On Monday, the EPA moved to regulate six “greenhouse gases” by finding that their contribution to Global Warming constitutes a hazard to human health. One of those gases is methane, the lightest and most abundant hydrocarbon, chemical symbol CH4.
This finding by the EPA unmasks an unscientific charade and a regulatory power-grab.
U.S. Agency to Regulate Greenhouse Gases
The announcement was made late Monday and paves the way for federal regulation of emissions of six gases, including carbon dioxide and methane from refineries, chemical facilities and power plants – even if Congress rejects climate change legislation.
EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson made the ‘endangerment finding’ announcement and also said that she believes it is “necessary to move ahead on new emission standards for cars, while potentially opening up large emitters such as power plants, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants to limits on their output of carbon dioxide and other gases.”…
“The endangerment finding means that we arrive at the climate talks in Copenhagen with a clear demonstration of our commitment to facing this global challenge,” Jackson said.
That’s one of the silliest — and scariest — things I’ve ever heard.
Methane, CH4, makes up about 1800 parts per billion, or less than 2/10,000ths of 1% of the atmosphere.
(By comparison, carbon dioxide, CO2, makes up about 375 parts per million of the atmosphere, or less than 4/100ths of 1%. We all know about CO2.)
Methane is a completely non-toxic, non-carcinogenic by-product of animal digestion and vegetation decay. It also vents to the atmosphere in natural seeps from underground reservoirs. The gas is much lighter than air and is the main constituent of the natural gas we burn in our houses. When burned, its residue gases are CO2 and H2O. That’s it.
Methane is supposedly 22 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2, so it’s included in the EPA power-grab. Even considering that, methane’s impact is less than a tenth of that of CO2 because it’s so dilute in the atmosphere.
Unlike CO2, methane doesn’t have much staying power in the atmosphere. Almost all , of whatever source, either escapes into space or reacts with hydroxyl ions to form, again, CO2 and water vapor.
While the graph above might appear scary at first glance, note the scale. The rate of increase over the 20+ year period covered by the graph is about 6 parts per billion methane per year, and the recent trend is nearly flat. That tells you that the natural processes that regulate atmospheric methane are working.
The primary sources for the additional methane added to the atmosphere (in order of importance) are:
- rice cultivation;
- domestic grazing animals;
- termites;
- landfills;
- coal mining;
- oil and gas extraction.
If oil and gas extraction (which, incidentally, is already regulated by the various states and by the MMS in Federal waters) is the #6 source of methane, why are we subjected to pictures like the one below, as the EPA makes its case for regulation?
It’s because EPA knows how to regulate and tax domestic producers. Nobody should expect this to have a meaningful, or even measurable, impact on the environment. It will, however, make transportation, electricity, and every product made with oil and gas more expensive. And it makes for a bigger and more powerful EPA.
As for the meaningful sources of anthropogenic methane, note that more than 60% of all rice paddies are found in India and China where scientific data concerning emission rates are unavailable, and, oddly enough, the EPA can’t regulate or tax them.
Cows they can tax. Termites, however, may prove slightly more challenging.
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
CH4 and CO2 Regulation are a strategem to give cover
Achance (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 7:15PM EST (link)to CongressCritters. Now they can all say that they voted for it to save us from uncaring and unelected bureaucrats. They’ll even pick up several Republicans in the Senate that way. I can just hear the plaintive cries of, “I had to do it to save you from the ‘crats!”
In Vino Veritas
Your Friendly Environmentally Waco Obama EPA Czar Lisa Jackson
louesc (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 4:21AM EST (link)I just wanted to get you familiar with your Friendly Environmentally Waco Obama EPA Czar Lisa Jackson. These videos are of her speaking at Power Shift Conf the same place were Van Jones Spoke.
https://www.americanpatriotsprevail.com/12809_Obama__A_Czar__EPA.html
https://www.americanpatriotsprevail.com/ObamaCzarLisaJackson10b.html
https://www.americanpatriotsprevail.com/ObamaEpaCzarScienceRelig.html
Reject Tyranny and Defend Liberty!
