Tag Archives: Sierra Club

News

Environmentalist groups caught colluding with Russians to prop up oil prices

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Satellite measurements of global temperature through March 2018
Satellite measurements of global temperature through March 2018

Who has an interest in keeping oil prices high? Environmentalists do because they want people to drive less. And Russia does because their economy has a significant oil production component. Neither the environmentalists nor Russia like that American is able to use fracking to cleanly produce natural gas, because it lowers the price of oil. How far would Russia and their environmentalist allies go to stop fracking?

The Daily Signal reports:

New Yorkers who are missing out on the natural gas revolution could be victims of Russian spy operations that fund popular environmental groups, current and former U.S. government officials and experts on Russia worry.

Natural gas development of the celebrated Marcellus Shale deposits has spurred jobs and other economic growth in neighboring Pennsylvania. But not in New York, which nearly 10 years ago banned the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to produce natural gas.

Two environmental advocacy groups that successfully lobbied against fracking in New York each received more than $10 million in grants from a foundation in California that got financial support from a Bermuda company congressional investigators linked to the Russians, public documents show.

The environmental groups Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club Foundation millions of dollars in grants from the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation.

[…]When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, renewed his state’s ban on fracking three years ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued a statement supporting the ban. So did the Sierra Club,  the primary recipient of grants from its sister organization, the Sierra Club Foundation.

Environmental activists associated with the groups receiving Sea Change Foundation grants continued to pressure Cuomo and other public officials to maintain and expand New York’s fracking ban.

We know that Russia is helping dictator Bashir Assad to stay in power in Syria. It turns out that his ability to do these things is conditional on his ability to make money. The more natural gas America can get by fracking, the less influence Russia can have on the world:

Since the U.S. is now the top producer of natural gas in the world, and well positioned to export liquefied natural gas across the globe, Russia recognizes it gradually could lose influence in parts of the world where Moscow has been the dominant supplier of oil and gas, Stiles said in a phone interview.

“America’s natural gas revolution has huge geopolitical ramifications, so Russia’s motivation to try to block our natural gas development is easy to understand,” the CIA veteran said. “If you are worried about the Russian bear rearing its ugly head in the next several years, the way to stop that and put it back into its cage is to cut it off at the knees financially.”

“That’s what natural gas pipelines are all about and that’s what fracking is all about. We are providing affordable energy to average Americans at home and our allies overseas.”

Now, I’m sure that if I asked environmentalists why they are colluding with Russia, they would say that they had to everything they could to stop global warming. But is there any global warming? We know that global temperatures were higher than today during the Medieval Warming Period about a thousand years ago. Back then, as now, the sun was far more active. But solar activity has been declining lately, and is predicted to decline more. Should we expect to see a cooling period because of this?

The Stream reports on what we are seeing in the climate lately:

Temperatures plummeted way below normal across the Northern Hemisphere this winter. Many cities in Canada, America, England, and Europe broke previous record lows. But it is not just the intensity of winter that has taken climate alarmists by surprise. It’s also the length.

Winter temperatures persist in many parts of Canada and Europe in late April. Some places received record amounts of snow. Some got it unexpectedly late. The prolonged winter even delayed spring planting in many regions.

[…]By all measures, this winter is long and severe. The implications challenge those who believe CO2 emissions are pushing global temperatures ever higher.

[…]Winters like this year’s are not sufficient reason to claim an end to the Modern Warm Period. But they do subvert the claim of steadily, and swiftly, rising temperatures driven by CO2 emissions.

[…]When it comes to global temperatures, it is safe to assert (based on hundreds of scientific publications) that nothing unusual is happening with our climate system.

Almost none of the computer climate models foresaw the 18-year absence of significant warming. No alarmist scientist warned us about the current colder-than-normal winter, which has disturbed normal life in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

I understand that people get scared about the future, and they like to be doing things that make them feel safer, but I think we need to be careful about restraining our energy production in order to benefit Russia. Especially if there is no global warming happening.

News

How Obama’s opposition to clean coal raises energy prices

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From the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

GenOn Energy said it would shutter seven coal plants and one oil-fired plant in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois with a total generating capacity of 3,140 megawatts. Midwest Generation followed suit with an advisory that it would close two coal plants serving Chicago.

The shutdowns represent a victory for President Obama, who in a 2008 interview as a candidate signaled his intention to run the coal industry into the ground: “So if somebody wants to build a 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 emitted.”

The president has made good on his promise. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has squeezed coal producers in its campaign to halt carbon dioxide, the same “greenhouse gas” all animals produce when exhaling. In December, the agency announced new regulations limiting mercury emissions that will force many power plants out of business within four years.

The EPA estimates utilities across the country will need to shell out at least $9.4 billion in 2015 to meet its new mandate, but House Republicans put the true cost at $84 billion. Companies that stay in business will have to install expensive equipment that will drive up consumers’ monthly electric bills. The average retail price of electricity in America already has climbed 46 percent since 1997, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Cleaner-burning natural gas is touted as a viable substitute for coal but the transition can’t be completed overnight. In the meantime, the nation’s net electricity generation is falling, down 7.1 percent from 2010 to 2011, says the EIA. Demand for electricity is projected to rise by 35 percent by 2035.

Green-energy enthusiasts look to windmills, solar panels and vegetable oil to save the day, but these trendy energy sources combined generate less than 5 percent of the nation’s energy – despite billions in subsidies. The net result of this policy could be electricity shortfalls when usage peaks in the summer. The energy brain trust has a remedy: Millions of homes across the country have been equipped with “smart meters” that can be instructed to hold back the juice. Brownouts might dim the future as Americans in the Age of Obama learn to get by with less.

The troublesome thing is that it is always the poorest families that have to pay the price for Obama’s Peter Pan energy policy. The rich Hollywood celebrities and wealthy Wall Street bankers who backed Obama in 2008 don’t mind paying a few more dollars.

News

Should we embrace “green jobs” to stop global warming?

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First watch this video: (H/T The American Spectator)

And why does the phrase “global warming” keep changing?

Consider this post from the American Spectator. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

We know the memo circulating around the environoiac Leftosphere was to not call “global warming” “global warming” any more, but to instead use the greater encompassing “climate change.” Obama administration science adviser John Holdren updated the blueprint a couple of months ago:

At the Environmental Protection Agency’s 40th celebration of the Clean Air Act, Holdren said, “I think one of the failures of the scientific community was in embracing the term ‘global warming’. Global warming is in fact a dangerous misnomer.” And in a speech last week in Norway, echoing remarks he made at a 2007 speech at Harvard University, Holdren said the term “global climate disruption” should be used instead of “global warming.”

Now USA Today reports that “climate” doesn’t work either:

“Everybody is rethinking their priorities,” says Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. He says it was a “mistake” for environmentalists to focus single-mindedly on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, he says, they need to pitch their concerns as “kitchen table” issues that directly affect people. For example, he cites the presence of the estrogen-like chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, in food packaging. “That’s personal to them. Climate is not,” he says.

“Climate … seems to have become a dirty word,” says Melinda Pierce, lead lobbyist for the Sierra Club. She says environmentalists need to seek smaller, specific victories. “If we talk electric cars,” she says, “people find that appealing.”

There is nothing that is able to be observed – we are just told by the state-paid experts that the state must increase so they can be paid more and have more power over the private sector. There is no reason given other than their will to have more money and power.

Why should we lose all of our jobs for the Secularist Delusion?