Bush Asked for Weaker Smog Standard – The Environmental Protection Agency agreed to weaken an important part of its new smog requirements after being told at the last minute that President Bush preferred a less stringent approach, according to government documents. They show tense exchanges between the EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget in the days before the smog air quality standard was announced Wednesday. Changes directed by the White House were made only hours before the agency issued the regulation. The late activity forced the EPA to delay the announcement for five hours.

British Government Figures Hide Scale of CO2 Emissions, Says Report – Britain’s climate change emissions may be 12% higher than officially stated, according to a National Audit Office investigation which has strongly criticized the government for using two different carbon accounting systems. There is “insufficient consistency and coordination” in the government’s approach, the NAO said. Using one system, which the government presents to the UN and in public, Britain emitted 656m tonnes of CO2 in 2005, and claims an improvement on 1990 figures. However, the lesser-known but more accurate data in the government’s national environmental accounts show emissions to be in the region of 733m tonnes in 2005, a NAO report says today.

More Than 200 Thousand Public-Records Requests Unanswered – Two years after President Bush signed an executive order designed to strengthen FOIA compliance and reduce backlogs of pending requests, an audit of public information procedures finds some progress but persistent problems. Hundreds of thousands of requests remain unanswered, and compliance with electronic requests has not kept pace with technological innovation.

Americans Don’t Care About Their Liberty – In recent weeks, the papers have been full of stories about the warehousing of information on Americans by the National Security Agency, the interception of financial information by the CIA, the stripping of authority from a civilian intelligence oversight board by the White House, and the compilation of suspicious activity reports from banks by the Treasury Department. On Thursday, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report documenting continuing misuse of Patriot Act powers by the FBI. And to judge from the reaction in the country, nobody cares.

Four Articles That Say There’s Something Strange Behind the Spitzer Investigation;

Even Some Conservative Republicans are Calling it Strange - While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators. Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

Intrigue: Novak suggests GOP operative behind Spitzer fall – Conservative columnist Robert Novak suggests a Republican political operative was behind the fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. “Republican political operative Roger Stone, Eliot Spitzer’s longtime antagonist, predicted his political demise more than three months in advance,” Novak writes. “Spitzer’s entrapment by federal authorities investigating a prostitution ring raised speculation that Stone, with a 40-year record as a political hit man, somehow was behind it.” Speaking of the scandal Stone added cryptically: “My work isn’t done there. Just watch.”

Alan Dershowitz, in the Wall Street Journal, averred that the story of Spitzer’s ‘capture’ doesn’t entirely ring true to career prosecutors – “There is no hard evidence that Eliot Spitzer was targeted for investigation, but the story of how he was caught does not ring entirely true to many experienced former prosecutors and current criminal lawyers,” Dershowitz wrote. “The New York Times reported that the revelations began with a routine tax inquiry by revenue agents ‘conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks.’ This investigation allegedly found ‘several unusual movements of cash involving the Governor of New York.’ But the movement of the amounts of cash required to pay prostitutes, even high-priced prostitutes over a long period of time, does not commonly generate a full-scale investigation.”

“We are talking about thousands, not millions, of dollars. We are also talking about a man who is a multimillionaire with numerous investments and purchases,” he added. “The idea that federal investigators would focus on a few transactions to corporations — that were not themselves under investigation — raises as many questions as answers.”

Ben Stein deeply disturbed by Spitzer investigation – Former Nixon speechwriter and Republican talking head Ben Stein is troubled by what he calls the actions of a few “nosy civil servants” using evidence gained from wiretaps to unravel the career of the outgoing New York Governor, and undo a majority vote by the people of New York.

“Something sinister is happening,” he says, “and it scares me.”
“Men hire prostitutes by the thousands,” Stein continues, “maybe tens of thousands, every day. They also bring women across state lines for sex every day.

“The punishment for the men who hire hookers is usually nil, or at most, a small fine, close to what you’d get for a traffic ticket.”

Spitzer, on the other hand, was humiliated and run out of office as punishment, with Stein protesting a small number of federal officials having what he essentially calls veto power over the electoral process. Spitzer, he continues, has been stripped of his career for something picked up on a wiretap that was not a high crime like terrorism or treason.

