up to 100,000 asthma attacks.  [Quoting Barack H. Obama:] We've doubled how far our cars and trucks will go on a gallon of gas by the middle of the next decade, saving you money at the pump — and we're helping families and businesses save billions with more efficient homes, buildings, and appliances.  This strategy has created jobs, grown our economy, and helped make America more energy independent than we've been in decades — all while holding our carbon emissions to levels not seen in about 20 years.  It's a good start.  But for the sake of our children, we have to do more.

The Editor says...
Obama takes credit for things that will never happen, and nobody questions him.

Scientists Respond to the Obama Administration's 2014 National Climate Assessment.  As independent scientists, we know that apparent evidence of "Climate Change," however scary, is not proof of anything.  Science derives its objectivity from robust logic and honest evidence repeatedly tested by all knowledgeable scientists, not just those paid to support the administration's version of "Global Warming," "Climate Change," "Climate Disruption," or whatever their marketing specialists call it today.

EPIC FAIL — Obama's climate report card.  A team of independent scientists fact checked President Obama's new national climate assessment report and issued it a failing grade.  They wrote that the President's report is "a masterpiece of marketing that shows for the first time the full capabilities of the Obama Administration to spin a scientific topic as they see fit, without regard to the underlying facts."

Scientists Disembowel Latest Green Drivel from Obama.  A group of 15 scientists has issued a scathing attack on Obama's latest environmentalist hyperventilation, the 829-page National Climate Assessment (released May 6), and offer a defense of Promethean Man to boot. [...] Among the signatories are:  Dr. George Wolff, who formerly chaired the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee; Joseph S. D'Aleo, a fellow with the American Meteorological Society; Dr. Neil Laverne Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center in Florida; and William M. "Bill" Gray, emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.

President Obama's big carbon crackdown readies for launch.  The EPA will launch the most dramatic anti-pollution regulation in a generation early next month, a sweeping crackdown on carbon that offers President Barack Obama his last real shot at a legacy on climate change — while causing significant political peril for red-state Democrats.  The move could produce a dramatic makeover of the power industry, shifting it away from coal-burning plants toward natural gas, solar and wind.  While this is the big move environmentalists have been yearning for, it also has major political implications in November for a president already under fire for what the GOP is branding a job-killing "War on Coal," and promises to be an election issue in energy-producing states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Louisiana.

Government Will Control You Before It Controls Climate.  Ultimately, it will not matter if people in government cynically promote the theory that human activity is destroying the global climate as a means of taking control of your life, or if they take control of your life because they sincerely believe human activity is destroying the global climate.  Either way, government will control your life.  The National Climate Assessment the Obama administration released this week describes in Sisyphean terms the task government faces in limiting carbon dioxide emissions, which the assessment says make up 84 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions it holds guilty of artificially warming our planet.

Tilting at Climate Windmills.  I admit that I haven't waded through the entire 840-page report, but nothing I can find in the material provided for mass consumption offers convincing links between the report's observations (or its outlandish predictions) and the potentially underlying causes.  It seems nothing more than mere presumption that the cause of the observations and predictions is carbon and fossil fuel proliferation.  You're simply to assume that it's true because they say so.  Think no more.

Carter-Obama Energy Policy: From Gasoline Lines to Pipeline Obstructionism.  In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter's petroleum price and allocation regulations, premised on the belief that we were running out of supply, put America in the gasoline lines.  Thirty-five years later, depletion fears refuted, Carter champions a letter to President Obama urging rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline segment (the last of four legs) on easily refutable arguments, discussed [in this article].  And Obama obliged.

What global warming means for your grocery bill.  A recent report released by the White House, the National Climate Assessment Report, says the effects of climate change are already being experienced across the United States.  And according to one commodities expert, global warming has turned up the heat on agriculture prices — which could be leading to higher costs at the grocery store.  "More than 80 percent of the temperature rise has occurred since 1980, and with that has come some price increases," wrote Jodie Gunzberg, global head of commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

The Editor says...
The article immediately above is largely based on meaningless statistics and deceptive pronouncements.  Global warming has had no effect on agricultural prices in this century, because there has been no global warming since 1998, and even when global warming took place, it was on the order of one degree per century.  The statement that "More than 80 percent of the temperature rise has occurred since 1980" is completely meaningless.  One could just as easily state that 100 percent of the temperature rise since 1980 has occurred since 1980.  So what?  Most of the global warming in the 20th century occurred before 1940, when internal combustion engines were still relatively rare.

Obama, Weatherman in Chief.  Only spin meister Obama could try to accelerate the resentment of the climate change malcontents by making it appear he, and only he, is the source and creator of "wonderful weather" for children.  His foisting himself on the world as its Weatherman in Chief, brings back painful memories when Obama was a fellow traveler of Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers in the Annenberg Challenge.  The Weather Underground's Ayers and Obama took millions in funds and ruined public education.  Everything to Everybody, Obama can only promise you a fictitious job; to keep the needed services of the doctor you already have and your health insurance.  Now he can make the rain go away when your kids are looking mournfully out the front window.  And non-believers of Obama's spun sugar will be branded racists.

Media misdirection and Climate Change.  [J]ust as not covering Benghazi and the IRS is intended to give political cover to the administration, the point of the tsunami of climate hyperbole washing over the heads of Americans — who poll after poll show are not particularly interested in the issue — is to drown us in fear and confusion as the president, on a "personal" anti-energy jihad, uses executive agencies to attack oil and coal, and along with them the entire productive sector of our economy. So much for pivoting to jobs.

Obama's climate push carries political perils.  The White House is framing its new climate change campaign as a critical piece of President Obama's legacy, but his focus on making history is likely to hurt red-state Democrats.  Though progressives have long clamored for Obama to get more vocal about climate change, the issue remains low on the list of priorities for most voters and potentially toxic for vulnerable Democrats already wary of the administration's regulations to slash carbon emissions.

Obama's Last Shot — Climate Change — And Why It's Doomed To Fail.  Today the Obama administration publishes its latest National Climate Assessment on the state of global warming.  The bad news — inevitably — is that the news is very bad:  more heat, more extreme weather, more drought, everything worse than ever before.  Fortunately, there's some good news too:  you don't need to believe a word because, just like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports, this document is much more a political one than a scientific one.

Obama's Phony Ambivalence on Keystone.  Keystone XL is intended to carry crude oil from Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.  Environmentalists have long opposed construction of the pipeline, arguing it would do great damage to the Sandhills region of Nebraska.  Supporters have contended that the project would have little, if any, negative environmental impact, is critically important for U.S. energy independence and would be a great boon to the economy and create thousands of jobs.  Many believed that Obama's eventual approval of the pipeline was inevitable and that he was just delaying the decision to get past the 2012 elections, after which he could safely withdraw his opposition without worrying about further wrath from environmental absolutists.  But since the elections, Obama has continued to obstruct the pipeline.

Obama to talk climate with meteorologists.  President Obama will speak about climate change on Tuesday [5/6/2014] with a number of national and local TV meteorologists across the country, according to an administration official.  The 2014 National Climate Assessment will be released Tuesday and will be the focus of Obama's interviews.  "Today" show weather forecaster Al Roker will be among those interviewing Obama on this year's report, which is expected to look at the number of extreme weather events and their connection to climate change, among other data.

The Editor says...
Obama's handlers make sure he is never interviewed by anyone who might ask difficult questions.  This event was obviously a "satellite media tour" to promote government propaganda.  The participating "news" organizations are probably doing so only either because they are loyal and obedient to Obama or because of Obama's tabloid appeal.

Podesta: Congress Can't Stop Obama On Global Warming.  White House adviser John Podesta told reporters Monday afternoon that Congress could not derail the Obama administration's efforts to unilaterally enact policies to fight global warming.  Podesta said that the president was committed to using executive orders to pass regulations under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon dioxide emissions that they say cause global warming.  "They may try, but there are no takers at this end of Pennsylvania Avenue," Podesta told reporters at a Monday press conference at the White House.

The Editor says...
At first glance, it appears that Mr. Obama is fighting problems we don't have.  Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and global warming has already stopped — all by itself.  In reality, global warming is all about finding a "problem" that can only be solved by establishing one centralized world government.  It's all about power, and that's why Obama is so quick to bypass the Congress

Obama talks climate change in Showtime documentary.  President Obama will discuss climate change in an upcoming Showtime documentary series produced by James Cameron.  Mashable reports the segment with Obama will offer an exclusive understanding of the president's thoughts on climate science and policy.

