What a long ride, but it’s not over, we got past the State, there is the EPA to deal with…

The Rogers City High School gymnasium filled up with people one more time last night, in what we were told is the last public hearing for the [...]]]>

The Rogers City High School gymnasium filled up with people one more time last night, in what we were told is the last public hearing for the air quality permit for the proposed power plant.

It has been five years since Wolverine Power announced their plans to build a coal-fired power plant in the world’s largest limestone quarry near Rogers City, Michigan. The hearing was specifically set to help the public understand the emissions limits and best available technology for greenhouse gases, as well as to show the proposed plant will not violate new ambient air regulations.

From the Presque Isle County Advance:

When the state denied Wolverine’s application May 21, 2010, it did so based on a perceived lack of need as determined by an opinion of the Michigan Public Service Commission. Wolverine appealed that denial and a Missaukee County judge agreed that there was no legal basis for the denial, sending it back to the DEQ in January.
DEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel said that without the provision of “need” considered, the applicant would have met all state and federal requirements last year. Modifications in the permit have to made because of new federal regulations enacted in 2010, which Wolverine’s engineers, working with DEQ staff, have strived to meet.
“The department will carefully evaluate comments received, determine whether there should be any changes made to the permit conditions, and develop the “Response to Comments” document. If the permit is approved, the Response to Comments document will be issued simultaneous to the permit,” Wurfel said.

Steve Schulwitz writes in the Alpena News:

The permit to install appears to be the last hurdle for Wolverine to clear in order to build the facility. Hellwig said he hopes to have the matter decided one way or another soon.
“We anticipate closure soon,” Hellwig said. “Following the hearing we consider the testimony and public comment, and then as a decision maker, I will render a decision. Depending on the level of comments, the details of the comments, and the time to do a response document, that will determine how much longer it will take. I don’t anticipate it taking a very long time, but we do have to go through the comments and make sure we rewind to those.”

In short, last year, after waiting 2 1/2 years for an air permit we were promised would take no more than 6 months, the permit was denied based on Governor Jennifer Granholm’s unconstitutional and rescinded executive order that all coal permits be issued on a needs basis. Her administration saw no need for the plant, despite clear, concise documentation to the contrary, and denied the permit. Wolverine Power appealed the denial in court and won, making it abundantly clear that the denial was purely political. This hearing brings us back to October 2008, except for the fact that the federal EPA has tightened emissions limits on two gases that are special to coal burning, NO2 and SO2.
Without going in to too much technical language, the plant passes those standards.

So here we are again. Every standard set by the State of Michigan is met by Wolverine. Every regulation not in place last time has been met now in 2011. Whenever a safety minimum has been suggested, Wolverine has doubled and sometimes tripled their own standards to remove any doubt that they are committed to building a state-of-the-art clean coal-fired power plant in one of the most economically depressed counties in the State of Michigan, and that’s saying something. It is now left, once again, to the State of Michigan DEQ to give the permit an up or down.

When your livelihood depends on the coal industry, you have to [...]]]>

When your livelihood depends on the coal industry, you have to fight to keep your job. That goes for any mining industry under this administration.

While we in Northern Michigan have survived for a hundred years on the mines and quarries of minerals and rock, the coal miners are fighting for survival against the most extremely radical EPA this nation has ever seen. We have seen the radical environmentalists who claim to represent the sentiment of the majority, and yet we know they represent not only the minority of thought, but the extreme emotionalism of reactionaries.

There is not an opposition to coal amongst those who mine it. We are dealing with the opposition to jobs with this administration at the helm. The coal-rich West Virginia delegation has Gary Howell, fighting for their jobs, hopefully, he won’t be the only one.

Obama plans on announcing funding (from where we do not know) tonight at the State of the Union address of 150 billion-with-a-B dollars for “clean energy.” This is not for energy, it is to create the illusion of making energy, and pay the thousands of green-educated college grads because there is no where else for them to work. Don’t forget how much money is invested in green energy and the millionaire liberals who will win on Wall Street. That 150 Billion dollars is to divert jobs from coal to green, and not using the same folks.

That is why they are rallying. The coal miners know the threat, the very real threat from the green millionaires.

Keeping an eye on energy news we don’t hear much about. Below are links to articles and my take on them.

Picking up where we left off last week, the [...]]]>

Keeping an eye on energy news we don’t hear much about. Below are links to articles and my take on them.