Millions of Iraqis Lack Water and Healthcare Says Red Cross – Five years after the United States led an invasion of Iraq, millions of people there are still deprived of clean water and medical care, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday

Regards,

Jim

Mitch McConnell Calls Himself an Environmental Leader While Helping Oil and Gas Companies Generate Dirty Energy – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has received more than half a million dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas lobbyists who look to him for help with troublesome bills. In 2006, McConnell supported a $5 billion tax windfall for the industry. He even went so far as to raise an objection in the Senate that led to the cancellation of a Live Earth benefit concert. McConnell’s recent decision to call himself an environmental leader adds an extra element of shamefulness to his already disgraceful behavior.

The Republican Senate that McConnell controls and the White House he cultivates came together — on behalf of the oil industry and the utility interests, by blocking the restoration of $13 billion in taxes on fabulous petroleum profits and shielding the power companies from a requirement to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable resources. …But the real winners were the lobbyists for big Republican campaign givers, who succeeded in blocking the restoration of billions in taxes on the big oil companies, which are squeezing American consumers for more than $100 billion per year in profits, thanks to huge price hikes at the pump. Had that tax provision survived, the proceeds would have financed clean energy development. Also, falling before the pressure of lobbyists was a requirement that utilities produce 15 percent of their electricity by wind, solar and other renewable means by 2020. This was a huge victory for the operators of dirty coal-fired plants in the Midwest and South. This is what Mitch McConnell and George W. Bush did for Big Energy, and did to the rest of us.

Bush Administration Abandons Jaguar Recovery – Due to a Center for Biological Diversity lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the jaguar as an endangered species in 1997. The New World’s largest cat formerly occurred from Monterey Bay, California across the southern states to the southern Appalachian Mountains. It was extirpated from the United States in 1963 when the last female was shot by federal agents. In recent years, however, the jaguar has been making a comeback, with a small but steady number of sightings in southern Arizona and New Mexico.

Rather than support the return of the jaguar, the Bush administration today issued its death warrant. In a first-of-its-kind decision in the 34-year history of the Endangered Species Act, the administration abandoned recovering the jaguar as a federal goal. It will not prepare a recovery plan or ensure the species recovers, either in the United States or throughout the animal’s range, extending to South America.

Our Water is at Risk – For over thirty years, the Clean Water Act has provided essential safeguards to all waters. However, two muddied U.S. Supreme Court decisions and an organized attack by industry polluters and developers are threatening protections for 20 million acres of wetlands and 60% of our nation’s streams! To add insult to injury, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently issued a vague and confusing “guidance” that further erodes critical protection on our waters. The guidance is seriously flawed and will lead to more polluted water. In its current form, the guidance leaves many so-called “isolated” waters such as wetlands open for destruction, leaves many headwaters and streams without clear protection, and ignores legal tools that could be used to preserve America’s waters. The EPA is currently taking public comments on this “misguided” guidance. But time is running out. The public can comment until January 21. Take action.

Global Warming Mostly Ignored in Presidential Debates – Of the nearly 2,500 questions asked of the presidential candidates by the top five TV political reporters during 2007, only three mentioned global warming. Three! (That’s a whopping one-tenth of one percent.) In more than 140 presidential debates and interviews these television hosts have moderated, they have spent more time talking about baseball, UFOs and Chuck Norris than they have about global warming. Sign the petition urging reporters to get serious about addressing climate change during the remainder of the campaign.

Bush Administration Wants to Speed Up the Process of Giving Away the Polar Bear’s Habitat to Big Oil Companies - Scientists tell us that two-thirds of all polar bears may be gone by 2050 due to global warming. Instead of addressing this, the Bush Administration wants to speed up the process of giving away the polar bear’s habitat to big oil companies. Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that they would be about a month late in finalizing their decision on the threatened species status of the polar bear. The decision was supposed to be made by January 9th. Earlier that week, Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne announced that a sale of oil and gas leases in the polar bear’s habitat will take place on February 6th.

Regards,

Jim

Charity Paid US Commander $100,000 While Cutting Wounded Veterans Budget – A charity that has been accused of ripping off veterans — and donors — paid a former commander of the United States Armed Forces to endorse it, before he later disassociated himself from the group’s solicitations. “Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was paid $100,000 to endorse a veterans charity that watchdog groups say is ripping off donors and wounded veterans by using only a small portion of the money raised for veterans services, according to testimony in Congress today.