Obama EPA
jiminga Friday, December 11th at 10:08AM EST (link)“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”
Living is So Cal, it doesn't cost much to heat my house.
Tbone (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 7:41PM EST (link)But, it is going to be real interesting when the heat bills start showing up in the NE. I don’t care how blue a district is, members of the congresstocracy who hope to have their seat after Obama is run out of town may want to start to take a little notice how his looney bin is screwing them over.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
Kowolski. I just google "congresstocracy" and I may have coined a word.
Tbone (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 8:02PM EST (link)I call copyright.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
Don't forget Hugo Chavez & that Kennedy kid subsidize heating oil. nt
Steve Maley (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 9:57PM EST (link)The blogger formerly known as ‘Vladimir’.
Methane, eh ?
Kenny Solomon (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 7:56PM EST (link)Ask this guy about it – he knows…….. http://mrmethane.com
Warning: Audio plays on site opening…. Not for the easily offended.
The man's got talent.
johnCV (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 9:01AM EST (link)His outfit reminds me of that tool who screams about getting Free Gov’t Money ads on TV.
Hmmmm, maybe were onto something here – flatulence, congress – yeah….
can you just imagine all of the CH4 to tax on Titan...
DONTREADONME (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 8:15PM EST (link)the moon of Neptune?
Methane Hydrates anyone
10ksnooker (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 8:18PM EST (link)When the ocean floor farts, the whole world pays attention.
Are any of these regulations
michigan Wednesday, December 9th at 8:25PM EST (link)constitutional? Does the constitution allow for us to be regulated by anything other than Congress? It’s getting a bit much for all to swallow.
Congress already handed over the keys
zuiko (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 12:50AM EST (link)With the Clean Air Act. SCOTUS says that CO2 counts as a pollutant under the definition in the law (which is vague enough that oxygen or nitrogen could be considered pollutants too), so unless Congress strips authority they can do whatever they want here. I’m not optimistic about undoing the damage the EPA is about to do.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. – Milton Friedman
maybe if the greenies stop composting....
DONTREADONME (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 8:26PM EST (link)we wouldn’t have so much darn methane!
speaking of methane & GHGs its CHILLY in Texas, Gore's...
DONTREADONME (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 8:30PM EST (link)in Hopencangen right? good Lord almighty its like I never left Virginia.
I wonder why water hasn't been declared a pollutant yet...
mschmitt (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 9:04PM EST (link)It’s a far more powerful GHG (if such a thing actually existed, seeing as the peak spectral output from the sun is IR and a reflector layer would cool by repelling at least as much as it would warm from trapping, but that’s besides the fact) than CO2 or methane.
They just call it dihydrogen monoxide gas, and the weather worshippers will be climbing over each other to be the first to declare it dangerous to life.
usque ad finem
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
Tbone (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 9:07PM EST (link)Read or die.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
Ban DHMO!
mschmitt (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 9:16PM EST (link)Or at least tax it to discourage its usage! Big government, where art thou to save us!?
usque ad finem
Thats some wicked stuff, better get the EPA on it now!
nessa (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 9:37PM EST (link)I’ll bet the poor underdeveloped countries are even more threatened by it than we are!!
Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:
* Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
* Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
* Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
* DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
* Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
* Contributes to soil erosion.
* Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
* Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
* Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
* Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
* Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
* Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
* Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.
“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
Contributor to Unified Patriots
teh twitter
Water is a pollutant
Achance (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 9:59PM EST (link)if you pump it out of the ground and then try to put it back in the ground. So is dirt and rock. We just had a ten year battle all the way to the USSC over whether raw mine tailings, unprocessed in any form except by washing them with water pumped from the same area were a pollutant under the Clean Water Act. The CWA is so vague that it says what some Fed Administrator says it says and what he says is entitled to great deference by the courts. Course, if the judge(s) disagree with that administrator, common if he’s a Republican appointee, they just put on their white smocks, become scientists, and substitute their “scientific” judgement for his scientific judgement.
