Coal Industry

Change You Can't Breathe In
By Mithridate Ombud | June 20, 2009 | 3:54 AM EDT

Riding on a waning crest of bringing change to the United States and cleaning up the environment, Barack Obama is going head to head against Barbara Boxer on a big issue. There are 44 coal ash dumps that have been designated as a "high hazard" to the public. They contain arsenic and heavy metals from coal plants. Barbara Boxer has seen the list and wants to make it public, whereas Barack Obama essentially told her "No, ma'am." It's important to know if you're in the path of one in case it regurgitates a billion gallons of hazardous waste on you.

Green groups are seeing red over this betrayal of campaign promises to bring a new era of openness. In fact, the average Earth-conscious moonbat is going to do a chai tea spit-take when they read about this in the newspaper. (And just wait until they read about Obama deciding to let Big Coal blow the top off 42 Appalachian mountaintops to strip mine.)

But that's where the problem lies. Jump on over to Google News and search for the term "Obama Coal Arsenic". You'll find that you won't really find anything. Anything. In fact, the only mention in the entire vast United States media is a short little editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

CBS’s Pelley Blames Coal Industry for Global Warming
By Kyle Drennen | April 27, 2009 | 4:45 PM EDT

Scott Pelley, CBS On Sunday’s CBS ‘60 Minutes,’ anchor Scott Pelley, who once remarked that global warming critics were the equivalent of Holocaust deniers, identified the American coal industry as one of the main culprits of climate change: "The future of our climate might be summed up in one question, what do we do about coal? Coal generates nearly half the electricity in the United States and in the world. But it is the dirtiest fuel of all when it comes to carbon dioxide, or CO-2, the leading greenhouse gas. A few days ago, the Obama administration declared, for the first time, that CO-2 is a threat to human health and it plans to impose limits."

Pelley’s story did feature a representative of the coal industry, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, who actually called for limitations on carbon emissions: "It's my judgment it is a problem. We need to go to work on it now. And it's critical that we start to act in this country...Our goal line is substantially to reduce our carbon footprint, to de-carbonize our business, by 2050." However, that wasn’t good enough for Pelley: "Four decades? That's a long time."

Pelley followed up by citing left-wing global warming activist Jim Hansen: "2050 is too late. We will have guaranteed disasters for our children, grandchildren, and the unborn." Pelley explained: "Jim Hansen is NASA's top climate scientist. He's credited with some of the earliest and most accurate projections on climate change. He thinks that Rogers plan leaves the Earth in the oven decades too long."

Climate Progress's Romm Responds Unkindly to NewsBusters
By Noel Sheppard | April 8, 2009 | 7:34 PM EDT

After getting wiped all over the floor by Marc Morano in a March 27 global warming debate, and responding by childishly forbidding any articles of Morano's be linked at his Climate Progress blog, Joe Romm has set his sights on NewsBusters.

In an article hysterically titled "Newbusters jumps the shark (if that’s possible) in its attack on my truthful statement “windpower now generates more jobs in this country than coal mining," Romm took issue with some statements I made about his debate performance in my April 3 piece.

Romm's main beef (bolds and italics his):

Global Warming Debate: Morano vs. Climate Progress's Romm
By Noel Sheppard | April 3, 2009 | 6:03 PM EDT

For your Friday evening entertainment pleasure, last week Sen James Inhofe's (R-Ok.) former communications director Marc Morano debated Climate Progress's Joe Romm on matters relating to the global warming myth.

UPDATE at end of post: Romm hysterically responds to NewsBusters.

Presented courtesy of Roll Call TV (debate begins at minute 3:45, part two below the fold):

Rain or Shine, Environmentalists Want to Control Us
By Matt Philbin | March 11, 2009 | 10:18 AM EDT

BMI's Dan Gainor has a great column on the Fox Forum about the silence around "global cooling."

This is the winter of environmentalists’ discontent. They desperately want the earth to be warming to prove Al Gore’s truth inviolate and they are going to make you pay thousands of dollars for it no matter whether it’s true or not. But the weather has been inconveniently cold. Thirty-two states have experienced record or near-record lows this winter – poking holes in the predictions of imminent fiery doom. Just ask the die-hard global warming activists who showed up in Washington last week to protest the nation’s use of coal. Their event was hampered by nearly a foot of snow in the nation’s capital – enough to freeze out luminaries like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.Still, there they were, a couple thousand idiots standing in a winter wonderland, chanting about global warming. What’s amazing is that NASA’s climate chief James Hansen was part of this foolishness. Here we have a man who the left keeps telling us is so smart we need to listen to everything he says and he doesn’t have the public relations sense of a freshman communications major.I have a news flash for Mr. Hansen – it gets cold in the winter. Sometimes it snows – even in Washington. If you want to promote global warming, look at a thermometer and wait until that red stuff climbs up real high.
Chris Matthews: GOP 'Outsourced' Response to Indian-American Governor
By Mike Sargent | February 25, 2009 | 2:13 PM EST

“Oh, god,” why did he have to use that word? According to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the GOP “outsourced” the Republican response to a young, successful Indian-American governor who “had nothing to do with Congress.”