Fox News Ignores Republican Affiliation of Suspected Terrorist Conspirator – Fox News is doing its best to arouse sympathy for a former Republican Congressman who was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan. The coverage of Rep. Mark Siljander’s indictment on Fox & Friends never mentioned his party affiliation, but featured his former aide, a conservative commentator who regularly appears on Fox, expressing her shock and disbelief and suggesting explanations for his actions. Debbie Schlussel is now best known for her attacks on Islam and Islamic culture, but twenty years ago, when she was an “Outstanding Teen Age Republican,” she served as an aide to Siljander. A year ago, Schlussel provoked a storm of outrage with a column titled “Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim,” which exaggerated the Muslim elements in Obama’s family background and called his loyalties to the United States into question.

Ailing GIs Deployed to War Zones – Fort Carson sent soldiers who were not medically fit to war zones last month to meet “deployable strength” goals, according to e-mails obtained by The Denver Post. One e-mail, written Jan. 3 by the surgeon for Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, says: “We have been having issues reaching deployable strength, and thus have been taking along some borderline soldiers who we would otherwise have left behind for continued treatment.” Capt. Scot Tebo’s e-mail was, in part, a reference to Master Sgt. Denny Nelson, a 19-year Army veteran, who was sent overseas last month despite doctors’ orders that he not run, jump or carry more than 20 pounds for three months because of a severe foot injury. Nelson says he was one of at least 52 soldiers deployed who should not have been, and a veterans group says the military is endangering soldiers to meet its goals.

Republicans Help Corporations and Think It’s Great to Have to Work Two Jobs and Work Long Hours – Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the chief deputy Republican whip in the House, unveiled his proposal to stimulate the economy. His legislation – the so-called Middle Class Job Protection Act – does nothing for the middle class. Instead, it reduces the corporate tax rate by 25 percent. At a press conference today unveiling the stimulus proposal, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) justified the conservative plan to give tax breaks to corporations – instead of working Americans – by arguing that people actually like working long hours:

“I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.”

Bachmann’s version of the American Dream is apparently working two full-time jobs and struggling to get by.

Bogus Iran Story Was Product of Pentagon Spokesman According to Reporter – An American journalist and historian who was the first to break the story of a secret Iranian peace overture to the Bush Administration in 2006 alleges that the latest Pentagon encounter between Iranian ships and a Navy vessel was a deliberate fabrication. The incident, on Jan. 5 in Strait of Hormuz off the Iranian coast, was originally described as a non-event — then quickly became one in which Iranian boats threatened to “explode” American ships. Porter identifies Bryan Whitman, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, as the culprit for the spurious account. Most of Whitman’s remarks that formed the basis for news stories were drawn from an off the record press briefing that was held on the condition he not be identified as a source.

The Surge Has Sucked All of the Flexibility Out of the System – “The surge has sucked all of the flexibility out of the system,” Army Chief of Staff George Casey said in an interview this week. “And we need to find a way of getting back into balance.” But President Bush made clear this week that additional troop withdrawals were far from a sure thing. After a meeting in Kuwait with Gen. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Bush said he was open to slowing or stopping the withdrawal of troops to avoid jeopardizing recent security gains in Iraq.

FOX Sports To Inject FOX News Anchors and Politics Into Super Bowl Coverage – On Feb. 3, Super Bowl Sunday, reporters from FOX News will be teaming up with reporters from FOX owned and operated stations from around the country for a three hour broadcast event, focusing on presidential politics and professional football. The anchors will toggle back and forth between discussion of the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday.

Shell Oil Is Polluting Houston – Shell’s Deer Park facility is a 1,500-acre complex located on the Houston Ship Channel in Harris County, about 20 miles east of downtown Houston. It is the nation’s eighth-largest oil refinery and one of the world’s largest producers of petrochemicals. The facility is also the second largest source of air pollution in Harris County, which ranks among the worst in the nation in several measures of air quality. “I live and work downwind from Shell, in Channelview. My family and my employees simply can’t afford to breathe in any more air pollution,” said Sierra Club member and small business owner Karla Land. “We have laws to protect air quality for a reason. Shell is breaking those laws and they need to be made to stop.” “On average of more than once a week for at least the past five years, Shell has reported that it violated its own permit limits by spewing a wide range of harmful pollutants into the air around the Deer Park plant,” said Luke Metzger, Director of Environment Texas. “Because the state of Texas and the U.S. EPA have both failed to put a stop to these blatant violations, ordinary citizens are stepping up to enforce the law themselves.” Take action.

