EPA Air Chief Is CO2 Clueless
The situation in Japan is awful on multiple fronts, and the Japanese face a recovery that will challenge the limits of their capabilities. Yet back here at home, the EPA is aiming to melt down our feeble economic situation by taxing everything that produces energy — not because of anything like radiation, but due to harmless carbon dioxide.
I thought I had heard just about everything in the great global warming debate until, on March 1, the House of Representatives held a hearing dealing with the EPA’s proposal to commence sweeping nationwide regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. The idea behind the EPA’s plan is to regulate (read: “tax”) the largest “polluters” to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the air. The EPA believes that by reducing carbon dioxide by some tiny fraction it can control the Earth’s climate system — a typical government mentality, no? Doing this would result in higher costs of doing business for the nation’s power generating facilities and manufacturing plants. It would increase the cost of doing business across the board for many other smaller businesses, and would likely inhibit companies from hiring new employees.
In February, Republican Fred Upton said:
Needless to say the Chinese government and other competitors have no intention of burdening and raising the cost of doing business for their manufacturers and energy producers the way EPA plans to do here in America. Our goal should be to export goods, not jobs.
During the EPA hearings, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) questioned Gina McCarthy, EPA chief of air programs and greenhouse gas regulations. He asked:
Do you know what the level of CO2 right now is generally speaking in the atmosphere?
He threw her a softball. Her answer?
Well actually I don’t have that figure.
(Take long pregnant pause here.)
You don’t have what? Please tell me this is a joke! The chief of the EPA’s air programs and greenhouse gas regulations doesn’t know how much carbon dioxide is in the air? This is beyond anything I thought was possible. This is a person leading the United States of America? Don’t tell our enemies.
What if Joe Barton was to ask a scientist who did not believe in manmade global warming that kind of question?
Barton: Mr. Horn, do you know what the instrument we use to measure temperature is, generally speaking?
Me: I don’t have that information at this time.
That’s how bad Gina McCarthy’s answer was. To be the chief regulator of such a potentially devastating policy and to not know that CO2 is 390 parts per million? What else doesn’t the EPA know about carbon dioxide? How about that it’s not a dangerous pollutant?
We have been told Ms. McCarthy is highly trained and unquestionably qualified for the job. Says Scientific American:
Although Ms. McCarthy has a tough road ahead, her experience and achievements prove she will rise to the challenge. She has shown true leadership in Connecticut and Massachusetts implementing a multi-pollutant approach to clean up the air in those states.
Let’s talk about that leadership: as head of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Power, Gina McCarthy helped develop the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the nation’s first mandatory cap-and-trade program. That program, called RGGI, is actually a tax on each resident and business owner in Connecticut and the other 9 RGGI member states. The charge for operating RGGI is hidden within complicated verbiage of electric bills each month.
Maybe that’s part of the reason New Hampshire just voted to drop out of the system, and more states are looking to follow New Hampshire’s lead.
There are two constants in the universe. The first is change, and the second is the bureaucratic mentality. Ms. McCarthy actually said:
I never really thought of myself as a regulator. I actually am a strong believer in markets. I really think our job is to make sure that the work we do is valued and priced in the markets appropriately. And so I am a true believer in democracy — in having government intervene when it needs to and not when it doesn’t.
Really. It would seem that she believes in the markets only when it is convenient to her bureaucratic, unscientifically biased agenda.
Is the United States going to keep up with China and maintain our leadership role in the world? Not if the EPA keeps looking for ways to handicap us. We need to get our heads out of the clouds and start developing our own resources — the most abundant in the world. Nations such as China, India, and others are unburdened by the carbon dioxide ball-and-chain.
They are forging ahead with a clear vision of the future while we are regulating ourselves into mediocrity.
Gina McCarthy, EPA chief of air programs and greenhouse gas regulations was asked: “Do you know what the level of CO2 right now is generally speaking in the atmosphere?”
She answered “Well actually I don’t have that figure”.
And why should she?
This is not, and has never been, about CO2, greenhouse gasses, global warming/climate change/.[fill in the next catch phrase].
This whole climate circus is about wealth distribution.
No, it’s about totalitarian control.
Look at Britain, where they’re planning a system that will let them shut down your electricity for “more socially useful” uses.
The Obama team has the same plan for the USA. Utilities nationwide are currently being forced to replace all existing residential and commercial electric meters with so-called “smart meters”. A “smart meter” can be switched on and off remotely – by the utility, or, by anyone (read EPA, DOE, etc). Smart meters, via the utilities central computer, can also be programed to shut off when the customer has used a pre-determined number of KW-hours. Net result will be electricity rationing. Next step in the Obama “forced” energy conservation program.
