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Home Front: Politix

Dems Won’t Rule Out Endangered Species Act Suits To Block Trump’s Wall

2017-01-28

[DAILYCALLER] President Trump’s political opponents may use existing federal laws designed to protect endangered species to stop him from building a border wall to stem the flow of illegal immigrants colonists coming from Mexico. Environmentalists say Trump’s proposed border wall would hinder the movement of endangered species migrating through their natural, cross-border habitats, and activists aren’t above filing suit under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to stop the wall. "We’ll of course closely review Trump’s proposal," Margie Kelly, a spokeswoman for the National Resources Defense Council, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. "Litigation is just one tool in our advocacy work, and we take nothing off the table," she said.

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Home Front: Culture Wars

Wind Power Cheaper than Coal with SCC

2013-10-15

As long as you factor in the "social costs" of carbon. I bet you didn't know that there is an acronym for that: SCC. According to a new study, "The social cost of carbon: implications for modernizing our electricity system," recently published online by the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, electricity generated by renewable sources can be comparable in cost, or even less expensive than, electricity generated by more traditional sources. By recalculating the penalties that ought to be assessed for carbon dioxide emissions--the so-called social cost of carbon--the researchers conclude that the actual cost of electricity generation is cheaper using renewable resources than using traditional coal plants, for example. The social cost of carbon, known by its acronym of SCC, is "a monetization of the impact, or the damages, from the carbon dioxide that's been put into the air," says Chris Hope, Ph.D., a reader in policy modeling and a fellow of Clare Hall at the Judge Business School at the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge. Hope coauthored the piece with Laurie T. Johnson, Ph.D., and Starla Yeh, both with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), based in Washington, D.C. Johnson is the chief economist at the NRDC's Climate Center, while Yeh is located in the organization's Center for Market Innovation. NRDC has long been a hard-left front group... "If you believe in the polluter pays principle, then the social cost of carbon dioxide is what you would want to charge anybody who emitted a ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," Hope explains. The SCC method has been in existence for some time; the federal government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines, for example, suggest that in calculating such costs, agencies of the federal government should use 'market' discount rates, according to Johnson, who responded to written questions posed by Civil Engineering online. "We disagree with using market rates for intergenerational damages, and therefore [we] re-estimated the SCC using [new] rates." They didn't like the answer, so they changed the rules. The OMB rates translate to $52, $33, and $11 (in 2007 dollars) as today's SCC of one metric ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere, according to the report. These numbers are based on discount rates of 2.5, 3, and 5, percent, respectively, which assume a continually improving economy when comparing the value of today's dollars to those of the future. But these percentages are too steep, the authors of the study argue, in part because off the uncertainty of the future of America's economy. According to the study, more reasonable discount rates of 1, 1.5, and 2 percent should be used, and these create SCC charges of $266, $122, and $62 per ton of emitted CO2. Figures don't lie, but ... I wonder if they factored in rare bird strikes as a social cost?

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Economy

Congress Dims the 100-Watt Ban

2011-12-18

The traditional incandescent light bulb won a nine-month reprieve late Thursday from new federal rules that would have led to its demise. The deal to avert a government shutdown starting Friday night includes a provision that prevents the Department of Energy from spending any money to implement or enforce the energy efficiency standards for light bulbs that is set to start going into effect for 100-watt bulbs in 2012. The new standards and regulations remain on the book, even if they now won't be enforced. Right next to the immigration laws. "The industry is concerned that any delay in federal enforcement...will undermine those investments and also create regulatory uncertainty," said Kyle Pitsor, vice president of government affairs for the trade group. He said it could allow some "bad actors" to import less efficient bulbs from overseas "without any fear of enforcement, thereby creating an uncompetitive disadvantage for U.S. manufacturers that made those investments." Only if the public wants to buy them, Kyle. But while environmentalists and the manufacturers supported the new rules, many conservatives and some consumers had objected at the lack of choice they would entail. The issue has been a lightning rod issue for the Tea Party. Whynot just add a carbon tax to the incandescent bulbs? OK, how about a surtax? Maybe a tax credit for CFLs. Why do they have to take away the choice? David Goldston, director of government affairs for the National Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental group, said there is broad bipartisan support for the higher standards. If there had been an up or down vote on the provision, rather than having it attached to a must-pass piece of legislation, he said it would never have passed. David knows this, because he is one of the elite who get to choose for the rest of us.