Picking up where we left off last week, the final story on the round-up was about how China has been subsidizing wind and solar and coal, virtually their entire energy production roster, and how they are out-subsidizing us. This week NRO’s Greg Pollowitz goes further and shows that despite China’s energy subsidies, you cannot get past the fact that wind and solar do next to nothing in actual megawatts of energy production:

But despite this rapid progress, wind energy still only generates a tiny fraction of China’s electricity. Indeed, even with aggressive government backing and green energy mandates, such “new energy” — including wind, solar, nuclear power plants, and biomass — accounts for less than 3 percent of China’s electricity production, compared to more than 70 percent provided by coal..

This is evidence of why coal power cannot easily be replaced with wind and solar, but also by nuclear:

Just to supply one-quarter of its current energy mix from a resource that emits far fewer greenhouse gases — nuclear power — the U.S. would need to build 1,000 one-gigawatt nuclear reactors by 2050. Yet construction has begun on only two nuclear reactors in the U.S. since 1974. And just to power an electric car and truck fleet to replace the U.S.’s current gas and ethanol-fueled one would require 500 new nuclear power plants. There are currently 442 reactors in the entire world, of which the U.S. has 104 — the most of any nation.

The Green Movement is loud and whiny, but they are not working fast enough to beat what they see as the thing that will kill the planet. Because it cannot be beat, and it will not kill the planet. Coal is part of the planet.

One of the funnier posts on Anthony Watts’ blog, “Watts Up With That?” is the graph in “Alarming Trends” he posted from Bishop Hill’s blog. He added more words to the query to make a funnier and more pertinent example in his final graph. Just how the books that pertain to bullshit and global warming rise at the same time is interesting, no?

Keeping an eye on energy news we don’t hear much about. Below are links to articles and my take on them.

Yes, You Could Say I’m A Global Warming [...]]]>

Keeping an eye on energy news we don’t hear much about. Below are links to articles and my take on them.

Yes, You Could Say I’m A Global Warming Denier, but only if you communicate in negatives. There is not a pink elephant in my kitchen, but that doesn’t mean I’m denying it, it means there is not one there.
Watt’s Up With That? is a blog devoted to the Global Warming Myth, and is where I stole this graph, but also the latest argument killer of the “climate change movement.” Dr. Kevin Trenberth says that since the IPCC says global warming is “unequivocal,” that now we must prove that man has absolutely no effect on climate change. Willis Eschenbach explains.
WHAT GLOBAL WARMING?

What an absolute mess the British Police have made.
They sent a police officer, well actually, many police officers undercover to live amongst the hippies, I mean eco-terrorists. While he was undercover, Mark Kennedy slept with more than a few of the hippy women, even though he is married. The whole undercover police thing fell apart when the eco-marxists planned an attack on a coal plant. Kennedy came clean, (I actually don’t know if he showered or not,) told everything, and now, the police are in trouble for sending him undercover in the first place. Get this, the attorney for the eco-nutso’s is actually suggesting that Kennedy be held up for rape because the women did not know they were compromising themselves with a non-hippy. How does law and order become all jumbled up? Think this is all far-fetched? You are looking at America in 20 years if we don’t stop these environmental whackjobs.

If I told you that if we don’t do something about the climate and how it changes, in a thousand years, things may be different, what would your reaction be?

If we stopped emitting carbon dioxide now, which would bring us close to the 2010 scenario, it’s unlikely the ice sheet would collapse, Gillett said.

STOP EXHALING!

I found it comical to read these two articles back to back. One from Grand Rapids, and one from Ludington.
Pros, cons of wind energy get a closer look at local forum
Residents share wind turbine concerns
Nevertheless, those who don’t necessarily read these types of articles may not see the comedy. The pros and cons of wind energy are being juxtaposed against the cons of coal plants. And, the cons of the coal plants are given only by the wind pros, and they are wrong.
For instance, the wind pros say that their product causes observable “fatal collisions birds and bats have with turbines, counting carcasses and observing feathers flying,” and the other story confirms that by saying, “noise, blade throw, ice throw — if ice formed on the blades loosens and then is thrown from the blade — bats and birds.” All of that is quite unnerving. But, in order to prove that wind turbines are good, the wind pro said, “Acidification of soil and water changes habitats, and mercury is killing animals, she said….Climate change due to coal-driven power could eliminate entire ecosystems that took thousands of years to develop.” That is first of all, not true, and second of all, not a reason to get a wind turbine. Of course, by looking at the video on the Ludington site, you will see just how fun it would be to live by a wind turbine.