The Editor says...
Is it a documentary or a propaganda film? Mr. Obama will read a teleprompter and pronounce someone else's thoughts on climate science and policy.  If you were to separate Obama from his teleprompter and ask him what carbon dioxide is or what it does, or why he thinks carbon dioxide is harmful, he probably couldn't tell you.  That's because he is poorly educated and unfit for his job.

Senate Democrats set to confirm zealous foe of fossil fuels.  Rhea Suh is living the sweetest dream of every radical environmental activist toiling in the trenches of Big Green's war against fossil fuels.  Suh has received a fat salary and extremely generous benefits since 2009 as assistant secretary for policy, management and budget for the Department of the Interior.  In that position, she helped shape every major Interior Department policy, including the infamous Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium that was twice rejected by the federal courts.  Before that, she was a member of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, which represents 200 major environmental groups that are devoted to halting development of U.S. natural resources, especially in the western states. [...] Suh's dream is about to become even sweeter because she will soon step into a new job that will make her one of Big Green's most powerful Washington players, thanks to her appointment by President Obama as assistant secretary of the Interior for fish, wildlife and parks.

The Democratic Civil War Over Energy.  A split is growing in the Democratic Party, one that ought to rival the divisions on the right that the headlines trumpet.  Greens are increasingly bitter about President Obama — annoyed that he's dropped climate legislation, scaled back green subsidies, ignored fracking.  They've channeled their frustration into the fight against Keystone, warning that they'll turn their significant money and resources against Mr. Obama's party if the president approves more "dirty oil."  Since this president cares about nothing so much as winning elections, he's sat on the pipeline for five years.

Government propaganda on demand:
White House to Introduce Climate Data Website.  President Obama wants Americans to see how climate change will remake their own backyards — and to make it as easy as opening a web-based app.  As part of its effort to make the public see global warming as a tangible, immediate and urgent problem, the White House on Wednesday will inaugurate a website aimed at turning scientific data about projected droughts and wildfires and the rise in sea levels into eye-catching digital presentations that can be mapped using an app.

Obama unleashing power of data on climate change.  The Obama administration hopes to fight global warming with the geeky power of numbers, maps and even gaming-type simulations.

White House launches climate data initiative.  The White House on Wednesday unveiled a new effort to share data and work with business to help communities prepare for climate change.  President Obama's Climate Data Initiative is "a broad effort to leverage the Federal Government's extensive, freely-available climate-relevant data resources to stimulate innovation and private-sector entrepreneurship in support of national climate-change preparedness," the White House said in a statement announcing the plan.  A new website, climate.data.gov, will be the central host for the government's climate data and will provide information and maps to help citizens and experts learn more about climate change and make decisions to prepare.

The Editor says...
How does one "prepare" for a temperature change of one degree per century, considering that the temperature often changes 40 degrees in 24 hours?  Moreover, why should one prepare at all, since most of us won't be around to experience that change, even if it happens exactly as predicted?

The Environmentalist Eugenics of the Left.  Pick up a copy of Obama's $3.9 trillion budget and there among the TSA fee hikes, Medicare payment cuts and the $400 million for the Department of Homeland Security to fight global warming is a curious little item.  On Page 930 of the budget that never ends is $575 million for "family planning/reproductive health" worldwide especially in "areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species."  The idea that the way to protect insects, fish and animals is by preventing human beings from having children is part of an approach known as Population, Health and Environment (PHE) which integrates population control into environmentalist initiatives.

Inhofe: Obama Wasted $120 Billion on Global Warming Which Could Buy 1400 F-35s.  Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday [3/5/2014] at a hearing on the Defense Department's Fiscal Year 2015 budget that President Barack Obama has wasted $120 billion on global warming over the past five years — money that would be better spent on the military.  "I've been working on this for quite some time ... In the last five years, between 2009 and 2014, the president has spent $120 billion on the environmental agenda, mostly global warming, climate and that type of thing," said Inhofe.  "And in that respect, if you'll just take the amount that was not authorized by Congress — and I'm talking about the environmental agenda, you could actually buy 1,400 F-35s."

The Editor says...
Even politicians on the right make the mistake of speculating about what we "could have bought" with the money wasted on some frivolous program, without considering the best alternative:  Don't spend the money at all, especially if it increases the national debt.

Obama and the Unsettled Science of Global Warming.  During a recent visit to California, President Obama reconfirmed he is a devout believer in man-caused climate change and policies he proposes show he is willing to risk the wellbeing of our families and harm the economic future of our country in support of an unsettled theory he believes is a settled science. [...] It is clear the Obama administration is hopelessly persuaded and as usual, taxpayers are on the hook to pay the penance for supposed crimes against the planet.  If Obama really believed this stuff, you would think he would do his part to reduce his carbon footprint with a bit less traveling on Air Force One and his gas-guzzling motorcade.

Obama: the Pen, Phone, and Failure.  [President Obama's] EPA is trying to regulate the coal industry out of business.  Coal provides 37% of our electricity.  Do not be alarmed, he is replacing that generating capacity with... well, nothing.  You see, skyrocketing the price of electricity was an objective not a side effect.  If you can't afford it, you won't use it.  The goal is to push Americans out of single-family homes into high-density cities, where tiny, cubicle-like apartments, clustered around mass transit will become the norm.  In these progressive Shangri-Las, no one will own a car, which is a good thing since Barry has doubled the price of gasoline in his first term and will probably double it again before the end of his second.

Obama the activist.  President Obama, like Secretary of State John Kerry, worships at the Church of Global Warming but chooses a different form of grandstanding to profess his faith.  In a speech at a Maryland supermarket warehouse, Obama said he was using his authority to direct the Transportation Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to tighten fuel economy standards for trucks as a measure to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief alleged earth-warming gas.

The Editor says...
Water vapor, not carbon dioxide, is the primary "greenhouse gas," but the sun is our heat source, not the atmospheric gases.

Obama, God of Weather — and Lies.  When he first ran for the presidency, Barack Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.  On Tuesday [2/18/2014], he claimed to have delivered on that promise, telling an audience in Maryland that his administration had prevented some of the severe weather impacts of climate change by restricting carbon dioxide emissions.  Before he took office, he said, "[c]arbon pollution was going unchecked, which was having severe impacts on our weather."  He then announced he would pursue new fuel economy standards for trucks.

The Editor says...
(1) Carbon dioxide is not carbon, for the same reason that water is not hydrogen; (2) carbon dioxide does not have an impact on day-to-day weather; and (3) trucks and cars are not the only sources of CO2.

Heavy-duty vehicles in Obama crosshairs.  President Obama will unveil the next phase of fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for heavy-duty vehicles on Tuesday [2/18/2014].  During his visit to a Safeway distribution center in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Obama will announce the new standards, which build upon the first standards the administration finalized for big rigs, semi trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles in 2011.  The new standards continue Obama's promised "year of action," a White House official said on Monday.  In the last five days, including the new fuel economy standards, the administration has set a stricter tone on the president's climate policies.

Obama orders new green rules.  President Obama on Tuesday [2/18/2014] announced he was ordering his administration to develop a set of new fuel efficiency standards for trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles.  Obama did not detail specific targets for heavy-duty vehicles, but said he expected a draft proposal by March of next year and for the rule to be implemented by 2016.  The proposal will be an extension of standards first launched in 2011, and apply to future model years.  While heavy-duty trucks and buses represent just 4 percent of the vehicles on the road, they generate 20 percent of the nation's vehicular carbon pollution.

The Editor says...
Here's a handy code-cracker for the benefit of those of you who attended public schools: If "4 percent of the vehicles on the road... generate 20 percent" of the CO2, that's probably because their engines are five times as powerful.  Therefore, it is a meaningless statistic.  And notice once again, "they generate 20 percent of the nation's vehicular carbon pollution."  That's a double-sided canard:  Carbon dioxide is not carbon, nor is it a pollutant.  Carbon dioxide obviously does not cause global warming, because carbon dioxide is steadily increasing in the atmosphere, and global warming stopped in the late 1990's.  Any battle against the production of carbon dioxide is futile, wasteful and unnecessary.  Why then are leftist politicians like Obama promoting such a battle (at taxpayers' expense)?  Leftists hate capitalism, and big trucks (and cars) are essential to capitalism.