Totally about Control. They don’t give a flying fig about global warming or cooling or any of that “scientific stuff” except that it makes possible a scam to gain more control.
“Shouldn’t Gina McCarthy know how much CO2 is in the air?”
She works for the government.
I don’t expect her to know anything.
That is why you need a staff of 10,000 – to hire a Contractor to answer those questions.
That would be a really funny line if it were not so tragically true.
Regulate first and ask questions later is the way they work. Obama’s EPA will destroy America’s economy with a tsunami of regulation. The Democrats sudden concern over gases prices should be seen as nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
http://www.bluecollarphilosophy.com/2011/03/democrats-suddenly-care-about-gas-prices-and-attack-republicans-over-it.html
If they really cared about the middle class and the poor they would be seeking new ways to tax them for merely existing.
“I really think our job is to make sure that the work we do is valued and priced in the markets appropriately.”
She envisions her “work” as a marketable commodity, to be compared and contrasted with similar “products” leading the “consumer” to make an appropriate “choice” based on perceived “value”?
What a load! At best, her “product” is a naive vision of a verdant land, energy generated by gentle breezes and a warm sun, while unicorns gambol in the meadows. In reality, it’s a scam to bleed money from the citizenry to prop up the politically connected, much as the public service unions fleece their constituents of “dues” to pad their own bank accounts and those of the politicians who are on the receiving end of their largesse.
Ms. McCarthy is just another of obamas appointees why do you expect any pollital appointee to know anythin except how to raise funds for their master?
If you think this is about money you badly mistaken.
It is typical of the Obama regime that someone like Gina McCarthy be appointed as EPA chief of “air programs” to regulate “greenhouse gas”.
Environmentalism has been a club used by the left for about 50 years now. The federal government is attempting to justify its control over the private sector by using “climate change” hyperbole. Gina McCarthy is, of course, clueless. That’s why she was chosen for the job. Orders come down from the White House: “Just say this, Gina, and you’ll keep your over-paid job.”
Hopefully she is reprinting her resume on recycled paper in preparation for 2012 or prior to that when the actual budget is passed and the EPA’s regulatory function is defunded.
Unfortunately much of the civil service (a double oxymoron) is inundated with socialists and pc types. There can be double savings to the taxpayer with a cull…lose their salaries and the cost of their interference in our lives.
She, like most of the rest of the appointees for this administration, are hired because of their “views” not for actual qualifications.
The current “ruling” elite are no better than the people who ran the USSR in the 70′s and 80′s. Screw the “common” person and help the “comrade” in “arms.
It has to be stopped.
She might have well said, I don’t care what the level of carbon dioxide is, I have an agenda to implement. Facts don’t matter; idealogy does.
Very good, Patty. I’m sure that’s what she was thinking. Ha-ha.
This is clearly a failed administration. Reasonable and rational people need to keep applying pressure against failed executives and bureaucrats to prevent them from causing more harm. They need to do the same thing with the present and with future congresses.
Fortunately, the scientific community is beginning to rein in those who publish political/ideological papers rather than science. This is a good thing.
Likewise, parts of the major media are beginning to diverge from their self-imposed fictional narrative. Hopefully this trend will continue and journalists will return to their creed of honest, factual reporting.
But the responsibility to understand and think clearly about the real world and to exercise rational sovereign authority over the government still rests with the individual American citizen. Let’s hope they can rise to the challenge.
“Reasonable and rational people…
Unfortunately the above are in the minority in the U.S. electorate, and shrinking by the day, which is how we got into this mess to begin with.
With the current-day government school teachers, self-important, “idealistic,” and not all that smart, indoctrinating today’s government school students, there will be fewer and fewer “reasonable and rational” people. A few thousand home-schoolers can’t supply all the thinking adults we need to save this country from Green Ruin.
Someone ought to ask her what common atmospheric gas absorbs the broadest spectrum of infrared energy and thereby contributes the most to the greenhouse effect? The answer is water.
Then ask her why the proven most important greenhouse gas of all has ZERO “Global Warming Potential” under the IPCC protocols? The answer is that the average residence time of a water molecule in the atmosphere is a matter of days, whereas CO2 or methane lasts decades. So if you quantify GWP on residence time, water becomes insignificant, while in the Real World that water molecule will be recycled through the hydrological cycle on averave once every eight days through the process of natrual evaporation under the influence of the sun. Natural processes are an Inconvenient Truth to promoters of anthropogenic global warming!