Evergreen Solar closing Massachusetts plant because of competition from ‘heavily subsidized solar manufacturers in China’
And lastly, this story is sad, and shows the inevitable end to all the wonderful green energy subsidization in America. Sometimes, we just have to realize that China will always out-subsidize us.

Keeping an eye on energy news we don’t hear much about. Below are links to articles and my take on them.

Down on Upton: Michigan Energy News Undercuts Rep’s [...]]]>

Keeping an eye on energy news we don’t hear much about. Below are links to articles and my take on them.

Down on Upton: Michigan Energy News Undercuts Rep’s Rap
Henderson is in charge of the Midwest Division of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and is upset that Upton has changed his tune on energy. Henderson believes his efforts with the NRDC are helping improve the planet. In my view, Henderson has a God complex, and nothing he is doing is helping our nation improve it’s economy, even though he says his way of fighting “climate change” is creating jobs. If Henderson was so interested in nature, he would have learned long ago that the earth heals on it’s own, and the world’s climate changes and there is nothing we can do about it. I see little reason for Fred Upton to hear him out on this, but I found it interesting that he tries to convince the reader that his point of view has merit after he says, “Whether you agree with the climate science or not, everyone can agree that eliminating the massive toll taken by air and water pollution that comes along with coal plants—as well as eliminating waste from our energy system—is unambiguously good.” With that sentence, he switches the focus from “climate change” to pollution. The new coal plants are very clean, and brand new technology fights pollutants. The fact is, the renewable energy he is talking about cannot produce the amount of energy that coal can, nor the amount of jobs. Henderson is a coal-industry hater, even though coal is part of nature.

U.S. does not have infrastructure to consume more ethanol
A study done by Purdue University says that unless something is done, ethanol production in America is an exercise in futility. There aren’t enough flex-fuel vehicles on the road, and the owners of many of these types of cars don’t know they can use that type of fuel, or won’t, or can’t find a pump. Wally Tyner used information from the EPA to come to the conclusion that the saturation point has been reached when it comes to ethanol. “Even if you could produce a whole bunch of E85, there is no way to distribute it,” Tyner said. “We would need to install about 2,000 pumps per year through 2022 to do it. You’re not going to go from 100 per year to 2,000 per year overnight. It’s just not going to happen.” Tyner goes on to say that ethanol would have to be cheaper than gasoline in order to be energy efficient.

Scientists: BP’s oil lingers, but bacteria ate natural gas
The title of the article is misleading. The story says they can’t find the oil, but the natural gas was eaten up by bacteria. All that really means is they can’t find the oil (but maybe it was eaten up too, but we can’t prove it.) Fair enough, but this story is something Henderson-with-the-God-complex should read. Isn’t nature wonderful? Or, as a friend of mine said, “”gee, bacteria eats cow farts. someone should inform the EPA.” If you don’t get the reference, read this, Cow Backpacks Trap Methane Gas Oh, the jokes are just careening through me brain.

To Complain About Limited Resources is Like a Trillionaire’s Child Complaining About Allowance; The Case for Optimism from the Ocean Floor
Mark Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the University of Michigan-Flint. You should read it, but Henderson-with-the-God-complex should read it too.

Mother Earth is abundant, she has natural cycles, she heals herself, and adapts to adversity. All of nature does this.

First of all, I want to heap lavish praise on Governor-elect Rick Snyder for splitting the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of [...]]]>

First of all, I want to heap lavish praise on Governor-elect Rick Snyder for splitting the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Environmental Quality. In my view, when the state legislature approved the combination of the DNR with the DEQ, it bottle-necked the permit process and lent to the nearly 1,000 day wait for eventual denial of the permit.

At the time, state lawmakers were giddy with the notion that they were helping “streamline” government by combining the two departments. One of our Republican state lawmakers was a facebook friend of mine back then, and beneath her ecstatic status update that trumpeted the great news, I commented, “But, doesn’t this mean that when we try to extract our natural resources, any industry will be shut down due to environmental concerns? It seems to me that this is a windfall for the radical environmentalists.” That comment was deleted very quickly, but I still think it’s true. I thought it was foolhardy to trust Granholm’s bureaucracy especially after all the studying I did about the Wolverine Clean Energy Venture and how the Granholm administration worked hand in hand with the Sierra Club and other radical groups. If you don’t think the Sierra Club is a radical environmental group, you have not seen what happened here in Rogers City.