Obama to issue executive order on truck fuel standards.  The preisdent just "can't wait" for Congress to develop new fuel efficiency standards for trucks, so he will do it for them using his power of executive authority. [...] It isn't so much that Congress won't develop new fuel standards.  It's that they won't do it the way he wants it done.  Like any good king, the president knows what's best and things like, "compromise," and "consensus" shouldn't stand in the way of his royal pronouncements.

Report: Obama offers UN climate agreement that doesn't need congressional approval.  The Obama administration is quietly forging ahead with plans to offer up an international commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming — without congressional approval.  Reuters reports that the U.S. submitted its vision for a new international global warming agreement to the United Nations on Wednesday, suggesting a "bifurcated approach" of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol — placing different emissions targets for rich and poor countries.

Obama to link California drought to climate change.  President Obama on Friday [2/14/2014] will travel to California to announce new executive actions to combat the state's drought and will attribute the growing frequency of such conditions to climate change.  Obama will announce the expediting of $100 million in assistance for livestock producers, $60 million in food-bank funding for families affected by the drought and another $15 million for areas nationwide most severely harmed by dry conditions.

Obama to pitch $1B climate change 'resilience fund'.  President Obama will pitch a new $1 billion climate change resilience fund during a visit Friday to California.  The fund, which would need to be approved by Congress, is intended to help communities dealing with negative weather that's the result of climate change.

The Editor says...
Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I wonder... where is he going to get a billion dollars?

Agriculture chief says climate change already hurting agriculture, unveils new 'climate hubs'.  Climate change is already hurting American farmers and rural residents, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today [2/5/2014], warning that the U.S. would regret any failure to adapt and prepare for shifting weather realities.

Obama stresses US position as climate leader.  President Obama said his second-term climate agenda will position the United States as an international leader that pushes large polluters like China and India to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.  The U.S. emits the second-most greenhouse gases in the world, behind China and ahead of India. Republicans who have criticized Obama's climate push have noted that U.S. action alone cannot avert some of the catastrophic conditions climate scientists say will come if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius by century's end.

Emails Show Extensive Collaboration Between EPA, Environmentalist Orgs.  Internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emails show extensive collaboration between top agency officials and leading environmentalist groups, including overt efforts to coordinate messaging and pressure the fossil fuel industry.  The emails, obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (EELI) through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, could fuel an ongoing controversy over EPA policies that critics say are biased against traditional sources of energy.  Emails show EPA used official events to help environmentalist groups gather signatures for petitions on agency rulemaking, incorporated advance copies of letters drafted by those groups into official statements, and worked with environmentalists to publicly pressure executives of at least one energy company.

Sierra Club Pressed EPA to Create Impossible Coal Standards.  Emails between the Sierra Club and the EPA produced through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit show the green group and senior officials at the nation's top environmental enforcer met and corresponded frequently about the agency's work on new coal regulations.  The EPA published its long-awaited New Source Performance Standards for new coal-fired plants on Wednesday [1/8/2014], four months after the agency announced their creation.  The EPA has repeatedly said the regulations on coal-fired power plants will not be a death blow to the industry.  However, the agency was working closely behind the scenes with the Sierra Club, an environmental organization that was pushing the agency to adopt standards that would be impossible for power plants to meet.

Podesta's Climate And Environmental Agendas Will Add To Obama's Executive Disorders.  President Obama's promise to be the most transparent administration in history is proving to be true with regard to the recent appointment of John Podesta as his high profile congressional circumvention strategist.  Podesta's belief in government by fiat is clear. [...] Never mind that having witnessed the past 17 years of flat global temperatures despite ballyhooed record atmospheric CO2 levels, John Podesta is hell-bent to reheat regulatory assaults on carbon emissions.

Executive Order: 'Excessively High Temperatures' 'Already' Harming Public Health.  "Excessively high temperatures" are "already" harming public health nationwide, Pres. Obama declared on Nov. 1, 2013, two months before today's assault by record low temperatures.  In his executive order on climate change, Obama warned that too much rain — and not enough rain — also dictated that executive action against climate fluctuations[.]

Despite Record Cold, Obama To Press Forward With Executive Action On Global Warming.  While climate alarmists are twisting logic into knots trying to blame the current deep freeze on global warming, President Obama is pressing ahead with his plans to use executive action to fight it.

In midst of The Big Freeze, Obama to exert presidential powers on 'global warming'.  Seeking to build his legacy on a core issue for many in the Democratic Party, the president and his deputies in the Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere will take several key actions over the next 12 months as part of the federal government's larger effort to combat climate change, specialists say.  Mr. Obama has shown few reservations about using executive powers on climate and environmental issues.  In the final few months of 2013, he took executive action directing the government to prepare itself for "the impacts of climate change" and instructed all federal departments and agencies to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce fuel consumption at all government facilities.

John Kerry Brings the Gospel of Global Warming to the World.  In the 19th century, European colonists set out across the world with Bibles tucked under one arm and blueprints of European parliamentary government under the other to teach the great unwashed the fundamentals of civilization.  Today, Secretary of State John Kerry is continuing that tradition — by preaching the Gospel of Global Warming to the rest of the world.

Interior Dept. Nominee Helped Steer Millions to Environmentalist Groups.  A nominee for a top post at the Interior Department helped create a financing apparatus that has steered hundreds of millions of dollars to some of the nation's most prominent environmentalist groups.  President Barack Obama nominated Rhea Suh in October to lead Interior's fish and wildlife and parks division, which oversees the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Obama's War on America's Energy Needs.  The Obama administration's relentless war on the nation's coal industry and on the electrical power generation plants that depend upon it is one aspect of his war on America that doesn't receive the attention it deserves.  There is literally no basis, no justification for it, and yet the mainstream media tends to take little notice or supports it.  It is far more than a "war on coal".  It is a war on the nation's capacity to meet its ever expanding energy needs.  You can't build a power generation plant overnight.  You can't get the enormous amount of electrical energy the nation needs from wind and solar power.

End of the line for the lead bullet? Regulations, bans force switch to 'green' ammo.  When the last bullet-producing lead smelter closes its doors on Dec. 31, it will mark a major victory for those who say lead-based ammunition pollutes the environment, but others warn 'green' bullets will cost more, drive up copper prices and do little to help conservation.  The bid to ban lead bullets, seen by some as harmful to the environment, started slowly more than a decade ago.

Podesta: Climate game changer.  Environmental groups believe John Podesta will be a force for change on climate issues at the White House. [...] Three key areas Podesta and the climate team will work on are Environmental Protection Agency rules on existing power plants, developing a comprehensive methane strategy and developing new fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles.  While Podesta's full portfolio won't be known until he arrives next year, an administration official said he'll probably spend time working with the Department of the Interior on its regulatory policies.  That's likely to include administration decisions about how to lease out federal lands and which energy development and mining projects to permit.

Obama directs federal government triple renewable power use.  President Obama directed federal agencies and the military to nearly triple renewable energy consumption by the end of the decade, setting a target of getting 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources.  The move, which comes through executive order, is the latest in a series of administrative efforts the White House has employed to address climate change through curbing greenhouse gas emissions. [...] The centerpiece of the president's agenda is proposed emissions rules for new and existing power plants.

The Editor says...
If the President wants the government to use electricity from renewable sources, then let the military bases and government buildings generate their own power, and leave the reliable fossil-fuel plants running for the rest of us.

EPA Chief: 'No More Urgent Threat to Public Health Than Climate Change'.  Ahead of her upcoming trip to China, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy told a liberal advocacy group in Washington on Monday that she has dedicated her life to protecting the environment:  "And I really see no greater issue and no more urgent threat to public health than climate change."

Feds refuse to tell House committee about their global warming spending.  Eleven federal agencies that declined to testify at a Sept. 18 hearing on their global warming spending also missed a Nov. 22 deadline to provide a congressional panel with written information about the issue.  The House Committee on Energy and Commerce asked officials at 14 agencies to testify at the hearing.  When the agencies said none of their top officials were available, the committee extended its invitation to any available staff member.  Still, all but the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency refused to provide a witness, citing scheduling conflicts.