Think about it, if methane is so much worse a greenhouse gas then CO2, doesn’t the greenhouse ffect due to CO2 diminish to insignificance in a manner similar to water?
Maybe they do know that water vapor is a much bigger contributor to global warming than is CO2. Lately I’ve noticed a dearth of articles ecstatically extolling the virtues of hydrogen powered vehicles, the “only” emission of which is water vapor.
Still, they’re not going to want to point out water vapor’s “danger to the planet,” since water vapor is going to be sooo hard to tax and regulate–or even reduce! A plastic blanket over the oceans? Over the Great Lakes? “Sure, it will destroy shipping, but it’s worth it to save the planet”? (You know, I can actually picture Nancy Pelosi saying that.)
Lately I’ve noticed a dearth of articles ecstatically extolling the virtues of hydrogen powered vehicles, the “only” emission of which is water vapor.
Could be. Or maybe they’ve finally started to figure out that we need energy to produce hydrogen to burn, and that energy has to come from….
One of our current EEEEVIL sources (oil, gas, nuke, hydro).
Same with electric cars. They do NOTHING to reduce our need for energy.
They are just much less efficient than the direct use of fossil fuels as a means of storing and transporting energy.
It’s time that this question be asked of every candidate for every postition: “Do you believe in man-made global warming?”
Any answer that isn’t a flat “No” should disqualify that person from holding public office. We need public servants in Washington who are grounded in reality and common sense, not a hoax.
Ok, so Gina McCarthy, the EPA Air Chief flubbed the question on CO2 levels. It’s hard work to advance the agenda of the proponents of the carbon tax and wealth redistribution. Imagine the contortion of facts and plate spinning necessary to take a trace harmless natural gas, without it all plants on our planet would die and twist it in to an “emission” and “pollutant”.
Perhaps Ms. McCarthy could have easily answered the question of levels of aluminum, barium, lead, arsenic, strontium and other known neurotoxins being sprayed daily in to our skies and atmosphere by the military-type tanker planes criss-crossing our skies.
Surely the EPA does not condone deliberate “aerosoling” of toxins in to the air, water, soil and upon unsuspecting humans. Even if those responsible cleverly call it “geo-engineering”, “weather modification” or “de-population plans” the EPA will see through the scam and put a stop to the deliberate and ongoing slow genocide being waged upon humanity and our environment.
As Ms. McCarthy says, ”and so I am a true believer in democracy — in having government intervene when it needs to and not when it doesn’t”.
Well, someone is intervening and experimenting with nature and humanity. It needs to stop now.
Look up at our formerly blue skies, now almost constantly shrouded in a toxic manmade milky haze. Who is watching this? Where are are our congressional leaders? Where is our EPA Air Chief on this?
Instead of asking CO2 levels, if only she could have been asked, what are the aluminum levels in our environment? I know our EPA Air Chief would have quickly answered, 61,000 times the allowable levels of ALUMINUM are being found in our environment.
‘..formerly blue skies..’ – Hmph. Where do you live, Gary, Indiana? I bet with all this ‘environmental tampering’ Gary, Indiana is receiving far less precipitation, warmer and muggier Summer days and a list of other meteorological anomalies. Oh wait, that’s right. THEY’RE NOT resembling ANY of the aforementioned. Perhaps upstream of Gary, Indiana are feeling those nasty effects. Nope.
You’ll be ‘happy’ to know the environmental lobby has stopped the use of DDT in Africa, resulting in the death of ~1.5 million African children per year. But hey, all hail the ‘fragile’ Mother Gaia..
You may dig the enviro-nitwits in England recently who’d proposed NO vehicles AT ALL to be driven in the bigger EU cities by 2050! hahaha
‘Say Goodnight Gracie’ (love George Burns btw)
mccarthy’s definition of democracy is really that of authoritarianism
she just needed to qualify that there is never an instance when government need not intervene in anything
however, the notion that man can destroy the earth is a bit kooky
we may or may not have the ability to wipe ourselves of the face of the earth but the earth will keep ticking despite our impact/non-impact
what about that gulf oil spill that was supposed to be a blight needing a century of effort to clean up?
the planet will be around until our sun turns into a giant red star and cannibalizes it (maybe another 4/5 billion years)
Gracie, just a note on you otherwise excellent post, “allowable levels,” is regulatory jargon. This assumes that, “Safe,” levels have been scientifically determined, that is below which there is no adverse effect on exposed individual’s health. There is also a comparison of the naturally occurring concentration. Your statement implies the EPA knows and is not enforcing its’ own regulations. I would not be surprised! I would like to know your source(s), the NYT is not acceptable.