In Vino Veritas
I concur wholeheartedly...
juumanistra (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 11:16PM EST (link)As a leach-in-training and currently sitting through an Environmental Law course, let me be the first to concur that the Clean Air Act’s jurisprudence is a bastion of sanity when compared to the insanity and destruction wrought by the Clean Water Act.
My favorite of all the Clean Water Act boondoggles, though, is P.U.D. No. 1 of Jefferson County v. Washington Department of Ecology, in which some of a river’s flow, when shunted through a hydroelectric bypass and then piped back in downstream, constitutes the discharge of a pollutant. What’s worse is that, in this context, water is a “pollutant” as defined by statute. (That still requires getting past the nettlesome issue of there being no discharge, but O’Connor’s majority opinion manages to. That it was an O’Connor opinion at all ought to be enough to tell you the quality of the reasoning on that question.)
And let’s not even get into the “sleeping giant of the Clean Water Act”, the total maximum daily load provisions. Which will, in all likelihood, be the Left’s next big green litigation crusade. The Clean Water Act is in desperate need of amending, though how, precisely, to introduce economic sanity into it is another. (As the only way it can be made sense of is if it’s assumed that its primary purpose is to destroy economically productive activity.)
After the academics and journalists are processed
Achance (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 3:26AM EST (link)through a few harvest seasons in the re-education brigade, the next cohort will be all the heads of all foundations that have funded Greenies and the officers and staffs of all non-profits engaged in any form of anti-development advocacy. World will soon be a better place!
In Vino Veritas
Ah, yes, the glories of the re-education brigades...
juumanistra (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 1:57PM EST (link)Another reason why the Right is preferable to the Left: Our “re-education camps” simply involve going out and getting a job in the industry one seeks to regulate before undertaking said regulation, rather than the Left’s preference for purging the enemies of the revolution through starvation and forced labor.
You get to keep your life and take some hard-earned wages. It’s a win-win!
Here you go MSchmitt
billyd (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 10:17PM EST (link)O’keefe before he visited Acorn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmLOTqKsANw
November 2nd 2010. What are you doing today to improve your tomorrow?
Absolutely right
peoplepower Thursday, December 10th at 8:27AM EST (link)Water vapor is the most pollutant of all. Next they will get rid of the Oceans and Lakes. The Climate Change is NORMAL. It does it all the time. All of this jnk is destroying our way of living. I personally like flushing toilets, electricity etc. If they get their way we will be equal to India or some other poor Country. Leave us all alone.
Absolutely right
peoplepower Thursday, December 10th at 8:27AM EST (link)Water vapor is the most pollutant of all. Next they will get rid of the Oceans and Lakes. The Climate Change is NORMAL. It does it all the time. All of this jnk is destroying our way of living. I personally like flushing toilets, electricity etc. If they get their way we will be equal to India or some other poor Country. Leave us all alone.
These are the policies we get when uneducated, corrupt
Old_Crow (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 9:29PM EST (link)fools are elected into office.
We can’t last until 2012, we need to take Congress back next year and start undoing every foolish policy, every foolish piece of legislation that Obama has done.
Can we tie this EPA nonsense up in the courts for a few years?
“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” — James Madison
It's a raw power grab.
anotherindyfilmguy (Diary) Wednesday, December 9th at 10:39PM EST (link)A pure and simple attack on the US economy.
Congress should have an oversight committee nail this foolishness before they destroy us with our own laws.
Santorum? Well, at least he’s not Romney…
http://www.zazzle.com/enemy_of_the_statist_tshirt-235977043035297478
Blanket farts
drfredc Thursday, December 10th at 12:22AM EST (link)If methane were such a great molecule at warming, a fart or two under the blankets would keep you warm all night…. or not…. or mostly not… or, well entirely not…
Just don’t fan the blankets and you won’t have to suffer cold and the smell.
