Cattle Manure Woes

Let us make it simple. Specialization in cattle production and milk production outran the natural carrying capacity of locally available farm land a long time ago. On top of that, it takes about two years for natural processes to degrade manure mixed with plant material to a safe product that can be easily added to soil without any risk.

The result is a reliance of half measures that ultimately mean raw manure drainage getting into the water system.

I have seen this problem and proposed solutions cross my desk for the past thirty years and it is no closer to resolution.

It is obvious that unless government mandates a solution, that no operator can afford to subsidize a solution. In short, all methods add operating costs or they would have long since been adopted.

Government can solve it with the stroke of a pen, by simply forcing all operators, including importers to meet a disposal standard. Everyone has the same costs, and thus everyone is able to pass the additional overhead onto the consumer. The small operator wins because he actually consumes his manure.

Good technical solutions are biodigesters that swiftly reduce the manure into a sterile soil additive. It may never be a profitable stand alone solution but it will make a steady feedstock available to soil management.

A second solution may be to dry and mix with plant waste to produce high quality biochar, but this seems to be too much effort. Most likely a biodigester as suggested over the years will be the superior solution.

Sep 18, 2009 11:59 PM in

Mooo-ve that manure: Agricultural runoff a spreading public health issue

By

Katherine Harmon

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=moove-that-manure-agricultural-runo-2009-09-18&sc=DD_20090921

Runoff from agriculture is the biggest polluter of the country's river and stream water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and it has been fingered for hypoxic dead zones and toxic red tide algae blooms.

But how much of that runoff makes it into people's drinking water closer to home? In agricultural areas, it can be enough to cause persistent health problems, including diarrhea and other infections, according to

a report today in The New York Times.

"Sometimes it smells like a barn coming out of the faucet," Lisa Barnard, a Wisconsin resident told the Times. Barnard's well water tested positive for various contaminants and bacteria, including E. coli—which point not just to any runoff, but that coming from excess manure, according to the Times piece.

Beef and dairy farms often dispose of manure and other waste by shipping it out as fertilizer for crops, but "there just isn't enough land to absorb that much manure," said Bill Hafs, a Wisconsin county official who is angling for more stringent rules and enforcement, in an interview with the Times. When heavy rains or early spring melts come, excess waste can find its way into rivers and streams and also

into groundwater—and into wells.

Brown County, where Hafs works, has about a quarter of a million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and about 41,000 dairy cows, which is about six people per cow. And as Hafs noted, "one cow produces as much waste as 18 people." And that is plenty of poo, according to many residents whose wells have been contaminated.

"More than 30 percent of the

wells in one town alone violated basic health standards," Hafs told the Times. "It's obvious we've got a problem." But he and others who have raised a stink about the contamination have been met with powerful agricultural lobbies. "We don't have the laws to force people to stop" dumping it, Hafs added. Dairy farms in Brown County create about a million gallons of waste a day, the Times reports.

For the most part, biological contaminants from farms that runoff into rivers or filter down into groundwater are regulated only by local laws. The Clean Water Act's jurisdiction is constrained largely to pollutants in water that is moving through manmade water supplies, such as aqueducts or pipes. The EPA does regulate farms that have more than 700 cows, but enforcement has been lax, the newspaper noted.

"The challenge now is for EPA and Congress to develop solutions that represent the next step in protecting our nation's waters and people's health," Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, said in an interview with the Times.

Lorne Gunter on 'Climate' Science

Lorne Gunter does us a service by describing the propaganda war been unethically waged on behalf of the global warming theory. I have commented a bit on this, but the amount of guff I must wade through for the occasional gem has become annoying. Some of it has fallen to the level of verbal fisticuffs.

It has been my interpretation that the climate in the Northern Hemisphere has been warmer over the past three decades, but not unusually so. It is as if we have shifted a half degree or so and have held it there while the sea ice melts away. This behavior is completely in accordance with the history of the Holocene and may represent a restoration of past climatic conditions.

In fact it is plausible to me that human activity has improved many parts of the Northern microclimate sufficient to have plausibly given us a slight edge. I would mostly though, assign those effects to our heat production throughout the winter. It may not seem significant, but it can prevent rivers from freezing over and perhaps do more. Of course agriculture allows the land to heat up much faster and for a lot of incoming energy to avoid absorption. The trees are gone. Add it all up and we may well be on the way to having a permanently warmer north until another volcano lets go.

In any event, it is clear that the Arctic sea ice is continuing to melt away and now on the edge of final collapse.