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Economy

Green Lighting - Marketing More Money for Less Energy

2011-10-16

Ed Crawford wants to unscrew 130 years' worth of the light bulb's history. But how many MBAs, engineers and lobbyists will it take to help him do that? As retailers and governments begin phasing out incandescent light bulbs, lighting companies are scrambling to introduce products and change public mind-sets about how much a light bulb should cost. Crawford has a big challenge ahead of him: He's chief executive of the North American lighting division of the world's largest lighting company, Philips Electronics. "Our marketing mix has to become more creative," Crawford says while walking the halls of the Philips offices, past rooms where high-tech displays show how lighting affects moods in kitchens and living areas. Did you know some guy made millions selling Pet Rocks? Philips has been hiring marketers and engineers from consumer products companies to prepare for the change. Its North American headquarters in suburban New Jersey is a short drive from the red-brick labs where Thomas Edison developed and improved early light bulb technology. The National Resources Defense Council said that by 2020, the new law will reduce energy costs by $100 to $200 per household each year. That could eliminate about 30 large power plants, according to the NRDC. The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that the new law could save households in the United States nearly $6 billion in energy costs by 2015. After the expense of buying the new bulbs. Is everybody like the stereotypical spouse - "Look honey, I saved $100 at the shoe store!" The world's largest home furnishings retailer, Ikea, stopped selling incandescent light bulbs in January. The State of California mandated that retailers stop selling 100-watt incandescent bulbs last Dec. 31, a year earlier than federal legislation requires. Naturally! California leads the way! But an Ikea lighting survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, showed that 61 percent of Americans are not even aware of the legislation that phases out incandescent bulbs. "We're used to thinking of light bulbs as a replacement business," Crawford said. "Transitioning our mind-set is absolutely a business challenge. It's a completely different sale. Getting people to think that way requires different skills, different marketing and salespeople." We older guys remember buying razor blades, then disposable shavers, then two bladed shavers (where I stopped), then triple and quadruple-bladed disposables. Marketing! The new hires are studying and segmenting the market. They've identified early adopters who might buy LED bulbs, dividing them into categories such as "young affluent" and "pre-empty nest," who are environmentally conscious, brand oriented and not price sensitive. The "green socialites" like to entertain and impress others with their home. You got a category for "skeptical libertarian"? A few skeptics in the industry suggest that American consumers will always migrate to the cheaper compact fluorescent and halogen bulbs instead of LEDs. One of the first CFLs I put in the can light in the kitchen lasted a week. Others fared better. Watts the reliability of the products? At $25 a pop, your failure rate needs to be one in a million.

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Home Front: Politix

US says carbon shift is boost to Copenhagen

2009-12-09

[Al Arabiya Latest] The United States said it had seized the climate initiative with a regulatory shift that labels greenhouse gases a dangerous pollutant, as a landmark conference entered a second day Tuesday. The shift by the Environmental Protection Agency was announced on the opening day of a 192-nation meeting in Copenhagen aimed at drawing up a global pact to tackle climate change amid warnings of environmental catastrophe. The U.S. move "means that we arrive at the climate talks in Copenhagen with a clear demonstration of our commitment to facing this global challenge," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said. Jackson signed orders declaring six greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, including carbon dioxide, to be pollutants that are subject to government regulation. The decision sidestepped a divided Congress and was greeted with outrage by Republicans and some U.S. business leaders. But delegates to the talks in Copenhagen said it would lend momentum to the 12-day conference. "It will only help to persuade delegates and observers from other countries that the U.S. is seriously using all the tools it has," said David Doniger, policy director of the National Resources Defense Council's climate center. "The administration has the task of persuading other countries that it is seriously tackling this issue at a time when the legislation is still working its way through Congress," he said in the Danish capital. France's climate ambassador Brice Lalonde said: "This gives additional credibility to the U.S. commitment." The impact on humanity of man-made drought, flood, storms and rising seas was spelt out Monday at the start of the meeting, which will climax with a summit attended by more than 110 leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama. "For the next two weeks, Copenhagen will be Hopenhagen," Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said. "By the end, we must be able to deliver back to the world what was granted us here today: hope for a better future," he said.