Green energy feels sold out by Obama.  Just 11 months after President Obama made the environment and climate change his top priority in the Inaugural Address, green energy firms are facing abandonment and even fines from his administration, now viewed as cozying up to Big Oil.  Two major events occurred this month that has the green industry yelling "sell out" at the White House.

Hagel, citing climate change, rolls out Arctic strategy.  The Defense Department on Friday [11/22/2013] unveiled a first-time strategy for protecting U.S. security interests and fostering international cooperation in the Arctic, where climate change is bringing new commercial activity and potential for conflict.

The Editor says...
The climate isn't changing any more than it always has.  This is just the easiest way to expand the government by playing on the emotions of the poorly-educated "low information" masses.

Obama on the 'urgency' of combating 'global warming'.  Few challenges facing America and the world are less urgent than combating the nonproblem of "global warming". [...] On all measures, global temperatures have been falling for seven full years since late 2001.  The January-to-January fall in temperatures between 2007 and 2008 was the greatest since global temperature records were first compiled in 1880, 128 years ago.  The rate of new Arctic sea-ice formation in mid-October 2008 was among the fastest since satellite records began almost 30 years ago.  There has been no decline whatsoever in the total global extent of sea ice since satellite records began.

Secretary of State John Kerry calls climate change the world's biggest threat.  Secretary of State John Kerry told a climate change conference in Poland Monday [11/18/2013] that global warming is the biggest challenge to the world.

If You Liked ObamaCare, You'll Love ClimateCare.  The president unveiled his "new national climate action plan" at Georgetown University last June.  The plan aims to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to 17 percent below their 2005 levels.  In his speech, the president noted that he had urged Congress to adopt a "bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change."  But he also said he wasn't going wait for Congress to act, so outlined what amounts to a kind of Climate Five-Year Plan, setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions at home while pursuing efforts abroad to reach "a new global agreement to reduce carbon pollution through concrete action."

The Editor says...
If the President is enacting the new rules on his own, that's not bipartisan, and if it's a government mandate, it's not "market-based."  In any event, it is not a "solution to climate change," because the climate has always changed, and no solution is needed — nor is any solution possible, no matter what the climate is doing.  Mr. Obama' goal is the destruction of capitalism, through any means at his disposal.  He probably doesn't even know what carbon dioxide is.

Executive Order Ignores Climate Reality.  President Obama is "preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change," by his new executive order issued Friday [11/1/2013]. [...] It is apparent that neither Obama nor the Sierra Club has been monitoring data from the president's own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  The executive order first cites "an increase in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures."  This is a false assertion in view of records from NOAA and the U.S. Historical Climatology Network.

Another Big Green power player moves up in Obama's Washington.  President Obama this week nominated Rhea Sun Suh to be the Department of the Interior's assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, a move that has brought shudders to ranchers, miners, timber harvesters and energy workers nationwide, particularly in the West.  The reason is that this high post controls both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.  Those two large agencies have a track record of appalling behavior that ranges from massively coercing private property away from thousands of owners, to faking science for new regulations, to cozy sue-and-settle lawsuits with not-so-former green group colleagues.

Pentagon pushes 680 green projects, despite money woes.  The Defense Department may be facing significant funding cuts, but not to its green energy program.  Fully 680 renewable-energy projects are still moving forward as part of President Obama's vision of a military that's run on clean fuel, despite the spending cutbacks and budget trims that have begun impacting military operations.  Among the 680 projects:  357 based on solar development, 289 based on thermal, 29 on wind and five others that haven't been disclosed but rather labeled as "electricity generation," The Blaze reported, citing a Defense Department document.

Obama's Executive Order on Climate.  On the surface, it might seem to make sense for the President to want to "do something" about climate events such as hurricanes, but there have always been hurricanes and blaming them and everything from droughts to wildfires on "climate change" is not just absurd, it is a deliberate lie that blames a rise in the amount of carbon dioxide, a so-called but incorrectly named "greenhouse gas", as the cause of these natural events.  The President has issued an Executive Order to ramp up efforts to address "climate change."  At the heart of the global warming hoax has been this carbon dioxide lie, but there has been no warming for over 17 years and the many computer models that predicted it were wrong; many were deliberately false.

Obama Issues Executive Order 'to Prepare the Nation for the Impacts of Climate Change'.  President Obama just issued an executive order "to prepare the Nation for the impacts of climate change by undertaking actions to enhance climate preparedness and resilience." [...] "In doing so, agencies should promote:  (1) engaged and strong partnerships and information sharing at all levels of government; (2) risk-informed decisionmaking and the tools to facilitate it; (3) adaptive learning, in which experiences serve as opportunities to inform and adjust future actions; and (4) preparedness planning."

The Editor says...
Reading Mr. Obama's executive order requires a high tolerance for doubletalk and environmental jibberish.  The whole purpose of his action is, as usual, the growth of the government and the destruction of capitalism.  The part about "information sharing at all levels of government," very reminiscent of the Patriot Act, sounds like the CIA sharing phone numbers with the IRS.

Obama steps around Congress again:
Obama takes control of climate change policies with executive order that will bypass Congress.  Obama's plan would be put in place through executive order, bypassing Congress, which has stalemated over climate legislation in recent years.

Global warming gets nearly twice as much taxpayer money as border security.  The White House reported to House Republicans that there are 18 federal agencies engaged in global warming activities in 2013, funding a wide range of programs, including scientific research, international climate assistance, incentivizing renewable energy technology and subsidies to renewable energy producers.  Global warming spending is estimated to cost $22.2 billion this year, and $21.4 billion next year.  At the same time, the federal government will spend nearly $12 billion on customs and border enforcement this year.

Obama orders government to prepare for impact of global warming.  President Obama issued an executive order Friday [11/1/2013] directing a government-wide effort to boost preparation in states and local communities for the impact of global warming.  The action orders federal agencies to work with states to build "resilience" against major storms and other weather extremes.  For example, the president's order directs that infrastructure projects like bridges and flood control take into consideration climate conditions of the future, which might require building structures larger or stronger — and likely at a higher price tag.

The Editor says...
By now it should be obvious:  Obama's goal is to make everything more expensive.  Electricity, gasoline, medical insurance, and, as we see here, everything else.  In order to justify preparations for the "impact of global warming," Mr. Obama would have to prove that there is (or will be) any global warming, and prove that one or two degrees of warming would be hazardous.  Neither he nor anyone else will never accomplish such a goal.  As usual, Mr. Obama is meddling in everybody's business for no reason except to impede capitalism.

Obama Clings To Climate Change Science That Now Looks Very Wrong.  Flying under the media radar largely due to the ongoing Syrian crisis and other news, President Obama has in the past two weeks signed three multinational climate agreements aimed at limiting greenhouse gasses [sic] and dealing with rising sea levels.  Meanwhile, elsewhere around the world, other countries are backing away from climate commitments.

The Editor says...
Maybe that's why there was a "Syrian crisis."  It allowed Obama to get some things done without news media attention.

Rich, Arrogant, and Stupid.  [Scroll down]  We have put off-limits huge supplies of oil and natural gas — a trillion barrels by some estimates — everywhere from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico.  The only development going on is on private lands in states that, unlike California, do not put up punitive regulatory barriers to exploration and exploitation.  Obama has intensified this bizarre behavior.  He has blocked the Keystone pipeline, and his federal Bureau of Land Management has just reduced by two-thirds the 1.3 million acres George Bush set aside for development in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.  Compared to the last 3 fiscal years of George Bush's second term, during the first 3 fiscal years of Obama's first, drilling leases on federal land fell 42%, and permits fell 39%.  And his EPA has just issued regulations on coal-fired electricity plants that are so severe and expensive that many plants will shut down and fewer new ones will be built, meaning electricity will become more expensive.

The Obama administration's unscientific war on carbon.  The environmental community, fearing the planet will be harmed from climate change, has pressured the Obama Administration to issue new standards for greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants.  Propaganda from radical environmental groups have altered the perception of many policymakers and American voters.  The constant drumbeat from these groups has been seized on by the media and is designed to generate incessant media coverage, donations, and grassroots activism despite scientific conclusions that differ from their ideology.

New Rules On Power Plants Will Kill Coal Industry.  The administration finally has released its rules for curbing CO2 emissions from U.S. power plants.  Far from being a plan to clean up the environment, it is in fact a road map to de-industrialization and poverty.