Mitt Romney Defends Himself Against Allegations Of Tolerance – Humor, but the joke here is not on Romney; it’s on intolerant Conservatives, and how the Republican candidates have to pander to them.

Regards,

Jim

As I have written in previous postings, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has helped Bush II with his latest plan for the conflict in Iraq, want’s to minimize and control our liberties, and represents the authoritarian leadership of the extreme political right. They are also part of the effort to deny global warming and the possibility that humans are a contributing factor.

Back in 2005, MotherJones reported on the denial efforts of AEI and others. As part of that report they documented the forty public policy groups that ExxonMobil is paying to use Noble Lies and dispute the facts behind global warming and its link to human activity. This report showed that ExxonMobil had given AEI $960,000 in 2005 and that AEI had produced a publication in 2004 called Don’t Worry Be Happy where they stated, “So, in a nutshell, the leading scientific study supporting global warming has been thoroughly debunked.”

ExxonMobil and AEI are at it again. According to The Guardian, “Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.” Various scientists and economists were sent letters by AEI and offered cash and travel expenses for articles that dispute the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

According to the Guardian, AEI’s funding from ExxonMobil is in excess of $1,600,000. Also, Lee Raymond, a former executive at ExxonMobil is the vice-chairman of AEI’s board of trustees. Kenneth P. Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, authored the letters and confirmed making the request.

The Guardian article concluded with:

Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: “The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration’s intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they’ve got left is a suitcase full of cash.”

On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE SUMMER – Global warming continues to disrupt the traditional winter holiday season. We’ve seen record high temperatures in the US Northeast. Not long before the city of Boston lit their annual Christmas tree, the temperature hit 69 degrees, breaking a 125-year-old record.

High temperatures in Europe have disrupted the ski season, with little snow in the Alps threatening low-lying resorts, as global warming has driven temperatures to their highest in 1,300 years. Global warming is also threatening to put ski resorts out of business in Spain, where nearly all the resorts are closed for lack of snow.

Take action

Regards,

Jim

Global Warming Could Devastate Economy
Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, according to a new report from the British government, eventually costing the world the equivalent of between 5% and 20% of global GDP each year. The report emphasized that global warming can only be fought with the cooperation of major countries such as the United States and China, and represents a huge contrast to the Bush administration’s wait-and-see global warming policies.

Climate change: ‘One degree and we’re done for’
Further global warming of 1 °C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know,” says Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

New Global Warming Movie – Better Than An Inconvenient Truth?

Some say The Great Warming is a better movie than an Inconvenient Truth. It talks about what you can do about and what others are doing about it. Instead of featuring one rich white male, Al Gore, it interviews all kinds of folks around the world. It talks about the morality of global warming including interviews with Christian environmentalists, such as Dr. Matthew Sleeth. “It’s more than just the heat …. our children’s planet is at stake …” says the movie.

The Great Warming will open Friday, November 3rd, at Grand Palace Stadium 24, 3839 Wesleyan, that’s between I-59 and Richmond between the Galleria and Greenway Plaza. To get a free energy audit, return your ticket stub to the volunteer at the theater or mail it to The Great Warming

The major corporate sponsor of the movie is Swiss Re, the global insurance company. Climate disruption threatens the insurance industry more than any other. The huge re-insurance companies, like Swiss Re, end up holding the bag. How do you insure Gulf Coast homes against torrential rain and hurricanes if the climate is changing? Swiss Re and Munich Re have taken a hard look at the science and now work for climate protection.

Regards,

Jim

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) provides official energy statistics from the U. S. Government. The statistics include sources of energy, international comparisons, CO₂ emissions and much more.

Energy Consumption by Source, 1635-2000 (Quadrillion Btu)


Click on the image to see a full size view. (Related report)

Their World Energy Overview: 1993-2003 report and other other EIA data were used for this posting.

Here are some general quotes from that report:

Between 1993 and 2003, the world’s total output of primary energy — petroleum, natural gas, coal, and electric power (hydro, nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, and wood and waste)–increased at an average annual rate of 1.8 percent.