One other thought. There is a discrepancy between the north and the south. The south has appeared to be stable at least while the north has been warmer. Human heat production and cover modification is a plausible starting point in terms of explanation.

Lorne Gunter: 'Real' scientists flee from evidence that challenges climate claims

Posted: July 08, 2009, 9:15 AM by NP Editor

If you visit drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures-- the site of a scientist who, for 30 years, has used satellites to monitor global temperature -- you will see that as of the end of June, the Earth is no warmer than it was in 1979. Over the past three decades, the Earth's temperature has been above average some of the time and below average some of the time. Now it is right on the 30-year average.

Indeed, while 1998 was the warmest or second-warmest year on record, no year since has been as warm. And while there have been more warm years than cool ones in the past decade-and-a-half, the trend, since at least 2003, has been downward.

And -- this is the one I really like -- according to climatedepot.com,since Al Gore released his movie An Inconvenient Truth in October 2006, the Earth's temperature has lost 0.74F, almost exactly the amount the UN's climate panel claims was gained in the entire 20th century. The latter stat is apropos of nothing. As a correlation of Al Gore's bombast vs. worldwide temperature averages, it is pure fluke. But you can bet that if there had been a similar rise in the past 33 months, the headlines would be blaring that the end of the world was near. Yet such a precipitous drop-off elicits nothing more than a little blog chatter.

If there is a cause for the decline in temperatures over the past nearly three years, it is the inactivity of the sun, not the hyperactivity of the former U. S. vice-president and his apocalyptic theories. Our solar system has been at the end of one 11-year cycle of sun spots and solar flares and waiting for the long overdue commencement of another.

The current inter-cyclical period has seen an especially inactive sun. Last August was the first month in nearly a century in which there were no sun spots at all. Only just now do solar scientists think they are observing the beginning of the next round.

Still, if anything, the rhetoric of global warming and climate change has become even more frenzied since 2006, not less, even to the point where scientists skeptical of the warming theory are being gagged by the Obama administration and the UN.

At a time when lawmakers in the United States and Canada are considering new regulations on energy use, new taxes on its consumption and new controls on carbon dioxide emissions -- all of which could compound our economic woes -- they are hearing mostly just from one side of the debate.

Recall that during the Bush years, scientists and environmentalist often claimed that U. S. government research into climate change was being stifled by the Republican administration. Never mind that during the Bush years the United States spent nearly $2-billion a year on climate research, almost all of it on the environmentalists' side, or that the government scientist who most frequently claimed to be censored -- NASA's James Hansen -- gave media interviews and speeches, published academic papers or wrote newspaper articles more than 1,400 times during the Bush administration. There were always journalists ready to regurgitate the insistence of activist scientists that their vital warnings on warming we being squelched, whether they were or not.

In 2003, when a U. S. Environmental Protection Agency study claiming recent climate change was "likely mostly due to human activities," was edited by Bush administration officials to tone done such definitive language, activists, networks and newspapers screamed of a conspiracy by the White House and oil companies to suppress the truth.

But when evidence arose last week that the EPA had killed an internal report claiming that much had changed in the past year and that a reassessment of climate predictions was needed, there was barely a media peep. Instead, EPA climate analyst Alan Carlin was told his conclusions would have "a very negative impact on our office."

Similarly, UN scientists gathering in Copenhagen this week to discuss what must be done to save polar bears, have excluded Canadian researcher Mitch Taylor, perhaps the world's foremost polar bear expert, because (according to a memo to Dr. Taylor obtained by London's Daily Telegraph) of "the position you've taken on global warming." According the hosts of the conference, Dr. Taylor's views doubting man-made warming "are extremely unhelpful."

To quote a vocal critic of the Bush administration, "real scientists aren't afraid of opposing views."

National Post

lgunter@shaw.ca

EPA Riles Paterson

Sober second thought is now setting in of the cap and trade scheme. I have no doubt what has been proposed will be unrecognizable by the time it reaches signature. So much simply cannot stand.

There is nothing more fraught with danger to the political class than new tax law. Even when it is absolutely the right thing to do, the political blow by is atrocious. Yet with a collapsed credit system it is proposed to add what will be an energy tax to the economic system. The only proposal I imagine that could be worse would be a payroll tax in terms of direct consequences to corporate America.

Quite bluntly, if they pass such a tax; the next congress will repeal it.

I do not think it will get to that. Congress has found a wonderful way to unite agriculture, the oil industry and the auto industry under one tent. And let us not forget the Unions who are been asked already to give up huge numbers of jobs.