Obama Takes on Coal With First-Ever Carbon Limits.  Linking global warming to public health, disease and extreme weather, the Obama administration pressed ahead Friday [9/20/2013] with tough requirements to limit carbon pollution from new power plants, despite protests from industry and Republicans that it would dim coal's future.

The Editor says...
A rational person acting on facts alone would have a hard time establishing a link between global warming and any kind of disease, public health problem or extreme weather, since global warming stopped in 1998.  But President Obama's actions are not based on anything but politics.  The policies of the Obama administration have two main goals:  the constant expansion of the federal government, and the systematic destruction of capitalism.

Obama White House Rolls Out Tough New Climate-Change Rules.  In his January State of the Union address, President Obama urged Congress to take action to stop global warming.  But he warned, "If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will."  He's following through on that pledge.  Friday morning, the Environmental Protection Agency will release a draft regulation to limit carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, the nation's chief source of global warming emissions.  The draft regulation is the first of four major regulatory steps the EPA will take to create a significant body of action on climate change before Obama leaves office.

The Editor says...
The article immediately above, as you can plainly see, calls coal-fired power plants "the nation's chief source of global warming emissions."  Really?  The emissions from all the coal-fired power plants in the world (to which China is adding monthly) haven't resulted in any global warming since 1998.  The emissions from coal-fired power plants are not as influential as other factors, like the variable output power of the sun.  President Obama is pretending to take bold action to "stop global warming," which stopped, all by itself, in 1998.  The Democrats hope (and the news media assume) you don't know any of this.

Obama's Middle-Class 'Mission Accomplished'.  Obama's idea of a "durable industry" seems to be solar companies like Solyndra and electric car suppliers like A123 Systems.  Both of these "durable" companies filed for bankruptcy after obtaining generous loans from the Obama administration.  Taxpayer money that would otherwise have been invested to create good jobs in the private sector was squandered so the president could pretend he was a green energy pioneer.  In reality, he has never been a pioneer at anything.  He is an old-fashioned radical who still harbors the adolescent fantasy of a Marxist utopia.

GOP Calls for Defunding of Program to Subsidize Green Vehicles.  Congressional Republicans called for the defunding of a program to subsidize vehicles powered by alternative fuels following new announcements of large taxpayer losses from loans made through the program.  The Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) program has yet to disburse about 60 percent of its authorized funds.  The Department of Energy (DOE) put the program on pause in 2011 but recently announced it plans to once again begin making loans to qualifying companies.

Target: Natural Gas.  The oil and gas fracking boom increased household disposable income by $1,200 last year as lower energy costs flowed to consumers, according to a new study from IHS Global Insight.  So Americans may want to know that President Obama's nominee to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) thinks natural gas is a "dead end."  That nominee is Ron Binz, and in March 2013 he spoke at an Edison Foundation panel on utilities and green technologies.  To fight global warming, he argued, government must adopt a "new regulatory model, because that's where it's going to start."

Sequestration nation: DoD doles out $7 billion in wind-energy contracts.  Why the Obama administration insists upon using the military as a sponsor of what they, rather than the free market, have arbitrarily and falsely deemed to be practical and cost-effective sources of energy, it pains me to think on — but the point is that the U.S. military is currently choosing to spend big money on energy sources that do not offer them the biggest bang for their buck.  Even better, the Pentagon dished out a similarly sized set of contracts for solar energy companies last month; and this is all on top the Navy's push to outfit a number of cruisers, destroyers, and fighter jets with biofuel-blended gas.

Obama forges ahead with green energy agenda despite congressional opposition.  For the first time since the Carter Administration, solar panels are going up on the roof of the White House.  It's part of a mandate towards renewable energy in the federal government, but also a symbolic gesture that the president is plowing ahead with his green energy agenda, regardless of congressional opposition.

Kerry Tells Brazil: Obama Won't Wait for Congressional Action on Climate Change.  At a joint news conference with his Brazilian counterpart on Tuesday [8/13/2013], Secretary of State John Kerry praised Brazil for its commitment to climate change initiatives, and he promised that the Obama administration also is determined to do something about it.

Obama picks green advocate as Navy energy chief.  Obama on Tuesday nominated Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn (Ret.) as the Navy's assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment.  McGinn comes over from the American Council on Renewable Energy, where he was president and chief executive.  The selection signals a continued commitment to green energy within the armed forces, an effort that's irked some Republicans who argue such initiatives are too pricey.

Obama administration preparing host of new environmental regs.  The Obama administration is looking forward to a host of new environmental regulations that go far beyond the president's plans to issue new standards for greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants.  The new regulations, previewed in the administration's spring regulatory roadmap released this week, cover everything from pollution runoff from military ships to landfill methane emissions [...]

EPA Wants Gov't To Control How Cold Your Beer Can Be.  In a seemingly innocuous revision of its Energy Star efficiency requirements announced June 27, the Environmental Protection Agency included an "optional" requirement for a "smart-grid" connection for customers to electronically connect their refrigerators or freezers with a utility provider.  The feature lets the utility provider regulate the appliances' power consumption, "including curtailing operations during more expensive peak-demand times."  So far, manufacturers are not required to include the feature, only "encouraged," and consumers must still give permission to turn it on.

Is Climate Change Our No. 1 Crisis, Mr. President?  The economy stagnates.  Syria burns.  Scandals lap at his feet.  China and Russia mock him, even as a "29-year-old hacker" revealed his nation's spy secrets to the world.  How does President Obama respond?  With a grandiloquent speech on climate change.  Climate change?  It lies at the very bottom of a list of Americans' concerns (last of 21 — Pew poll).  Which means that Obama's declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost — and it will be heavy — is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic.

Obama's Fundamental Transformation of a Nation He Despises.  [Scroll down]  Now, with the help of "extreme weather" coverage on every mainstream news service, he has been ginning up another crisis as the pretext for sweeping regulation of the entire economy.  And just last week, in a speech at Georgetown University, he has announced what that regulation will cover.  It will cover just about everything.  Every activity that uses energy, or that used energy in its manufacture or requires energy for its maintenance, will be regulated — not by Congress but by the president directly.  That is the strategy behind Obama's new pronouncements on the "social cost" of carbon emissions. [...] But what is the "social cost" of carbon?  It is the cost of future climate events that "might result" from increased carbon emissions.

Obama's Climate Five-Year Plan.  Way back in January 2008, when he was just a senator running for the presidency, Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that he "was the first to call for a 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter."  That way, he explained, "if somebody wants to build a [conventional] coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."  Five years later, Obama is doing what he said he'd do.

GOP bill challenges the administration's change in 'social cost of carbon'.  Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) wants the White House to take public comment on its decision to increase the estimated damages from carbon emissions that agencies use in regulations.  Bloomberg reports that Hunter introduced a bill Friday [6/28/2013] to force the White House Office of Management and Budget to seek comment on the changed cost, and submit information to Congress explaining its methodology behind the increased estimate.

'Carbon Pollution' and Wealth Redistribution.  No crisis should go to waste, an eternal truth highlighted in bold by a purported climate change apocalypse that is now the target of actions newly proposed by President Obama.  This so-called "crisis" will flood not various coastlines, but instead the front pages, replacing other, less flattering political headlines for the administration.  And if the proposed actions offer the potential of sizeable wealth transfers to political allies?  That is far more than mere icing on the cake.

Obama Announces Plan to Save the Earth from a Problem That Doesn't Exist.  Obama has failed to fix the economy or win the war in Afghanistan, but give him an imaginary problem and he's on it like Michelle on a glazed poundcake.  Even major liberal media outlets are admitting that the whole Global Warming thing isn't panning out.  So that's the perfect time for His Majesty Barack I, Protector of the Planet from the Carbon Devil, to announce that he will be bypassing Congress and going all Imperial Presidency on a problem that even its enthusiastic backers are backing away from.  While raising electricity rates sky high.

Barack Obama to cut emissions in vow to save planet.  Barack Obama today unveiled the most ambitious plan to counter climate change ever put forward by a US president, saying he would not condemn future generations "to a planet that is beyond fixing".  In sweeping proposals released after four years of frustrated efforts, Mr Obama ordered new curbs on carbon emissions from power plants and called for America to ready its defences against an already-changing climate.  The president also surprised environmentalists by signalling he would reject a controversial oil pipeline if it was found to "significantly exacerbate" the problem of carbon pollution.

The Editor says...
(1) There has never been a time when the climate did not change.  To say that it is "already changing" is grossly misleading.  (2) Carbon dioxide is not carbon.  (3) Carbon dioxide is not pollution.  (4) I would much rather take my chances with inevitable climate change than preventable tyranny.

Pricey Attack on Phantom 'Warming'.  There hasn't been much evidence of "global warming" for at least 15 years.  If anything, "cooling" has kicked in as part of an eternal cycle that stretches back through history.  But President Obama is not one to let the facts stand in the way of a beautiful theory.  Especially when it rallies his restive liberal base.  During (what else?) a speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday, Obama announced that he'll use his favorite leadership tool, executive orders, and the powers of the unelected, Nixon-era Environmental Protection Agency to end-run Congress and crack down on one of his favorite whipping boys, coal.  All in the name of fighting the phantom menace of climate change and in particular carbon emissions.

President Obama's recently proposed policies will do little to combat climate change — but they will do much for his political and economic objectives.
"Carbon Pollution" and Wealth Redistribution.  No crisis should go to waste, an eternal truth highlighted in bold by a purported climate change apocalypse that is now the target of actions newly proposed by President Obama.  This so-called "crisis" will flood not various coastlines, but instead the front pages, replacing other, less flattering political headlines for the administration.  And if the proposed actions offer the potential of sizeable wealth transfers to political allies?  That is far more than mere icing on the cake.  Whatever the weakness of the evidence on greenhouse gases and climate effects, the real goal of carbon policy is a regional redistribution of wealth [...]

Obama: The Man With A Climate Change Plan.  We hoped Obama might moderate his green ambitions in the face of the shift in the climate change discussion.  Global warming has slowed significantly in recent years, and we're gradually learning just how feeble our understanding of our planet's climate is.  Given this uncertainty, emulating Europe by pushing through growth-constricting green policies to meet targets based on fallible climate models would be a huge mistake.  Unfortunately, Obama didn't mention any of this in his speech, instead insisting that the science is settled.

Obama: driving a green dagger into the heart of the American dream.  When it comes to pinpointing the nadir of the Obama administration, future historians are going to suffer a serious case of option paralysis.  Was it Benghazi?  The NSA?  His use of the IRS to harass the Tea party?  The various scandals involving his black ops department, the EPA?  Obamacare?  Personally, though, I think the one they will eventually plump for is Obama's Climate Action Plan of June 25 2013.  The economy, after all, is everything.  Without an economy you can't afford a domestic policy, let alone a foreign policy.  So you'd think the very last thing any president would do as his country began to show the first vague signs of slow — and quite possibly illusory — recovery after a long recession would be to jeopardise it with a whole new raft of utterly pointless regulation and wasteful government expenditure.

The president plans to raise your power bill.  If you accept the science of global warming, then you accept the fact that the president's unilateral action on climate change will have absolutely no effect in terms of adjusting the global thermostat to a temperature Obama finds desirable.  The rest of the developing world, anchored by India and China, are building carbon-burning factories, power plants and even whole new cities that will overwhelm any new rules the president may impose on Americans and our struggling economy.

Tell Obama: There's No Climate Change To Fight.  Apparently President Obama will announce yet another set of policies next month aimed at mitigating global warming.  But why?  The enemy he promises to fight simply doesn't exist.

President Obama pivots to climate change.  "This Tuesday, I'll lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go — a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it," Mr. Obama says.  "This is a serious challenge — but it's one uniquely suited to America's strengths."

The Editor says...
For once I would have to agree, since global warming has already been fixed by doing nothing, which is what many Americans do best.  Notice that Mr. Obama, like so many others who don't want to alienate the hoi polloi by using techical terms, says "carbon" when he really means "carbon dioxide."  Thus, he is calling carbon dioxide a pollutant, which (as shown many times on this page) it is not.  Mr. Obama is repeating a lie, hoping that it will eventually turn into common knowledge.

The microwave tax.  The Energy Department is once more deciding what kind of appliances are good for you.  Like the "standards" the federal government imposed on light bulbs, toilets, washing machines and other essentials, the rules are all about taking choices from consumers and requiring them to buy machines that don't work or don't work as well as they once did.  On Monday, the Obama administration published new rules that will make microwave ovens less efficient and more expensive.  It's in the service of the global-warming scam.

The Editor says...
To the best of my knowledge, the Department of Energy has never produced a single kilowatt-hour of energy that was sold to the public.  All they can do is tell us how to conserve energy.  Conservation is not an energy source.

Obama hits a wall in Berlin.  [Scroll down]  There he vowed energetic measures against global warming ("the global threat of our time").  The 16-year pause of this warming was not predicted by, and is not explained by, the climate models for which, in his strange understanding of respect for science, he has forsworn skepticism.

Obama Readying Emissions Limits on Power Plants.  President Obama is preparing regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, senior officials said Wednesday [6/19/2013].  The move would be the most consequential climate policy step he could take and one likely to provoke legal challenges from Republicans and some industries.  Electric power plants are the largest single source of global warming pollution in the country, responsible for nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Editor says...
There's that phrase again:  "global warming pollution."  There is no such thing.

Obama Quietly Raises 'Carbon Price' as Costs to Climate Increase.  Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government's accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.  The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $38 a metric ton in 2015 from $23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations.  The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops.

The Editor says...
Warmer weather would produce longer growing seasons, not "diminished crops."

Obama Tells Keystone Foes He Will Unveil Climate Measures.  With his administration under pressure from environmentalists to reject the Keystone XL pipeline project, President Barack Obama plans to unveil a package of separate actions next month focused on curbing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.  At closed-door fundraisers held over the past few weeks, the president has been telling Democratic party donors that he will unveil new climate proposals in July, according to people who have attended the events or been briefed.

The Editor asks...
Why does the most open and transparent administration in history conduct closed-door fundraisers?

Obama's new Energy chief: Climate change 'not debatable'.  New Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz doesn't want to spend his tenure battling over climate science.  "Let me make it very clear that there is no ambiguity in terms of the scientific basis calling for a prudent response on climate change," Moniz told Energy Department employees shortly after his swearing-in.  "I am not interested in debating what is not debatable," Moniz said in his remarks at the Tuesday [5/21/2013] ceremony.  "There is plenty to debate as we try and move forward on our climate agenda."

Oh, good: Interior still acquiring new land and creating monuments, nevermind sequestration warnings.  The federal estate covers almost a third of the surface area of the United States, but it is in no way exempt from the deficient funding, top-down regulatory hindrance, and slow, bureaucratic politicking that goes down in all other areas of the government — and in this case, the results are often environmental degradation.

Congress working to strip presidential land grab power.  If you think national monuments are statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, welcome to the crazy catalog of federal land grabbing tools.  These "monuments" are actually large areas that are supposed to be small, and can be created out of thin air by the president with the stroke of a pen.  This extraordinary power has been abused by presidents of both political parties time and again to bypass Congress in creating national park-size units — a congressional power — at his own whim to satisfy his Big Green constituents.

Obama's EPA And IRS Violate Our Constitutional Rights.  The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged that it released personal information on potentially thousands of farmers and ranchers to environmental groups, violating their privacy rights and acting in collusion with private groups with private political agendas.  In Nixonian fashion, the EPA has provided these environmental groups with the dossiers of farmers it has gathered to help them create an enemies list of potential polluters.  The agency acknowledged the information included individual names, email addresses, phone numbers and personal addresses.

Obama's One-Man March Against Keystone.  If Obama wants to be grand marshal of a one-man parade against the Keystone XL pipeline, he's doing a heckuva job.  Top Democrats along the proposed pipeline route favor Keystone.  These include U.S. senators Jon Tester of Montana and freshman Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.  Texas representatives Henry Cuellar, Charles A. Gonzalez, Al Green, Gene Green, Ruben Hinojosa, and Sheila Jackson Lee all have pleaded with Obama to give Keystone the green light.

Green Energy, Black Water.  Two environmental groups have accused Duke Energy, one of the Democratic Party's major corporate supporters and a recipient of large green energy subsidies, of contaminating drinking water supplies in Charlotte, N.C.  The plaintiffs say Duke is misleading the public about its environmental record, and could face federal sanctions and a hit to its public image in Charlotte, where the utility is headquartered.  Alleged environmental damage by Duke could also pose challenges for the Obama administration, which has strong ties to the company.