You want her source? Just do a search on “chemtrails”.
You’ll get all the whacko psuedo-science you can handle.
Art, the CO2 question is moot for as you’d mentioned in your article THERE IS NO PROOF of CO2 contributing to ANY type of atmospheric warming/change to the earth’s climate.
Did you or the other posters see the Brit video doing a CO2 experiment on a far smaller scale of course with volunteers who had little/no science background whereas the gathering took place in one’s flat?
The host of the impromptu science experiment brought in an AGW quack. Anywho, the experiment didn’t support their pie-in-the-sky dogma and tried to pass it off as ‘inaccurate’! Even Obama has a better 2-step.
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com has it in their archives somewhere. Worth a look.. and a chuckle.
“As Ms. McCarthy says, ”and so I am a true believer in democracy — in having government intervene when it needs to and not when it doesn’t”.
Isn’t it comical how the left always quotes the “D” word to justify or obfuscate their agenda? A true democracy would require a vote of the people rather than a government mandate or regulation. Her idea of democracy is rule by government. She uses the D word to hide her desire for a dictatorship, whether benevolent (as she perceives it) or oppressive (as I perceive it).
Is she a scientist? I bet not.How did she get her degree?
For a long time I didn’t think I’d ever see a worse president than Jimmy Carter. I’m really sad that now I have done so.
This is what happens whenever unconstitutional agencies are created. Their only purpose is control of the population and economy. Democrats must be defeated at the poll or with arms, and it must happen soon. Not only are they attacking the U.S. with every government agency available, they are not dealing with the threat from Islam. Scratch a Democrat, find a traitor.
Well at least I will have clean air as I starve to death as a homeless person.
Holy canole! Even the rankest amateur knows atmospheric CO2 is c. 390 ppm. (though some will dispute this figure – I accept it, BRW) And those with only a passing knowledge know that the atmospheric sink is c. 760 BMTC, the soil/organic sink is c. 2000 BMTC and the Oceanic Sink is 38,000 BMTC.
And even the laymen who has looked at the figures knows the accepted (simplified) cycle theory that output is roughly 7 BMTC, slightly over half of which is absorbed by soil and Oceanic sink (a current increase of roughly 0.4% per year, c. 4% over the last decade). Quite a bit of CO2 cycles back and forth between the various sinks, but the that’s where the anthropogenic CO2 balanace wids up.
It’s appalling that the EPA chief of air programs and greenhouse gas regulations is not intimmately aware of these figures and the basic mechanisms of the CO2 cycle.
Being an AGW advocare I can understand (though as a “lukewarmer”, I side mainly with the skeptics). But our EPA CO2 poet laureate not knowing the bare-bones alphabet is beyond comprehension.
If she is into air quality, she should know nitrogen is towards 700,000 ppm. 390 parts per million is nothing unless it is a toxin.
Another day, another exhibit in the leftist freakshow that is the Obama regime.
Well…Hell….
It looks like Reagan was Right, yet again
So…
the obvious solution to the tree caused CO2 is tax the hell out of the states with the biggest forest…
or
reengage the foresting industry
then everybody wins
:: ))
So is that why it rains soooo much over here in the Northwest? We have too many trees?
Cut em all down?
As a corporate Project Manager, I sometimes go before a group of executives to get projects chartered/approved (basically what McCarthy was doing). If I could not answer questions on our current baseline performance or the performance targets of the project, I would be summarily dismissed from their presence and possibly from the company.
Gina McCarthy’s answer would be as laughable as Fred Upton describes if she didn’t already control the ignition to his home heating unit and to his car. They will tax anything in order to control everything. And we will let them because we now believe in the Nanny State, stupid as that has always been.
One of the lead articles in this month’s National Geographic is “The Acid Sea” which talks about the (supposed) increase in ocean acidity due to our CO2 output.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/
Anybody have any comments on this?
I went to the article but don’t have time to read it. But after years and years of hearing that our waters were being acidified by the output of factories and power generators, and after years of pollution control efforts to clean the output of factories and power generators, NOW we learn it’s our CO2. All that wasted time and money, and it was CO2 all the time!
BTW, my brother-in-law is an agronomist and he scoffs that acidification of the waters via “acid rain” was just another hoax. Another EXPENSIVE hoax. You don’t suppose acidification by CO2 could be one more hoax, do you? One more justification for regulating that dangerous gas?
