Eighteen years (less one month) and counting; that's the time since the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted "global warming" of the earth's climate but, given the length of the current cooling cycle, the "warmists" are now calling it a "warming pause."
Of the approximately 30 different models--all based on carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the air -- used in their scenarios, none has proven correct. In fact, even the model predicting the least amount of warming over this period is substantially wrong: there was no warming at all, period.
This fundamental fact appears to be unknown to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
EPA & CO2
Regardless of that fact, the EPA presses ahead with sweeping controls on power generation from carbon sources in the country. The EPA wants to reduce the amount of "warming" that supposedly has or could be happening at some time in the future. The EPA takes its cues from the IPCC models, despite their miserable failure to predict anything on the basis of CO2 levels that have been rising in the atmosphere.
Of course, there is a simple explanation for it: the CO2 levels have no correlation with the current or near future climate or its change. That's because all the absorbable (infrared) back-radiation of the earth's surface is captured by the little amount of CO2 within the first 200 meters (approximately 500 feet) above ground. All the CO2 in the atmosphere above that elevation, about 98% of all atmospheric CO2 has no additional effect. Therefore, neither any increase nor any decrease in CO2 would make a difference.
So, let's look at the actual electric power generation.
Electric Power Generation
"Carbon" (primarily) coal currently provides in the order of 40% of the electric power used in the USA. Other carbon sources (oil and natural gas) provide another 25% and nuclear power a similar amount of 20%. The rest is made up from regenerative power sources of which hydro-electric power is the largest energy source.
The ONE and ONLY result of the sweeping controls on electric power generation that the EPA rules can and will achieve are substantially rising electric power energy costs.
If you think your hydro (electricity-consumption) bills are rather high already, you ain't seen anything yet! All that additional money you may have to fork over to pay for your hydro bills, of course, will really go into the government's coffers, not to the coal mining or power generating industries.
EPA says they want to protect you from climate change.
That reminds me of the underlying stories known from well-known gangster stories like Don Corleone, Al Capone and others of that kind. They all are in the protection racket.
The Protection Racket
The protection racket is a system of enterprise that basically makes you pay for protection from their racketeering. If that racket did not exist, you would be just as fine without their "protection."
When it comes to the issue of perceived global warming, the EPA appears to disregard any and all scientific evidence to the contrary of their claims.
As Dr. Johnson Paugh described it recently in her column on "Estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon-Driven 'Consensus' Global Warming:" the science is not settled but the fix on our pockets is.
Perhaps it's time to send EPA's CO2 emission rules into an "18-year pause" or would you prefer a "life sentence?"