I cannot imagine a way to make this medicine go down, and with a Congress that cannot do the right thing with a medical insurance system that is a disgrace to the developed world, and easily garnered popular support, passing a cap and trade act in the face of neither is impossibility.

Peterson cries foul on EPA ethanol proposal, vows not to support climate change bill

(5/6/2009) By Sally Schuff

http://www.feedstuffs.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=F4D1A9DFCD974EAD8CD5205E15C1CB42&nm=Breaking+News&type=news&mod=News&mid=A3D60400B4204079A76C4B1B129CB433&tier=3&nid=2ED25D0552384C0396608AE0F548F8E9

House Agriculture Committee chairman Collin Peterson (D., Minn.) sent a message to the Obama Administration today not to count on his support for climate change legislation.

"I'm off the train," Peterson said May 6 during a strongly worded statement at a hearing on the Environmental Protection Agency's new proposal for assessing indirect effects of ethanol production on greenhouse gas emissions. Peterson predicted that the EPA proposal, combined with the climate change legislation under consideration, could "kill off corn ethanol."

Peterson said, "I will not support any kind of climate change bill -- even if you fix this -- because I don't trust anybody anymore. I've had it."

Peterson said his position was not negotiable. "I don't have any confidence. The only way I would consider supporting any climate change legislation would be if it was ironclad that these agencies had no ability to do any rulemaking of any kind whatsoever ... (that) we could be absolutely guaranteed that these folks would not get involved," he said.

Following his statement at the hearing, Peterson told reporters he had notified both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Cal.) and the White House of his position.

Peterson charged that corn ethanol had been singled out by its opponents for assessment of its indirect land impacts, while petroleum, which has a much larger carbon footprint, was not subject to the same scrutiny.

He made his remarks as Margo Oge, EPA director of transportation and air quality, prepared to testify on the agency's proposed rulemaking, which was unveiled May 4 with more than 1,000 pages of rule language and background. There is a lively debate among scientists on how accurately the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions can be calculated from land use for biofuel crops.

A U.S. Department of Energy briefing document on the controversy is online at www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/obp_science_response_web.pdf.

Exploiting Polar Bears

Declaring the polar bear as endangered never made any sense whatsoever. Now we discover that it provides a convenient straw man to promote the anti development agendas everywhere else of the radical left.

I do not understand why we even bother to provide these marginalized ideologues such a blanket label as if there ever were a underlying rational for their intellectual position. Like the radical right they represent that portion of the body politic whose real ideology is driven by a hatred of the status quo and their own marginalization in it. They really are the tail end of the third standard deviation. This is not a good thing. Once upon a time it found and promoted Hitler.

The situation with the polar bears is just plain silly. Not as bad as having congress declaring that the earths is flat, but close enough.

The polar bear faces two possible threats. The most serious is been hunted to extinction by man. It was not feasible in the nineteenth century and now we simply do not care anymore. That leaves us with a loss of their food supply. Again, we are not competing for their seal diet, nor are anything else and it looks very secure.

Even if the temperature of the Arctic rose dramatically, the Arctic winter does not go away. There will be a huge area of viable habitat always. The bear is able to function successfully deep into Hudson Bay, which tells us that the only thing that matters is at least six months of pack ice.

By the by, if the 110,000 year cycle through the Sirius hot zone holds up, then they have survived worse at least ten times.

March 2, 2009

Global Warming: Using the Polar Bear to Impose Costly Measures

by Ben Lieberman

http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm2319.cfm

WebMemo #2319

In 2008, the Bush Administration, responding to litigation from an environmental group, listed the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Bush Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne also made some changes to the implementation of the ESA in order to limit the adverse consequences. But now, the omnibus appropriations bill, first passed by the House and now being debated in the Senate, seeks to reverse these common sense limitations.

If successful, this revised polar bear policy would greatly threaten economic growth and serve as a powerful anti-stimulus measure, not just in the polar bears' Alaskan habitat but throughout the United States. These rule changes are a costly and unnecessary form of backdoor global warming policy and have no business in a massive spending bill that is headed for quick passage with limited debate. With such drastic implications for the nation, the Senate should, at a minimum, fully debate the pros and cons of such a policy.

History of the ESA: More Economic Harm Than Environmental Good

Enacted in 1973, the ESA authorizes the Department of the Interior (DOI) to create a list of species considered endangered or threatened. Once a new species is listed, the statute requires DOI, working with other federal agencies, to formulate a recovery plan that includes any and all actions deemed necessary to protect the species and its habitat. Broad citizen suit provisions allow environmental activist groups to force DOI to enjoin any activity alleged to be in violation of the provisions of the ESA, to list additional species, or to expand provisions for already-listed species.

