Category Archives: Coal
While Congress Is Fighting Over ObamaCare, Obama is Planning His Next Attack On America
Barack Obama is not about to be a “Lame Duck” President if he can help it. He promised to bring about the fundamental transformation of America and to force American energy costs to skyrocket. He has done a pretty good job of meeting his goals so far, but he is not done with us yet.
AZ Leader at Inform the Pundits has an excellent post up on how President Obama and his EPA storm troopers plan to force electricity costs in America to skyrocket. In that post, he provides a link to the President’s “Climate Action Plan“ and a link to new EPA regulations proposed on Friday. Let’s take a look.
President Obama’s Climate Action Plan
The preamble is taken from President Obama’s 2013 Inaugural Address (Emphasis added):
“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.
The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise. That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure — our forests and waterways, our croplands and snow-capped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”– President Obama, Second Inaugural Address, January 2013
Please note the bits I put in bold. The “overwhelming judgment of science” is a scam. Check out this Inform the Pundit article. And, look at this quote from another Inform the Pundit article:
Claims of increased “extreme weather” events are being disproved by scientists. Not only are U.S. hurricanes in decline, but so are tornadoes, droughts, and floods.
That article is full true information backed up by good sources. But the truth never stopped Barack Obama before and it won’t stop him now. So, let’s see what he and his EPA storm troopers have in store for us. Oh, and that “sustainable energy sources” sounds a lot like Agenda 21, doesn’t it?
Continue: Here
Related articles
- While Congress Is Fighting Over ObamaCare, Obama is Planning His Next Attack On America (conservativesonfire.wordpress.com)
- Opponents ramp up fight against Obama climate plan (boston.com)
- Opponents ramp up fight against Obama climate plan (wfaa.com)
Are the Pressures of Failure and Fear of Imprisonment Forcing Obama to Take Over Our Country?
Thursday, July 18, 2013
By Jerry McConnell
We’ve had some bad presidents over the nearly two and one half centuries of our existence, but never as bad and more troubled as we have seen and continue to see from the likes of Barack Hussein Obama. This plant, quite unexpectedly, came on to our scene with absolutely NO proven background, and no positive credentials of any national significance. His administration since taking over the role of President in a Usurper status, has been the most administratively faulty and scandal plagued, foolish and perilously reckless and profligately doling out our taxpayers’ money in a bankrupting manner outright to openly declared enemies whom he has befriended.
Among these recipients of his grandstanding and our sorrow are the Islamic terrorists, corrupt anti-American United Nations members, as well as to personal friends and family. All this and more while our national debt numbers keep skyrocketing into never before heard of brackets that would embarrass a collective group of ultra rich oil barons.
Sadly for the United States, he is having much fun doing it spending obscene amounts of taxpayer dollars and fueling higher national debt numbers and as reported, he curses revered honorable events such as Independence Day because he could have been playing golf instead. He is making a mockery of our government and thumbing his nose at the very people WHO PAY THE GREATEST BULK OF TAXES FOR OUR GOVERNMENT.
There is no question that he is accomplishing the assassination and demise or our once great nation (circa BO; Before Obama). He is on a mission of national destruction that was neither programmed nor spoken of prior to his ascendency to the power of the presidency, under false pretenses of legal citizenship, ever attempting to hand over our sovereignty to the corrupt and greedy United Nations through personally concocted treaties unwanted by the public.
There is also not much question that he and his personal staff of czars and cabinet members are all working tirelessly to find more and more ways to totally destroy our beloved Constitution, proclaimed all over the world as the best and longest lasting legal document of all similar essays of all the countries in the world. His most recent attack on our staff of support and bible of laws came ironically during this month of birth of our independence from tyranny just as he is now exhibiting.
In the Freedom Outpost on July 11, 2013, Dean Garrison authored “US Citizens Sign Petition For Obama To Repeal Bill of Rights”. Can you believe it, the fundamental underpinnings of the initial rights of our country’s constitution for the people, including freedom of speech and religion, freedom to bear arms, and actually all of the freedoms that we as American enjoy in our daily lives?
Garrison spoke of “a bunch of apathetic Obama-worshippers who probably don’t know what the Bill of Rights is. Make no mistake my friends. If Obama could have 300 million people in America with this mentality he would. This is exactly how really bad people gain power. If you gain control of enough “useful idiots” then you have a power base that is tough to overcome.”
The author cites this quote from one of, if not the most flagrant tyrants in the history of the world, Germany’s Adolph Hitler; this domineering, slick-talking murderer said, “How lucky for those in power, that people don’t think.”
How lucky indeed. To think that after all the egregious mistakes and scandalous events in just Obama’s first half year of his second term, let alone the many scary things from his first term in total, his lemmings, or those so densely imbued with his karma and charisma, and trickery and deceit as to be deaf, dumb and blind to keep his approval record in these, his worst days, still at or near the fifty percent mark. No wonder the man is going for broke and wants the high levels of the United Nations to enshrine him at the head of the entire world.
Then, as if the scandals in Obama’s Departments of the Executive Branch, IRS, NSA, and State, to mention just a few, Obama was not content to quit while his favorable numbers had only slipped a few slots below the 50 percent mark, he decided in his addelpated brain to once again thumb his nose at the taxpayers of the country who support the mining of coal.
in the words of Suzanne Hamner of Freedom Outpost and the Daily Caller, “Obama Will Use $8 Billion Of Taxpayer’s Money To Wage War On Coal, Leaving Thousands Unemployed” online July 10, 2013. In addition to adding MORE unnecessary and unneeded billions to our lofty and unparalleled national debt, his vendetta against 280 coal-fired generating plants could cost the jobs of thousands of the employees at those plants.
Hey, you Obama voters, how’s all that mountainous national debt and the loss of thousands more jobs sitting with you now?
Jerry McConnell is a longtime resident of planet earth with one half century on the seacoast of NH. He is a community activist but promises not to run for President and he feeds ACORN’s to the squirrels. He can be emailed at lethrneck@comcast.net with complaints or the editor at letters@canadafreepress.com with favorables.
World Bank’s no-coal decree could leave developing nations in the dark, critics say
The World Bank has approved a new energy initiative that will severely limit funding of coal-fired power plants and projects around the world, meaning developing countries could be unable to obtain access to cheap electricity.
“It will make a difference. [It will] be more expensive for underdeveloped countries to obtain the cheapest form of electricity,” Milton Catelin, Chief Executive for the World Coal Association, told FoxNews.com. “I think the World Bank has moved away from their original purpose and they have failed with poverty eradication so they are jumping on the climate control bandwagon.
“But for the benefit of society as a whole, they [the World Bank] should be at a balance between eradicating poverty and climate control,” he added.
The World Bank’s board said on Tuesday it was seeking to balance environmental efforts with energy needs in poorer, undeveloped countries and was limiting funding of coal-fired power plants and projects to only “rare circumstances.”
Its “Energy Sector Directions Paper” also said it would increase backing of hydroelectric power, which it had originally abandoned nearly two decades ago.
Officials from the World Bank told FoxNews.com that while they are now operating under the new energy initiative, they would look at energy-related issues on a case-by-case basis.
“We think that there will be a certain amount of countries within the next ten years that will not be able to use another viable source of energy,” said Rachel Kyte, Vice President Sustainable Development for the World Bank. “We don’t want to turn around and say that they will have to wait fifteen years for a new source.
“It’s impossible to improve the economy and meet the needs of the poor without having energy,” Kyte said. You cannot have entrepreneurialism going if you cannot flip on the power. What we firmly believe is that you can’t end poverty without addressing energy.”
She added that the World Bank will make allowances for Greenfield coal power generation on a case-by-case basis. The Greenfield method involves an “end point” for a power plant, when its land is restored to its original condition.
The World Bank has been going in a new direction under current president Jim Yong Kim, the first scientist to head the group, and has taken a more aggressive stance on climate change.
In the past, multilateral organizations have been criticized for urging global action to cut carbon dioxide emissions while funding coal-powered plants at the same time.
The World Bank previously defended itself by saying some of the poorest countries in the world have no other choice and need energy from coal to end poverty.
Now, Catelin said, “The reality is that they listen to the administration in Washington which has taken a negative stance on coal.
“It’s ridiculous to think that the World Bank has anything to do with poverty eradication anymore. They’ve become nothing more than another international body.”
Coal Vs. Gas: This is why Americans need an Energy Policy that “WORKS’”
Coal Is Dead; Long Live Natural Gas
July 13, 2012
Major coal manufacturers in the United States, including Arch Coal Inc (ACI), Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. (ANR), Peabody Energy Corporation (BTU), and James River Coal Company (JRCC), made the same mistake the predecessors of today’s oil giants, such as BP p.l.c. (BP) and Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM), made in the 1980s. They built up too much capacity when commodity price was high, raising their own fixed cost structure and increasing their debt burdens along the way.
When reality turned out to be different from expectations, coal price collapsed with natural gas flooding the electricity generating market. Since natural gas is more efficient, cleaner, and now inexpensive, the coal industry as a whole faces major trouble. Power generation from natural gas has matched coal for the first time. This major trend appears unstoppable. And the worst may be yet to come. All coal miners will have to downsize, and more will go bust.
Within the United States, coal consumption has dropped sharply during recent years as natural gas gradually becomes cheap and abundant, replacing thermal coal in power plants. The following chart shows this trend vividly.
In the meantime, U.S. coal stocks have been rising as supply constantly outruns demand, which almost inevitably leads to lower prices. Given coal miners’ razor-thin profit margin in general, a small coal price movement often translates into huge stock price swings.
And finally, as coal production piles up, the export of coal has been rising sharply (in the following chart). The sharp rise in exports is a consequence of price collapse—it becomes so cheap that it’s a better deal for other continents to ship coal across the ocean, still cheaper than digging in their own backyards. Coal mining is a dirty business, polluting self while serving cheap coal to other countries perhaps wouldn’t serve the industry well politically.
Given such overwhelming trends, one has to be very suspicious of the sustainability of this industry for years to come. One possible policy change that might help coal mining is that the environmentalists and the EPA manage to stop hydraulic fracturing of natural gas, which will curb natural gas supply and make dirtier coal a viable option again—a bit ironic, isn’t it?
The one that might do better than the others is Walter Energy, Inc. (WLT), which has a focus on metallurgical coal for the steel industry, and is not so much dependent on thermal coal (for burning).
So what about natural gas? Would major natural gas businesses such as Chesapeake Energy Corporation (CHK) become the new king? Not necessarily. With abundant reserve and a relatively cheap way of exploration, competition will be fierce. Big players like Exxon Mobile still have an edge in financial resources. At the end of the day, companies like Chesapeake are not necessarily winners even if natural gas becomes mainstream.
Overall, investors shall not count on a turnaround of the coal industry like what happened during the last roller coaster cycle of coal prices.
Related articles
- Miners Weather The Slow Burn Of Coal’s Demise (wnyc.org)
- Natural Gas: An Unconventional Bonanza (realclearpolitics.com)
- Peter C. Glover: Irony of Ironies: Europe Switches to Coal as US Gas Glut Reduces Emissions (junkscience.com)
- The Huge Shift in Our Energy System That’s Happening Right Now in 1 Chart (theatlantic.com)
- Are Natural Gas Prices About To Explode? (seekingalpha.com)
- Patriot Coal Bankruptcy Highlights Disparity In Energy Sector (ibtimes.com)
Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 