The United States, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Canada were the world’s five largest producers of energy in 2003, supplying 49.2 percent of the world’s total energy.

The United States, China, Russia, Japan, and Germany were the world’s five largest consumers of primary energy in 2003, accounting for 49.8 percent of world energy consumption.

For world consumption, the report stated:

In 2003, the United States consumed 20.0 million barrels per day of petroleum–25 percent of world consumption.

In 2003, the United States, which was the leading consumer of dry natural gas at 22.4 trillion cubic feet, and Russia, which ranked second at 15.3 trillion cubic feet, together accounted for 39 percent of world consumption.

China was also the largest consumer of coal in 2003, using 1.5 billion short tons, followed by the United States, which consumed 1.1 billion short tons, India, Germany , and Russia.

All of this consumption means more CO₂:

Total world carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption of petroleum, natural gas, and coal, and the flaring of natural gas increased from 21.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 1993 to 25.2 billion metric tons in 2003, or by 17.1 percent.

In 2003, the consumption of petroleum was the world’s primary source of carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels, accounting for 42 percent of the total.

Coal ranked second as a source of carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels in 2003, accounting for 37 percent of the total.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of natural gas accounted for the remaining 21 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels in 2003.

Now for some charts on petroleum consumption and CO₂ emissions from the EIA data.

The first chart shows consumption of petroleum and the corresponding CO₂ emissions from that consumption. It shows these two data sets for both the U. S. and the world. The red and blue lines represent the U. S. and the light brown and yellow represent the world.

Click on the image to see a full size view.

As you can see, U. S. CO₂ emissions and petroleum consumption have not increased at the same rate as the rest of the world. This may be due to the advanced stable state of our economy and that much of the rest of the world is rapidly catching up with our way of life. There is no doubt that man’s consumption of petroleum products is increasing rapidly and accelerating while growing economies try to reach their stable state. Of course, there is a matching increase in CO₂ due to chemical reactions of our consumption.

The table below summarizes the changes for the four data sets tracked in the chart above. The percentages indicate the growth from 1980 to 2003.

The charts below represent two views of what has been happening to CO₂ emissions since 1980. They both show CO₂ emissions by geographical area: US – United States, RNA – Rest of North America, C&SA – Central and South America, WE – Western Europe, EE – Eastern Europe (Note this time frame includes the 1991 dissolution of the USSR), ME – Middle East, AF – Africa, CH – China, IN – India, JP – Japan, SK – South Korea, RA&O – Rest of Asia and Oceania.

The next chart shows the CO₂ emissions added to the atmosphere in absolute values. They are stacked to show the world total. The fastest emissions growth is in Asia. The only area showing a decrease is EE. It appears that the economies of the former USSR are not ‘progressing’ in line with the rest of the eastern hemisphere. Other more developed areas seem to have relatively stable growth in emissions.

Click on the image to see a full size view.

The chart below displays the same data as the previous one only with each geographical area shown as a percentage of the total emissions. While the emissions from the U. S. have dropped slightly relative to the rest of the world, Asia, the top 5 geographical areas in the chart, has increased it’s share from 19 percent to about 33 percent.

Click on the image to see a full size view.

I leave it to you to come to your own conclusions about the worst CO₂ emitter. But there is no doubt that man is producing lots of CO₂ and with the oceans and atmosphere getting warmer – there is some correlation.

Driving your car, air-conditioning your home, eating, traveling by commercial air and recycling all affect the amount of CO₂ released into our atmosphere.

Take The Carbon Quiz to see what your CO₂ contirbution is. Then, if your concerned, visit one of these sites if you’d like to find out how to offset your CO₂ impact on our only home.

• Carbonfund
• Terrapass
• Climate Care

From the Energy Information Administration:

Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Consumption and Flaring of Fossil Fuels

Total world carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption of petroleum, natural gas, and coal, and the flaring of natural gas increased from 21.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 1993 to 25.2 billion metric tons in 2003, or by 17.1 percent. The average annual growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions over the period was 1.6 percent (Note: Carbon dioxide emissions are measured here in metric tons of carbon dioxide. Tons of carbon dioxide can be converted to tons of carbon equivalent by multiplying by 12/44. ) The United States, China, Russia, Japan, and India were the world’s five largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels in 2003, producing 52 percent of the world total. The next five leading producers of carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels were Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Italy, and together they produced an additional 12 percent of the world total. In 2003, total United States carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels were 5.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, more tha one and one-half times as much as the 3.5 million metric tons produced by China, while Russia produced 1.6 billion metric tons.