This is more stupidity. Nat Geo uses as an example the destruction of sea life near a CO2 vent which likely has the CO2 concentration thousands of time greater than it’s average levels. This article says the sea hold 50x more CO2 than the atmosphere does.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Yet a relatively small increase in atmospheric CO2 is going to dissolve and make the ocean acidic, all the while the oceans are supposed to warm which will result in more outgassing of CO2 from the oceans, because a warmer ocean will hold LESS CO2.
Realize the Nat Geo article was based more on models and conjecture than even the normal climate change scare.
Well, good for Scientific American. Something strange has happened to that publication over the last year. It has been reformatted. It has been dumbed down. There is now a giant list of Important People running the show. Oh, yeah, THAT impressed me. The cover that breathlessly announced that we’re still evolving! Well, duh, doesn’t every eight-year-old know that? Articles on “climate change.” And I actually saw a “hockey stick” graph! After twenty-six years of subscribing, that’s it for me. I quit.
Yep, the Scientific Gringo (Hispanic language edition coming soon) is a goner. It has been wilting on the vine for some years now. Get the American Scientist instead.
The cover that breathlessly announced that we’re still evolving! Well, duh, doesn’t every eight-year-old know that?
Give ‘em a break, willya! They have to keep shouting that or the rubes might wake up and notice there’s not a shred of EVIDENCE to support it!
Well, at least this was a learning opportunity for me to go back and relearn how much C02 is in the air. From a medical standpoint, it’s negligible, which is why I forgot.
Anyway…. 0.039 %. Huh. So a tiny increase in this tiny figure (especially given all the “noise” in any complex system and all the random crap we don’t know about and can’t control) is supposed to make us all want to commit economic suicide?
I can’t believe any of us fell for that in the first place.
Hmmm, it’s a little like the Democrats screaming that reducing our $l.5 TRILLION deficit by any more than $6 billion will cause the economy to self-destruct. So if the Republicans pass any meaningful spending reductions, the Dems can now scream that the only reason unemployment is still just south of 10% is the Republicans’ failed budget, which destroyed poor Obama’s fragile economic recovery.
And for certain it has nothing to do with ObamaCare or the EPA’s business-destroying harmless-gas taxation.
If you are into the medical field, GE bought Ohio which makes anestheisia equipment. They have CO2 bottles on the machine so they can give you CO2 to breath with O2, formerly cyclopropane, fluothane and other stuff. In surgery they administer CO2. Your heart may actually stop if they don’t.
“I really think our job is to make sure that the work we do is valued and priced in the markets appropriately.”
And how do you expect to “value and price” the markets appropriately when you don’t even know what the starting number is?
At long last, MS. McCarthy, have you no shame?
The United States of America began losing its industrial strength, particularly in heavy industry, the “smoke stack” segment, immediately after the EPA was created. Since that time, our electrical power infrastructure has rotted. Your computer, and your entire electronic life, is being supported by power plants built in your grandfather’s day. When the grid collapses, for years, you will not have heat, lights, running water, any home communication, and probably your job. Study Northeast Japan, for the societal effects of a long term black out. They lack energy.
Is this worth the impact of stopping coal combustion, the ubiquitous, low cost, American native fuel? If the UN is correct, if CO2 will eventually kill, then billions are doomed. Even with nuclear power, there is no cost effective green substitute and there will be none in the far future.
The US must confront reality, form a national energy policy: burn coal or cease to be an advanced society. The decision is way over due.
Where is the energy going to come from to power all of these new electric cars that Obama wants to sell. There are no new coal fired plants permitted for 2011 and 1 so far for 2012. Black outs and brown outs on the horizon?
And if YOU think this is about climate, you are in for a surprise.
Just hang around for another five years.
If the UN is correct, if CO2 will eventually kill, then billions are doomed.
Are you unaware of the fact that many (most?) of the Greenies want billions to die?
But don’t worry. The U.N. is rarely right.
I really think our job is to make sure that the work we do is valued and priced in the markets appropriately.
I’m confused, what “work” is she talking about? Work the EPA does? If I have it right, apparently the EPA considers that it provides a service (regulation) which is “priced” at its market value in the form of a tax levied on everyone who “uses” that service (basically everyone). Do all regulatory agencies think that way?
Utility bills can be very interesting reading. You never know what you might find tucked away in them.
Do not blame the EPA they are just doing what the real clueless one tells them to do. Now is that obama or are real president soros?
The same Obama administration that shills about shipping jobs overseas.
Gina McCarthy is the kind of person who, in the name of saving free speech, would tax reading, watching or listening .. anything.
Had this been Sarah Palin, we’d have seen this clip over, and over, and over….
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