You
may have noticed gas prices cratering again, which is great news for individual
consumers, but another bad sign for the overall economy. As much as I like
filling up for a lot less, it's less of a pleasure knowing that the price isn't
coming down because things are going so well. It's the opposite. But still, the
relatively low price does help.
However,
the Obama administration doesn't appear to feel the same regarding energy.
Obama and his minions would prefer to drive up the cost artificially,
regardless of how much it hurts us. And what better way to achieve this goal
than through the EPA and the threat of global warming. And son of a gun, they found
a new target -- methane.
Okay,
it's not new, but it has become the target du jour. ThinkProgress writes that, "Regulating Carbon
dioxide, by far the most common greenhouse gas, is critical to halt the
emissions that cause climate change. But methane is a very close second, and
for the first time, the federal government is moving to significantly rein in
methane pollution."
They
appear, however, to have given up on sequestering cow farts, at least for now,
as, "The Obama administration released a proposed
rule Tuesday to regulate methane emissions from new and modified oil
and gas wells across the country. How much? It's complicated."
Of
course it's complicated -- the government is involved. Naturally,
environmentalist wacko groups are thrilled with the decision to further crush
the American economy and put still more energy workers on the ever-growing
unemployment rolls. "We applaud the Obama administration for taking an
important step toward addressing this significant contributor to climate
disruption," said Friends of the Earth's Kate DeAngelis in a statement.
Now
it's climate disruption? Who knew we could disrupt the climate? I guess the
Friends of the Earth did. But there's a problem. I guess it's less a problem
than a reality check. It is naturally occurring methane seepage that dwarfs
what's being emitted from anything man-made.
In
the past several years scientists have taken to the oceans to find an astonishing
amount of these vents and mud volcanoes spewing out methane from the ocean
floor. Just this past year they found hundreds of these vents off our eastern
coast -- 570 just between Massachusetts and North Carolina.
Unfortunately
for the climate warmests, these vents are, "not associated with
features like oil or gas reservoirs or active tectonic margins," said Prof.
Adam Skarke from Mississippi State
University, who led the study. "Widespread seepage had not been expected
on the Atlantic margin. It is not near a plate tectonic boundary like the US
Pacific coast, nor associated with a petroleum basin like the
northern Gulf of Mexico."
Scientists
say worldwide, there could be as many as 30,000 of these methane vents. In 2004
the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institute stated: "Far more natural gas is sequestered on the
seafloor -- or leaking from it -- than can be drilled from all existing wells
on Earth. The ocean floor is teaming with methane, the same gas that fuels our
homes and our economy. But evidence has steadily accumulated that natural
seepage of methane from the seafloor is a large, continuous, and ubiquitous
phenomenon."
In
2012, a group of scientists from Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland and Norway
did an on-site study in the Greenland Sea of methane vents and deposits
(methane hydrates). They found the release was not due to recent ocean warming.
That in fact a lot of these vents and deposits were hundreds of years old.
"At numerous emergences we found deposits that might already be hundreds
of years old," and that "the observed gas emanations are probably not
caused by human influence," says chief scientist Dr. Christian Berndt.
The
EPA claims their methane limiting scheme may cut about 400,000 tons of methane,
which is apparently supposed to have an impact on the precious environment.
That sounds like a lot, but scientists estimate that beneath these thousands of
vents on the ocean floor are billions of tons of the stuff.
The
EPA crackdown on methane will do exactly nothing to save the climate (as if it
needs saving) -- but we and they already know that. These new rules have nothing
to do with climate and everything to do with government control, wealth
transfer, and creating dependence on government agencies in order to grow the
power of the State.
Comments
Stopping methane from leaking from the ocean
floor is not one of the enumerated powers granted by the states in the US
Constitution. The methane is there to be extracted.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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