In 2003, the consumption of petroleum was the world’s primary source of carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels, accounting for 42 percent of the total. Between 1993 and 2003 emissions from the consumption of petroleum increased by 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, or 15.4 percent, rising from 9.1 to 10.5 billion metric tons. The United States was the largest producer of carbon dioxide from the consumption of petroleum in 2003 and accounted for 24 percent of the world total. China was the second largest producer, followed by Japan, Russia, and Germany, and together these four countries accounted for an additional 20 percent.

Coal ranked second as a source of carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels in 2003, accounting for 37 percent of the total. World carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption of coal totaled 9.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2003, up 16.3 percent from the 1993 level of 8.0 billion metric tons. China and the United States were the two largest producers of carbon dioxide from the consumption of coal in 2003 and together they accounted for 52 percent of the world total. India, Russia, and Japan accounted for an additional 16 percent.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of natural gas accounted for the remaining 21 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels in 2003. Emissions from the consumption and flaring of natural gas increased from 4.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 1993 to 5.3 billion metric tons in 2003, or by 22.2 percent. The United States and Russia were the two largest producers of carbon dioxide from the consumption and flaring of natural gas in 2003 and together they accounted for 38 percent of the world total. The United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany accounted for an additional 10 percent.

The chart below is based on petroleum consumption and and CO₂ emissions data from the Energy Information Administration, Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government

U.S. CO₂ Emissions Growth Slower than Petroleum Consumption Growth.


Click on image for full view.

In the March 8, 2006, issue of Personal Finance, there is an article that discusses a change in federal regulations at the Environmental Projection Agency (EPA). The PF article stated:

In the early 1990s, the EPA came to the conclusion that key cities and counties around the US needed to change gasoline blends to cut damaging emissions from automobile usage.

This changed the blends of gasoline to include a higher concentration of oxygenating agents, led by ethanol. While modern cars with fuel injection and other on-board engine management devices already make adjustments to compensate for fuel, temperature and load demands on engines, ethanol— for other reasons—became the EPA’s mandated choice.

To make everything more challenging, the EPA enabled local and state jurisdictions to make their own mandates as to the exact recipes for their local gasoline blends utilizing ethanol and other similar chemical additives.

The result: a crazy quilt of gasoline blends with individual states having as many as three to seven different blend recipes.

The fallout is that prices for gasoline at the pump have been soaring, independent of crude oil costs. With refiners working to meet local demands, any unanticipated changes have resulted in shortages or pricing spikes.

The EPA is getting tired of hearing complaints from refiners, distributors and consumers. Quietly it eliminated the mandated inclusion of the oxygenating-agent blends in our gasoline supplies.

How does this jive with what President Bush said on August 8, 2005 at the signing ceremony for the Energy Policy Act? President Bush stated, “The bill also will lead to a greater diversity of fuels for cars and trucks. The bill includes tax incentives for producers of ethanol and biodiesel. The bill includes a flexible, cost-effective renewable fuel standard that will double the amount of ethanol and biodiesel in our fuel supply over the next seven years. Using ethanol and biodiesel will leave our air cleaner. And every time we use a home-grown fuel, particularly these, we’re going to be helping our farmers, and at the same time, be less dependent on foreign sources of energy.”

And do you really believe that the Energy Policy Act is particularly “helping our farmers?” Wouldn’t the real beneficiaries be the ethanol producers and the companies selling the reformulated gasoline (RFG)?

You might wonder what lead to the EPA making this change in February. According to their background information, “Recently, Congress passed legislation which amended Section 211(k) of the CAA to remove the RFG oxygen requirement.” Well guess what? That change was enabled by the same Energy Policy Act the President signed last August. Here is the language from Title XV: Ethanol and Motor Fuels – Subtitle A: General Provisions of the Energy Policy Act, “(Sec. 1504) Amends the Clean Air Act to repeal general requirements governing the oxygen content of both gasoline and of reformulated gasoline.” So which is it? Are we increasing the use of ethanol or not?