They had to outsource the response tonight, the Republican party. They had to outsource to someone who had nothing to do with Congress because the Republicans in Congress had nothing to do with the programs he was talking about tonight or the record he referred to.

First of all, one might point out that Piyush “Bobby” Jindal was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2004 to 2006. Furthermore, Republican governors are quite important members of the party. The idea that the GOP was bringing in an outsider is flat out wrong.

NASA's Hansen Films Ad For Upcoming Protest Against Coal
By Noel Sheppard | February 18, 2009 | 3:19 PM EST
NASA's James Hansen has created an advertisement for a protest at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C., on March 2.

In the piece, Hansen claims:

We cannot burn all the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet. The only practical way to solve the problem is to phase out the biggest source of carbon and that is coal.

Is this what someone working for the United States government and paid with our tax dollars should be doing (video embedded below the fold):

Rolling Stone Defends Pork, Attacks GOP
By Terry Trippany | February 7, 2009 | 11:12 AM EST
While Capitol Hill is working on a "compromise" I thought it fitting to take a look at how the usual suspects in the media are dealing with Republican leaders that dare speak out and identify elements of the stimulus package that have nothing to do with stimulating the economy. For this task I turned to Rolling Stone Magazine and quickly came upon an article headlined "The Unserious Opposition".

In that article Rolling Stone Magazine Contributing Editor Tim Dickinson rolled out his Mother Jones bona fides with a predictable attack on Republican Senators after CNN published a Republican list of 32 wasteful provisions contained in the proposed bill.

With the simple phrase "And look at what the GOP considers to be pork in this bill", Dickinson takes the common path of those that can't stop living in the past and sarcastically twists the list to portray the Republicans as "Cheneyite" ideologues. In his logic however we find a convoluted line of reasoning that is misleading at best. It exemplifies the typical approach taken by gushing media types that have forsaken their watchdog duties to become members of the Presidential fan club.

Gore in DC: Will Anybody Care About His Green Investments?
By Noel Sheppard | January 28, 2009 | 11:08 AM EST

As Nobel Laureate Al Gore warns Congress today about how the naturally occurring gas carbon dioxide is destroying the planet -- and gets a lot of press attention doing so, of course! -- one has to wonder whether anyone -- either on Capitol Hill or in the media -- will ask him how he financially benefits if the legislative measures he's proposing get enacted.

After all, as NewsBusters reported last April, Gore has made huge investments in companies that produce green technologies specifically designed to combat the "problem" he's been telling the world -- using his brand of junk science, of course! -- exists.

Now, with a new, green Administration in office, Gore wants our tax dollars spent on things he's invested in (from prepared remarks):

'Bush Hurt Mine Safety' Meme Won't Yield to Facts
By Tom Blumer | January 20, 2009 | 12:21 PM EST

2008 was the safest year ever to be an American miner. The combined number of fatalities from all forms of mining was the lowest ever.

2007 (latest information available) also shows the lowest "all-injury" rate for miners on record by far.

Yet Ken Ward Jr.'s early-January contribution at the Charleston (WV) Gazette to the spate of final-month Bush-bashing pretended that this data doesn't exist. Instead he gave the impression of an opposite situation. Media outlets have been trying and failing to make this case since the Sago Mine Disaster of January 2006 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), even while the safety stats have generally showed nearly continuous improvement.

You'll see that Ward also uses a headline that will leave those who recall Barack Obama's campaign promise to bankrupt new coal-powered plants shaking their heads in disbelief (bolds after headlines are mine):

NASA's Hansen to Obama: Use Global Warming to Redistribute Wealth
By Noel Sheppard | January 1, 2009 | 12:51 PM EST

Climate realists around the world have contended for years that the real goal of alarmists such as Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his followers is to use the fear of man-made global warming to redistribute wealth.

On Monday, one of Gore's leading scientific resources, Goddard Institute for Space Studies chief James Hansen, sent a letter to Barack and Michelle Obama specifically urging the president-elect to enact a tax on carbon emissions that would take money from higher-income Americans and distribute the proceeds to the less fortunate.

The eco-socialism cat was let out of the bag on page five of a PDF Hansen published at Columbia University's website on December 29 (emphasis added, h/t Britain's Guardian, file photo):

Christmas Lights Are Bad For the Planet
By Noel Sheppard | December 24, 2008 | 10:41 AM EST

Here's an announcement that will please atheists and climate alarmists alike: Christmas lights are bad for the planet because they cause global warming.

So says the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia's national science agency.  

Bah humbug, I kid you not.

As reported by the Courier and Mail this Christmas Eve: