In an article titled “Methane Madness: Science Does Not Support White House Policy,” at americanthinker.com, noted environmental scientist S Fred Singer details how President Obama is using Global Warming/Climate Change fraud to destroy the US, and also world, economy:
“The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on 18 August 2015 proposed regulations to reduce emissions of methane. These regulations would be the first to directly restrict methane emissions by the oil and gas industry; they build on a 2012 rule that sought to curb volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract natural gas. Combined, the two regulations could reduce the oil and gas sector’s methane emissions by up to 30% by 2025, compared with 2012 levels, EPA says.
The proposed EPA regs are part of a larger effort by the White House to reduce national methane emissions by 40–45% by 2025. [See go.nature.com/o6uzlj for more detail.] But methane has only negligible influence on climate — contrary to popular belief and contrary to the claims of the IPCC, the UN’s climate science panel. Basic physics does not support White House policies to control methane emissions.”
Having nationalised the US healthcare industry, the best in the world and which is 15% of the US economy, through his signature law called Obamacare; President Obama wants to make the US an energy poor country. President Obama has also set his sight on the Paris Climate Summit scheduled for December 2015. Before that, he wants to exhaust all administrative measures available to pile on regulations on US energy sector, to effectively ban coal and make remaining fossil fuels prohibitively costly. He is using the administrative route as the Congress is with the Republicans and they won’t oblige him with any laws in the matter. He wants to go to Paris with the claim that he has done enough to dismantle fossil fuel based energy plants in the US, and the world must reciprocate. Thus, the Leftist agenda of taking control of the world economy through Global Warming/Climate Change scare will get advanced towards success.
And therefore the EPA has proposed the regulations to reduce emission of methane gas, an inconsequential Green House gas.
“Methane is an Ineffective Greenhouse Gas
The IPCC claim that methane is roughly 30 times more important per molecule than CO2 is largely irrelevant. My colleague Thomas Sheahen (PhD in physics, MIT) has pointed out that the much more abundant atmospheric water vapor absorbs radiation in many of the same parts of the infrared spectrum. As a result, the global warming effectiveness of CH4 is much reduced, since the Earth’s radiation can only be absorbed once.
A further reduction in its effectiveness comes from the fact that there’s just very little radiation energy in the part of the infrared spectrum where methane absorbs. The earth’s surface emits as a so-called “black body,” with a peak in wavelength that varies inversely with temperature. [An interesting example is the Antarctic continent; it is very dry and extremely cold. On the one hand, the scarcity of water vapor should make methane a slightly more effective greenhouse gas; but on the other hand, Antarctic’s infrared emission is mostly at longer wavelengths, far removed from the region where methane absorbs.]
Policy considerations
The EPA’s proposed new regulations to reduce anthropogenic methane emissions into the atmosphere will raise greatly the cost of oil and gas production. Perhaps that is the real purpose of the EPA regs. But since the climate effects of methane are insignificant, EPA regs lack a science base and may simply be part of a scheme to phase out all fossil fuels, including natural gas.
The production of natural gas from shale through a combination of horizontal drilling and fracking has been a real economic boon to the US. For example, it reduced the price of natural gas from $13 a few years ago to about $4 per MCF [1000 cubic feet]. The price even fell briefly to $2 per MCF. As a result, the cost of electric power in the US is only a fraction of the European cost, giving a great advantage to US industry and benefiting US consumers.
In 2008, candidate Obama promised us that electricity prices would “sky-rocket.” The proposed EPA regs will raise electricity prices and the cost of living for US consumers. Industries may move to countries where natural gas and electricity is cheaper; jobs will follow industry.
To sum up: Though technically a GH gas, methane (CH4) has only negligible influence on climate; however it does affect the chemistry of the stratosphere — as was predicted nearly 50 years ago.” (from the article)
With the US administration coming out in support of the Global Warming/Climate Change fraud, it is likely that present Indian government will simply fold under pressure, as it in any case itself believes that the fraud is not fraud, but a fact. India is already very energy poor country. If it agrees to cut in fossil fuel emissions during the upcoming Paris Conference, 125 crore people will be condemned to stay in wretched poverty. Energy is central to modern economy, and without cheap energy, India can not pull its huge population out of poverty.
Read the full S Fred Singer article here.