Always, Fred C
I call Obama's bluff
char (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 2:33AM EST (link)I’m sorry but Obama is a dyed in the wool narcissist. I struggle to believe that he would singlehandedly order the EPA crack down on CH4/CO2 and be the fall guy for all the dems just for the sake of regulating cow farts. Doing so would make him into a hated person and we all know that he wants and needs to be loved by all (or to at least be able to blame someone else for his shortcomings, preferably his predecessor).
This is nothing but pre copenhagen posturing. If Obama tries this then he hands Republicans the greatest campaign platform topic they have ever had. Not only will Repubs push to toss him out (seeing how HE SINGLEHANDEDLY destroyed the economy) but Repubs will push to simply omit CO2/CH4 from the clean air act and push out every Dem senator who doesn’t vote with them (after all they are letting Obama destroy the economy).
Obama’s bluff is so incomprehensibly bad that it really is laughable. This is nothing more than pre Copenhagen preening so that he can strut his stuff in front of the enlightened and have them sing his praises. If Obama wanted to destroy the economy this way then why would he wait until now? Cap and trade has been dead in the senate for months.
Yep. A Page from Kim Jong Ill II's Book.
OccamsRazor (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 2:41AM EST (link)Posturing before making demands. It’s a sign, ultimately, of weakness.
What mak
Cargosquid (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 10:57AM EST (link)that any Republicans would change anything? The GOP wants power just as badly as the Dems. The GOP in power do not want to put restrictions on their future power nor do they want to restrict the power of the EPA. That would mean that CONGRESS would have to make hard decisions about such laws. That’s why Congress always invents these “independent” regulatory agencies. Congress wants perks and power with no concurrent responsibility.
They ALL need to be replaced and we need to return to Constitutional law. Actually, they all need to be impeached for being forsworn.
Rope. Tree. Politician. Assembly required.
555 Cargo nt
Warrior (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 2:36PM EST (link)“Racial criteria are irrational, irrelevant, [and] odious to our way of life.” — Thurgood Marshall for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1950 Supreme Court case of McLaurin v. Oklahoma
'quick pull my finger...'/nt
larryp Thursday, December 10th at 9:31AM EST (link)It also takes more wealth out of the economy
mkj350 Thursday, December 10th at 11:33AM EST (link)by taking it out of our pockets. That’s the bottom line. This has nothing to do with the environment – it’s all about their control, because they know what’s best for us. These lofty elitists want to take us back to before the industrial age. They want to shut down any business that is remotely successful. It’s capitalism and individual success they hate. Any money we have, they want to take it and give it to the poor and unsuccessful in order to “level the playing field”. None of this will apply to them however. It’s the “let them eat cake” philosophy – but only when they say we can.
Another word for 'climate change' is
Warrior (Diary) Thursday, December 10th at 2:38PM EST (link)‘WEATHER’
“Racial criteria are irrational, irrelevant, [and] odious to our way of life.” — Thurgood Marshall for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1950 Supreme Court case of McLaurin v. Oklahoma
A Modest Proposal
utahrepublican Thursday, December 10th at 5:05PM EST (link)Instead of passing Trap & Raid, why doesn’t Congress simply remove 100% of the funding for EPA for the next fiscal year. Not only would that help the deficit, but quite possibly (after something less than 365 days without pay) many of the most unreasonable bureaucrats might decide to retire. Then, if EPA is ever funded again, the replacements can consider “reviewing” the absurd “findings” the got EPA de-funded the first time. I don’t expect it to happen, but I bet a nickel (make that two nickles, I’m really confident) we would get some first class decisions for a while if it did.
Educated people
1stsgt Saturday, December 12th at 6:28PM EST (link)I once thought the congress consisted of educated people. Now I am just an old country boy and have a high school education but I have concluded that I could do a better job than 99% of the congress. I must comment on Rep Waxman for a moment. I know of nothing he backs except taxes and investigations. That is all I have ever heard from him. This is enough before I get off on a tangent.
Educated People
chargis Saturday, December 12th at 7:17PM EST (link)Most of thease folks are educated beyond their inteligence.