Here are some other related sections of the Energy Policy Act that might clarify(?):

(Sec. 208) Establishes in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the Sugar Cane Ethanol Pilot Program. Directs the Administrator of EPA to establish a pilot project in multiple states to study the production of ethanol from cane sugar, sugarcane, and sugarcane byproducts.

(Sec. 1501) Amends the Clean Air Act to establish a renewable fuel program consisting of cellulosic biomass and waste-derived ethanol, and biodiesel. Directs the EPA Administrator to promulgate regulations to implement a renewable fuel program to ensure that gasoline introduced into commerce in the United States contains the applicable volume of specified renewable fuel (except in noncontiguous states or territories).

Directs the Administrator to study and report to Congress on the effects of ethanol content in gasoline on permeation, the process by which fuel molecules migrate through the elastomeric materials (rubber and plastic parts) that make up the fuel and fuel vapor systems of a motor vehicle.

Requires such study to include estimates of the increase in total evaporative emissions likely to result from the use of gasoline with ethanol content in a motor vehicle, and the fleet of motor vehicles, due to permeation.

(Sec. 1510) Directs the Secretary to establish a program to provide guarantees of loans by private institutions for the construction of facilities for the processing and conversion of municipal solid waste and cellulosic biomass into fuel ethanol and other commercial byproducts.

(Sec. 1511) Amends the Clean Air Act to: (1) authorize funds for certain loan guarantees to implement commercial demonstration projects for cellulosic biomass and sucrose-derived ethanol; and (2) direct the Secretary to issue loan guarantees for up to four projects to commercially demonstrate the feasibility and viability of producing cellulosic biomass ethanol or sucrose-derived ethanol (including use of cereal straw and municipal solid waste as a feedstock).

Authorizes appropriations for FY2005-FY2007 for a resource center to develop bioconversion technology using low-cost biomass for the production of ethanol at the Center for Biomass-Based Energy at the Mississippi State University and the Oklahoma State University.

Authorizes the Secretary to provide grants to merchant producers of cellulosic biomass ethanol to build eligible production facilities for the product.

(Sec. 1512) Authorizes the Secretary to provide grants to merchant producers of cellulosic biomass ethanol, waste-derived ethanol, and approved renewable fuels in the United States to assist them in building eligible production facilities for the production of ethanol or approved renewable fuels. Authorizes appropriations for FY2006-FY2008.

(Sec. 1514) Directs the EPA Administrator to: (1) establish an Advanced Biofuel Technologies Program to demonstrate advanced technologies for the production of alternative transportation fuels; (2) give priority to projects that enhance the geographical diversity of alternative fuels production and utilize feedstocks that represent 10% or less of domestic ethanol or biodiesel fuel production during the previous fiscal year; and (3) fund demonstration projects to develop conversion technologies for producing cellulosic biomass ethanol, and for coproducing value-added bioproducts (such as fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides) resulting from biodiesel fuel production. Authorizes appropriations for FY2005-FY2009.

(Sec. 1516) Authorizes funds for, and authorizes the Secretary to issue, loan guarantees to projects to demonstrate commercially the feasibility and viability of producing ethanol using sugarcane, sugarcane bagasse, and other sugarcane byproducts as a feedstock.

So, is there still a contradiction? The EPA has eliminated the requirements for using ethanol. The Energy Policy Act, which lead to the EPA changes, promotes getting ethanol from sources other than corn.

In Warnings from Katrina and Rita?, I provided a chart that plots the number of named storms over time for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.   This chart was created by a coworker from various internet data sources and goes back to the mid 1800s.   The article points out that hurricanes get their energy from the warming oceans.  

This article briefly covers one of the reasons the oceans are warming:  The sea ice at the North Pole is shrinking and more of the sun’s energy is being absorbed by the Arctic Ocean.

According to an article in a recent issue of Popular Science magazine, not yet available on the internet, there has been a loss of 500,000 square miles of sea ice since 1979 as measured at the height of summer when the sea ice shrinks to its annual minimum.   This loss is equivalent to the size of Alaska and can easily be seen in the two satellite photos below.

8/31/1979

Click on the image for a full view.

8/31/2005

Click on the image for a full view.

The chart below shows that there is a trend toward further sea ice reductions, more warming of the oceans, and more hurricanes.

For more on what has been happening with the sea ice at the North Pole, check out  The Cryosphere Today