Obama eyes taking millions of acres to save habitat from global warming.  A large purchase in Florida's Everglades, for example, is aimed in part at preserving grasses that can help prevent rising water from flooding the area and destroying animal habitat.  The new strategy, produced by several federal and state agencies and tribal groups, would expand that program to protect habitat under global warming pressure and used by everything from butterflies and robins to foxes and even coral.  For example, more habitat for grizzly bears would be set aside so they can move north as their habitat warms.

Obama admin looking to set aside millions of acres for habitat preservation.  The federal government already manages nearly one third of the surface area of the United States, but inefficient federal bureaucrats, dependent on DC for their funding and often motivated by political externalities, do not make the best environmental stewards — far from it.

Federal plan aims to help wildlife adapt to climate change.  Developed along with state and tribal authorities, the strategy seeks to preserve species as global warming alters their historical habitats and, in many cases, forces them to migrate across state and tribal borders.  Over the next five years, the plan establishes priorities for what will probably be a decades-long effort.  One key proposal is to create wildlife "corridors" that would let animals and plants move to new habitats.  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Daniel M. Ashe said such routes could be made through easements and could total "much more than 1 million acres."  The plan does not provide an estimate of the cost.

The Editor says...
"The plan does not provide an estimate of the cost" because the cost is inestimable.  Once again, if you questioned these people, I believe you would find them all to be firm believers in Darwin's "survival of the fittest."  Yet they seem to think wild animals need "corridors" to get to their new homes — assuming the animals can detect any climate change and assuming they elect to move.  These "corridors" will naturally fall right across the land with the greatest petroleum reserves, preventing Big Oil from making money.  This is nothing more or less than another big government land grab.  The people who come up with these ideas don't care about killing jobs and seizing private land.

Obama keeps rolling the dice on green energy.  Like a desperate gambler who doubles down on a losing bet, President Obama is calling for spending $2 billion more on green energy projects.  Apparently these billions will succeed where previous billions have failed.

Obama Will Use Nixon-Era Law to Fight Climate Change.  President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways.  The result could be significant delays for natural gas export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.

Obama doubles down on alternative energy.  President Barack Obama is doubling down on the administration's plan to reinvest federal oil-and-gas drilling revenues into next-generation alternative energy technology, unveiled during his State of the Union address last February.

Climate Change: Key mission for the US Navy?  It's troubling that the top officers of our Navy have accepted the misguided theory of man-made climate change. [...] Not only is the Navy concerned about climate change, they are attempting to do something about it.  Both the Navy and the Air Force have established goals to use a 50/50 blend of biofuel and petroleum-based fuel for planes and ships.  Navy plans call for establishment of a "Green Strike Group" task force by 2016, fueled by the biofuel blend, and for alternative fuels to power half of all energy consumption by 2020.

Military Doesn't Need To Worry About Climate Change.  The commander of America's Pacific forces says he knows what the top security risk is in that region.  No, it's not China.  Nor is it North Korea.  It's climate change.  Yes, this is embarrassing.

Climate Change Is the Biggest Threat in the Pacific, Says Top U.S. Admiral.  North Korea just annulled the 1953 armistice ending its war with South Korea.  China and Japan are locked in a dispute over an island chain.  But the greatest long-term threat to the peace of East Asia and Pacific Ocean — the part of the world at the heart of the Obama administration's aspirational defense strategy — is climate change, according to the admiral in charge of U.S. military operations there.

Carbon Power Politics.  President Obama gave his second-term global warming agenda a lot more definition Monday [3/4/2013] with a new Environmental Protection Agency chief to replace Lisa Jackson.  Picking Gina McCarthy, one of her top lieutenants and the architect of some of the agency's most destructive carbon rules, is a sign he intends to make good on his vow of "executive actions" if Congress doesn't pass cap and tax.

Obama Possibly Trading Keystone for More Taxes?  Pretty much everyone, including all of the major labor unions, is geeked about the Keystone Pipeline, which would create jobs and improve the United State's energy independence.  But a bunch of hippies hate it, and the hippies vote, probably illegally in seven states, so Barack Obama is totally against it for right now, you guys.  The Earth, it matters so much more than rebuilding the American economy by providing needed jobs to skilled and unskilled laborers in states across middle America, and ending the vice grip that backwards Middle Eastern nations have on our energy consumption.

Environmentalism and Human Sacrifice.  Take the Keystone XL pipeline, the pipeline the Canadian government wants built in the US in order to send Canadian crude to American refineries.  It would be a 1,179-mile, 36-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline, beginning in Alberta, and ending in Nebraska.  The pipeline will be able to transport about 830,000 barrels of oil per day to Gulf Coast and Midwest refineries, reducing American dependence on oil from Venezuela — Iran's base in the Western Hemisphere — and the Middle East by up to 40 percent.  It will also provide Americans with many thousands of well-paying jobs.  Approving this pipeline is a moral and economic necessity. [...] But the Obama administration may (again) veto the Keystone XL pipeline — for one reason:  environmentalist fanaticism.

An Alaskan Challenge for 'All of the Above' Energy.  An accident with no environmental impact is being exploited for political purposes in an effort to halt offshore exploration in Alaska.

Obama Admits: 'Energy Is Going to Be a Little More Expensive'.  This is not the first time Obama has admitted to supporting price-raising energy policies.  In 2008, then-candidate Obama said he was fine with soaring energy prices so long as they helped curb green house gas emissions.  "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," he said.  Obama supporters in 2008 also applauded the prospect of rising gas prices because they would "force us to think about changing the culture to create more emphasis on mass transportation."  Following the sustained applause, Obama praised Europe for its rail system.

Obama's Bonfire of Green Energy Inanities.  President Obama, as his Inauguration Address confirms, is in denial about both the climate and energy realities.  Repeating the most alarmist rhetoric of ideologue-turned-salesman to oil interests Al Gore, Obama appeared ignorant of the fact that data shows global warming isn't happening.  The president has re-stated his desire for yet more backing to a green energy industry that is collapsing being wholly reliant on the lifeline of public subsidy.  And that can only mean dumping further on the oil, gas and coal industries that made the US the powerhouse it still is.

So Apparently Gigolo John Kerry is a Scientist Now.  The longfaced new Secretary of State, John Kerry, delivered his first major address today.  It was not on the recent North Korean nuclear tests or the ongoing strife in the Middle East or the rise of China.  It was on global warming aka climate change.

Obama Unveils His Economy-Killing Cap-And-Tax Plan.  The president's proposed Energy Security Fund will stifle the private energy sector boom and provide permanent funding for future Solyndras and electric cars that nobody wants.

Obama still chasing 'green jobs' will-o'-the-wisp.  It's one thing to say we have to throw a lot of money at solving global warming to save the planet.  It's quite another to pretend that there is a "green economy" just waiting to happen, filled with hundreds of thousands or even millions of good jobs, as Obama has often promised.  The new "green energy economy" that Obama has repeatedly spoken of — a future of lower ocean levels in which Americans work at good-paying jobs manufacturing windmills and solar panels — has always been among the most optimistic features of his vision for America.  But given that it is an economically impossible pipe dream, it is also one of the biggest flops of his presidency.

Obama Commits Assault With Battery.  The problem here is so obvious that it shouldn't be necessary to say it:  If projects such as this made any economic sense at all, banks would be financing them.  But these schemes are far too irrational for even the most profligate of banks or the junk bonds or any other legitimate means of finance.  So the politicians rush in, falling over each other to squander the nation's diminishing treasure on yet another billion-dollar photo op.

Climate assessment delivers a grim overview.  The Obama administration has implemented several regulations to curtail emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists say have stoked global warming.  But the president seldom speaks of climate change.  The White House declined to comment on the National Climate Assessment report, saying it had not had a chance to review it.

The Editor says...
The article above appears in the LA Times, and it reeks with bias.  The writer publicizes false White House statements without challenging them:  The White House (ignoring the personification) has all day and all night to review every report published by anybody, especially when it pertains to big-government policy like so-called global warming.

Turning America's water into Big Green's elite empire.  Two weeks ago, outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar named the White River — which cuts 722 miles through its 17.8 million-acre watershed, crossing 60 counties in Arkansas and Missouri — as the second National Blueway.  What exactly, we should ask, is a National Blueway?  In short, it's the focus of the biggest federal land grab in American history.