So now that Snyder has said the two departments will be split, it is along that line that I call on Governor-Elect Rick Snyder to review the permit to install for Wolverine Clean Energy Venture.

The Granholm administration went out of their way to deny this top-of-the-line clean coal energy plant. Granholm, an attorney by profession, utilized her bureaucracy to make up regulations and make new unconstitutional laws by executive order. She and her administration lied repeatedly to consumers, and denied the air permit based on her shredded process, rather than science, and the law.

In accordance with the campaign promise from his commercial during the 2010 election season, “We’ll dump that tax, thin the regulations and jobs will come back,” Snyder must review the Wolverine air quality permit denial.

A brief synopsis, in case this post gets to the governor-elect’s desk.

In May, 2006, Wolverine Energy announced they were seeking to build a base-load clean coal plant in Rogers City, within the largest limestone quarry in the world, which would take advantage of both the limestone for the scrubbing process, and the deep-sea port for the transport of supplies. An air quality permit was sought in September of 2007. A battle ensued with local and national environmental groups, but the process of the most important permit needed for installation of the plant continued when the Michigan DEQ held public hearings and announced that the proposed top-of-the-line clean coal base-load plant was environmentally sound, in October of 2008. All the data was reviewed, the townspeople were assured that even the scientists sitting in front of them, were completely comfortable with the idea of raising their families in Rogers City with the coal plant in operation. In January of 2009, Jennifer Granholm issued her plans to make Michigan “green” and discontinue coal as a source of power, replacing it with conservation and wind/solar energy. She issued an executive order that said that all coal plant permit applications will have to go through the MPSC, but that EO was challenged as unconstitutional by then AG Mike Cox and had to be rescinded. Nevertheless, it was the MPSC that determined that the clean coal plant be denied installation, citing that Wolverine “failed to demonstrate the plant was needed to meet future supply needs,” a finding that was not true, nor in accordance with the law. The Granholm administration continually moved the target on this permit application, and in the end, denied it ignoring the law and scientific fact.

The process of getting an air quality permit, or permit to install from the DEQ was knee-capped by three main reasons. One, the administration sat on the permit for 2 years and 8 months, a typical permit takes 3 months to 1 1/2 years. Two, the DEQ no longer existed to issue the permit, even though they approved the air quality in October of 2008. Three, Jennifer Granholm acted unlawfully and against scientific fact when she used faulty predictions of need, relying on the MPSC rather than the DEQ.

The northeastern lower peninsula has some of the highest unemployment numbers in the state. That plant would have generated 2,000+ jobs within the first year of installation, and put our city and townships at a tax revenue level never before seen here. It was unlawfully denied by an administration with absolutely no thought of improving our economy and our energy future.

More on the Rogers City Coal Plant can be found at jennerationx. com.

Yesterday’s Politico article:

“Our work on light bulbs wasn’t an arbitrary mandate,” he said. “We didn’t just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding [...]]]>

Yesterday’s Politico article:

“Our work on light bulbs wasn’t an arbitrary mandate,” he said. “We didn’t just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead, we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45059.html#ixzz15AsSPtxL

Congressman Fred Upton’s work with environmental groups is what needs to be highlighted in this article.

Global Warming theory is thoroughly debunked. It is not only not caused by human industry, it is not happening. Moreover, the Congressman is seeking the top spot on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the chair of such a committee must realize this.

Further, the fluorescent bulbs that are held in favor by extremist environmentalists contain mercury, one of the elements the green movement decries when killing coal plants. Their hypocrisy is stunning.

Thomas Edison’s work was the result of his life-long interest in science. Fred Upton’s consultation with the scientific agenda of the green movement, which is not science, but an ideology, must be pointed out.

The idea that he defended the ban by saying it wasn’t done by picking a percentage and time out of the air is not the point, the fact that it was done based on faulty information, and the lack of leadership on energy issues is.

There are many reason’s I’m glad to see you go, Jennifer, but number one is the crap you pulled with the Rogers City Coal Plant

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