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Fifth Column

Judge Ahab and the Whales

2008-06-22

In its storied history the U.S. Navy has defeated German U-boats and the British and Japanese Imperial navies, but we are about to find out if it can be whipped by whales and activist judges. Welcome to the new world of lawsuits as antiwar weapons. The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to take the case, National Resources Defense Council v. Donald Winter. For the sake of the U.S. military and the Constitution's separation of powers, this one deserves its day before the High Court. Mr. Winter is Secretary of the Navy. The NRDC, a nasty left-wing activist group that specializes in lawsuits, has sued him for conducting training exercises off the coast of California, as the Navy has done for 40 years. The NRDC claims the use of medium-frequency active sonar – a type of sonar especially useful for antisubmarine warfare – might harm whales, or at least confuse them. When the issue was first raised eight years ago, the Bush Administration went out of its way to allay the concerns – though the Navy says that it has never harmed a whale with sonar, as far as it knows. It asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to study the issue under the Endangered Species Act. NOAA gave the Navy a permit to continue to train. Just to be sure, the Navy asked for another study, under the Marine Mammals Protection Act. NOAA replied that this would take time but granted the Navy permission to continue the exercises, noting that the Navy had adopted 29 separate measures to minimize any impact on marine mammals. None of this was good enough for the litigious greens, who sued again in March 2007 to stop the training – in the middle of a war. Enter federal judge Florence Cooper, who ordered the Navy to halt the exercises while the suit is pending. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a rare moment of sanity, stayed the injunction "on the grounds that the district court had failed to consider the 'public interest' in having a trained and effective Navy." Talk about understatement. This bout of clarity didn't last long. In January, Judge Cooper issued another partial injunction, allowing the exercises to proceed as long as no whales came swimming through. This time, the Ninth Circuit concurred. In response, President Bush, citing "emergency circumstances" and the "paramount interests of the United States," and implementing alternative safeguards, asked the judge to reconsider. Judge Cooper declined, saying there was no emergency. The appeals court affirmed. The last time we checked, the executive branch was responsible for national security and the President is Commander in Chief. Having unelected judges order our troops to stand down in response to a phantom threat to whales is bad enough. But the laws at issue in this case are mere "paperwork" statutes. The Navy and Bush Administration are accused of having failed merely to complete an environmental impact statement on the possible threat to whales. Under the substantive laws intended to protect the whales, NOAA has already given the Navy the approval it needs. Judge Cooper is a major culprit here, arbitrarily preventing the Navy from maintaining its military readiness training for the sake of compliance with a purely procedural law. But the larger problem is the culture of environmental law and litigation, which puts the speculative threat to whales above U.S. national security. The Supreme Court should leap at the chance to slap these activist litigants and judges down.

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Home Front: Politix

Spinal Tap To Reunite For Global Warming

2007-04-25

Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming. The mock heavy metal group immortalized in the 1984 mockumentary, "This is Spinal Tap," will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for July 7. The original members of Spinal Tap will be there: guitarist Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest), singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer). Rob Reiner, who both directed "This is Spinal Tap" and played the fake documentarian Marty DeBergi in the film, will also be in attendance. A new 15-minute film directed by Reiner on the band's reunion will also play at the opening night of the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on Wednesday. The slate for the opening gala, to be hosted by Al Gore, was previously announced, excepting the Reiner short. The festival is to open with a showing of several global warming-themed short films produced by the SOS (Save Our Selves) campaign. SOS is also putting on the Live Earth concerts, to be held across seven continents. Reiner spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday to explain the reunion of Spinal Tap — a band always known more as a parody of rock `n roll excess than environmental awareness. "They're not that environmentally conscious, but they've heard of global warming," said Reiner, whose other films include "When Harry Met Sally" and "Stand By Me." "Nigel thought it was just because he was wearing too much clothing — that if he just took his jacket off it would be cooler." Spinal Tap has reunited several times since the film, but hasn't for a number of years. For the band — whose last album was 1992's "Break like the Wind" — the occasion warranted a new single: "Warmer Than Hell." Reiner provided a sneak peak at the lyrics: "The devil went to Devon, it felt like the fourth degree/ He said, `Is it hot in here, or is it only me?'" The director said the new short film explains what the band has been doing with their lives lately. Nigel has been raising miniature horses to race, but can't find jockeys small enough to ride them; David is now a hip-hop producer who also runs a colonic clinic; and Derek is in rehab for addiction to the Internet. Reiner, 60, has for over 20 years worked with the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental radical left-wing Soros-funded action organization. Though the Spinal Tap reunion will be a lot of laughs, he hopes the SOS short films program and the Live Earth concerts have a substantial effect. "What I think is going to be nice about this whole effort is there will be marching orders for people," said Reiner. "Not only from a personal standpoint of what individuals can do in their lives, but a macro perspective with respect to the public sector and government." When fantasy exceeds reality--the very heart of the global warming debate.