The Real Obama Climate Deal.  President Obama set off a guessing game this week as to what he intended with his inaugural promise to double down on climate change.  There's no need to guess.  California Democrat Barbara Boxer, the Senate's climate guru, was happy to fill in the gory details.  The president's climate shout-out sent the green community into flurries of ecstasy, with grand hopes of a new push for cap-and-trade in Congress, or of a redoubled U.S. commitment to a global carbon pact.

Obama's path on climate change runs through EPA.  Obama has vowed to reduce greenhouse gases and to slow warming temperatures, saying a failure to do so "would betray our children and future generations."  And while environmentalists applauded the president's pledge, they are encouraging him to use his executive powers rather than Congress on issues like stricter limits on carbon emissions.  The EPA last year recommended limited carbon emissions from new power plants, but advocates now want Obama to expand that rule to include existing power plants, as well.

Stupid Grids.  The Obama administration's push for "smart grid" technology could be the centerpiece of a revamped "green energy" agenda during the president's second term.  However, the federal government's existing smart grid development effort, funded extensively by the 2009 stimulus spending bill, is riddled with financial problems, according to a report from the Energy Department's inspector general released Wednesday [1/23/2013].

DOE report on Smart Grid.  [For example,] One recipient was reimbursed about $7.3 million more than allowed by the terms and conditions of the award.  After reviewing the recipient's records, we identified an approximate $7.3 million difference between reimbursements requested and actual expenditures by the recipient.  Contrary to the requirements, representatives of the recipient informed us they had based their monthly claims on both actual and estimated expenses and had not subsequently reconciled estimates to actual.

Climate-Change Misdirection.  Instead of pouring money into subsidies and direct production support of existing, inefficientgreen energy, President Obama should focus on dramatically ramping up investments into the research and development of green energy.  Put another way, it is the difference between supporting an inexpensive researcher who will discover more efficient, future solar panels — and supporting a Solyndra at great expense to produce lots of inefficient, present-technology solar panels.  When innovation eventually makes green energy cheaper, everyone will implement it, including the Chinese.  Such a policy would likely do 500 times more good per dollar invested than current subsidy schemes.

Lawmaker wants Obama to prove climate change.  Rep. Thomas Massie challenged President Obama to roll out the proof that humans have played a hand in climate change.  Mr. Massie, Kentucky Republican, said he was "disappointed" that the president in his second inaugural address blamed droughts on "human activity" and accused some of "denying the evidence of scientists."

Salazar Gets to Work on Last-Minute Push of Obama's Green Agenda.  Ken Salazar may be leaving the Interior Department soon, but he's giving a strong push to President Obama's solar and wind agenda on his way out the door.  Two days after announcing that he would be hanging up his cowboy hat and returning home to Colorado come March, Salazar announced the first-ever statewide plan to designate renewable energy zones on public land.

Obama declares war on reality.  [Scroll down]  Concerted global action so far to deal with the threat of climate change has resulted in: higher energy prices; more deaths from fuel poverty; more intrusive regulation; the destruction of rainforests and the squandering of agricultural land on biofuels; higher food prices; famine and food riots — as a result partly of the drive for biofuels; the entrenchment of corporatism and rent-seeking to the detriment of free markets; the ravaging of the countryside with ugly solar farms and even uglier wind turbines; the deaths of millions of birds and bats; the great recession.  How any of this has in any way benefited either our children (who are going to find it far harder to find a job) or future generations is a complete mystery.

The Regulatory Landscape in America — A Morass Of Red Tape.  Former climate czar Carol Browner was very clear about what's in store when she told several green groups not to worry, because "President Obama has a big green 'to-do' list for 2013 so they'll get what they want.

Obama EPA Forces Company to Cut Jobs, Spend $6 million on Green Agenda.  A settlement forced by the Obama Administration's Environmental Protection Agency on a Wisconsin power company has forced an employer to prepare to cut jobs and spend millions paying for the Obama Administration's green energy agenda.

MIT to Obama: Only 4 years left to stop global warming.  The now or never message said that since Obama won't face voters again in a election, he should take the risk of upsetting Americans by imposing a carbon tax and fund research projects that could cost trillions of dollars.  "We can no longer pretend that addressing climate change will be without real costs," said the letter from the world's leading technology university.  MIT urged Obama to make climate change his No. 1 priority.  "The potential for global warming over the next decades threatens consequences so dire that they could overwhelm any progress you make toward other long-term economic, social and political goals," said the letter.

The Editor says...
In case this is your first visit to akdart.com, allow me to offer an opposing viewpoint:
[1]  Global warming stopped — all by itself — about 15 years ago.
[2]  A few degrees of global warming wouldn't be all that bad.
[3]  Global warming is only one of many environmental false alarms that have been spread by activists who have no regard for the truth.
[4]  The global warming hoax was based on flawed computer models.
[5]  The global warming hoax was an effort to shut down industry, destroy capitalism, and spread a world-wide socialist government.
[6]  Carbon dioxide is plant food — not a pollutant.

Feds fund $100,000 video game featuring female climate change 'superhero'.  A new video game featuring a black alien female superhero delivered to Earth to fight global warming is about to hit the market thanks to a $100,000 grant from the Obama administration.

Under the Green Hammer.  President Obama's reelection has the climate cult chomping at the bit to get a long wish list of policies put in place, from energy taxes to cap-and-trade to a possible blockade on coal and natural-gas exports.  And most of these activists are in no mood to let that messy little obstacle called the democratic process slow the juggernaut.  Some, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, are encouraging the president to bypass Congress and shutter more coal-fired power plants through executive action.

New air pollution standards restrict soot particles.  The Obama administration announced a new air pollution standard Friday [12/14/2012] that would bring about a 20% reduction in microscopic particles of soot emitted by coal-fired power plants and diesel vehicles that contribute to haze and respiratory ailments.  The new limit, fought by industry and welcomed by environmentalists, marks the first time the Environmental Protection Agency tightened the soot standard since it was established 15 years ago.

Green Graveyard: 19 Taxpayer-Funded Failures.  While there's speculation over which federally supported green energy company may be the next to declare bankruptcy, plenty have already gone belly up.  In one of the most extensive compilations to date, Heritage has identified 19 bankrupt green energy companies — unable to make it even with the $2.6 billion in financial assistance and incentives the government promised.

Ramping Up Government Control of the Energy Sector.  If insanity consists of "doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to come out different," President Obama is surely mad.  He has spent four years funding green energy start-ups that have failed, one after another.  Now he wants to spend the next four years funding green energy firms that are again likely to fail.

Bankrupt Obama-stimulus recipient goes to the highest bidder, the highest bidder being China.  The problem here is that in the case of A123 Systems, a manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric cards, the Obama administration spoon-fed hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into what they assured us was a guaranteed-successful endeavor at ushering in the glorious green-energy revolution and leading us down the path of ostensibly necessary energy independence.

Did the U.S. Constitution Promise a Chicken in Every Pot?  [Scroll down]  So every time the liberals like Obama try to regulate an industry, they intentionally try to stop the flow of commerce.  Obama thought he could make Green energy rise from the oceans and eliminate oil and coal and natural gas.  Obama thought he could make an electric car that would run on hot air rather than coal, natural gas, and nuclear.  Cap and trade is a tax on commerce.  Obama and the commies want to hinder U.S. Commerce in the name of carbon emissions.

Democrats Better Start Soul Searching.  We can't know quite what a second Obama term will bring, but if his first term is an indication, there's little reason to expect his party will be crowing. [...] On Friday [11/9/2012], citing ecological concerns, the administration closed off 1.6 million acres of federal land in western states from planned oil shale extraction.  An American energy boom lies in wait underground and Obama is determined to keep it there.

Barack H. Obama is doing everything he can to prevent this:
U.S. Oil Output to Overtake Saudi Arabia's by 2020.  U.S. oil output is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia's in the next decade, making the world's biggest fuel consumer almost self-reliant and putting it on track to become a net exporter, the International Energy Agency said.  Growing supplies of crude extracted through new technology including hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations will transform the U.S. into the largest producer for about five years starting about 2020, the Paris-based adviser to 28 nations said today [11/12/2012] in its annual World Energy Outlook.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."

— Steven Chu, United States Secretary of Energy.    
Sources:  [1] [2] [3] [4]    

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2013 by Andrew K. Dart