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Home Front: WoT

Some thoughts on "suitcase nukes"

2006-01-22

Wretchard the Cat at Belmont Club; EFL'd. As usual, he's on to something. The terrorist "suitcase nuclear weapon" is the nightmare scenario often invoked to explain why such weapons should never be allowed to fall into the hands of leaders like President Ahmadinejad. . . . But a closer examination of the suitcase nuke problem suggests that this method of delivery has certain limitations. Let's begin a thought experiment by considering the number of suitcase nukes that would be required to destroy a country like France or the United States. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a somewhat left of center think tank, produced a very respectable model of how many nuclear weapons would be required to inflict damage to the point of diminishing returns, a concept accepted by Robert McNamara at the height of the Cold War. This inflection point is known as the "knee" and occurred where around 25% of the target population was killed. . . . According to these figures it will take about 150 nukes to 'destroy' the fabric and cohesion of the United States and about 30 to do the same to France. Note that inflicting this damage will not have any substantial effect the US ability to perform an immediate counterstrike with thousands of nuclear warheads because these are deployed in hardened facilities or on submerged platforms which would survive a paltry (by Cold War standards) 150 warhead strike. But this number would be enough to finish the target nation as cohesive society for decades. The problem with suitcase nukes is maintaining command and control over them. Any suitcase nuke which could be armed and detonated by its possessor (protected only by a combination detonator just like the movies) would have serious defects as a weapon. This method delegates so much command and control over the weapon to the possessor that it is effectively "his". In our thought experiment, imagine a rogue state providing such weapons to 150 terrorist teams for use against the United States. There would be no assurance that once deployed these weapons would not be stolen or used for unintended purposes. It would be possible for a rogue team to sell the weapon to the highest bidder, perhaps a rival rogue state looking for such devices. It would not be impossible for one of the teams to turn against its masters and use it against them. A team with a suitcase nuke might divert to Switzerland where they could demand the payment of a few billion dollars in exchange for not blowing up Zurich. A suitcase weapon could be captured by the CIA or the Mossad and reimported into the rogue state where it could be detonated against targets who could hardly admit its true provenance. If the teams belonged to rival political terrorist organizations they could be used against each other. Clearly, releasing a large number of suitcase nuclear weapons without positive command and control would be less than ideal and probably disastrous for the wielder. The most probable workaround to the problem would be to deploy these weapons at a very low rate by sending them out one trusted team at a time. In that way the weapon would be used within a short period and watched, probably by a large number of mutually counterchecking personnel, every step of the way. One nuke to Paris. Boom. One nuke to New York. Boom. The problem with solving the control problem by slowing down the rate of attack is apparent from the table above. One nuke in Paris or New York will be grossly insufficient to finish the infidel enemy but quite sufficient to provoke a massive response. Once the fissile traces are identified ten thousand warheads will be headed back the other way. The other obvious possibility is to deploy a large number of suitcase nukes in a componentized configuration so that it requires the assembly of several teams, each with part of the requisite firing information or componentry to activate the device. (This is conceptually similar to the two key system on boomers) For example, Iran could deploy 450 teams -- three teams to activate a suitcase bomb -- with the intent of controlling 150 devices targeted at the United States. Unfortunately a force of this size could hardly remain covert for any length of time. The teams security would rapidly "deteriorate" in a deployed environment and would almost certainly be discovered before long. Once discovered the game would be up. The weapons would no longer be deniable and their use would be open belligerency. The suitcase weapons would have no advantage to nuclear bombs delivered by the air force of the rogue nation. . . .

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