Notwithstanding its laudable goal of protecting species, the ESA has proven to be a flawed approach that has only gotten worse after three decades of judicial interpretation. Some 1,300 species are listed, but very few have actually recovered to the point of being de-listed, and only 5 percent are more than 50 percent recovered.[1]

While doing little to protect species, the ESA's provisions have been highly successful in curtailing economic activity in the vicinity of the designated habitat for the 1,300 species.

The ESA, Global Warming, and Polar Bears

Such ulterior motives are clearly a part of the push to list the polar bear. Its global numbers have actually doubled, from an estimated 8,000–10,000 in 1965–1970 to 20,000–25,000 today.[2] Unfortunately, the requirements for listing have never been rigorous. In the case of polar bears, listing was based on speculation that, according to computer models, continued global warming will reduce the future amount of Arctic summer ice upon which the bears rely.[3] In this way, the ESA is being used to implement global warming policy.

Among its many requirements, the ESA states that "each federal agency shall, in consultation with and with the assistance of the Secretary, insure that any action authorized, funded, or carried out by such agency is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of habitat."[4] These so-called Section 7 consultations routinely add delays to economic activities near endangered species and sometimes block them entirely.

Most directly, the polar bear listing could curtail energy production in Alaska. This would be unfortunate, as Alaskan oil and natural gas potential is tremendous. A 2008 U.S. Geological Survey study estimated there are 40 billion barrels of undiscovered oil above the Arctic circle—which would nearly double America's proven reserves—as well as tremendous volumes of natural gas.[5]

The impacts of the polar bear listing stretch well beyond Alaska, though locking up Alaskan energy would be bad enough. Carbon dioxide, the ubiquitous byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, is the agent DOI blames for the warming that supposedly shrinks the ice and thus harms the bears. Consequently, any activity producing or using energy—building a new bridge in Alabama, opening a factory or power plant in Arizona, expanding a dairy operation in New York, constructing a school in Idaho—could invoke the Section 7 consultation process. Bottom line: Environmental activists could use the ESA to hold up any of thousands of projects across the U.S. This would include many if not all of the "shovel ready" projects that are funded in the stimulus package.

Anticipating these adverse economic impacts, Secretary Kempthorne took several steps to address them. This included a rule to limit the Section 7 consultations to those where the cause and effect between the activity in question and the harm to species is not tenuous (thus excluding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from any individual source) and a rule specifically exempting new global warming considerations with regard to the polar bear listing.

Congressional Attempts to Undo These Regulations

Now, Section 429 of the House-passed Omnibus Appropriations Act would allow DOI to reverse these rules for the polar bear listing and, worse, to do so without the customary notice and comment rulemaking. In other words, the provisions here would allow DOI to make the change and do so with even less transparency and accountability than usual.

If this is done, then every activity that involves energy—from expanding a power plant to starting a farm—could get caught up in ESA red tape. The long-term economic impacts would be severe, and ironically the shorter-term effects would undercut the thrust of the stimulus package to spur an economic recovery.

Consider all new construction projects as well as efforts to create or expand all but the very smallest of businesses—the very kinds of things that are both a part of the stimulus package and that in any event are necessary for economic growth. Assuming the proposed changes are enacted, then all of the federal agencies involved in one way or another in such projects—for example, the Environmental Protection Agency for the many things that require EPA permits—will have to engage in Section 7 consultations with the Department of the Interior over the global warming implications. At the very least, such projects will be held up by bureaucratic delays, thereby creating opportunities for environmental groups and others to initiate litigation against them. Aside from delays, which could stretch into years in some cases, some projects could end up being scaled back in an effort to mitigate the supposed adverse impact, and others could be stopped entirely.

Beyond being bad policy in itself, the very fact that this complicated and far-reaching change is being done in an omnibus bill with precious little opportunity for debate strongly urges that these provisions should not be rushed into law.

Backdoor Extremism

The American people do not need a costly backdoor global warming policy implemented through the misuse of preexisting ESA authority never intended for that purpose. But at no time is such a policy more harmful than in the midst of a severe recession. The adverse economic impacts of ill-advised global warming measures are clear and are a big part of the reason why Congress has yet to directly enact any such measures. Doing it indirectly via the ESA and quietly tucking it into the massive omnibus appropriations bill now moving through the Senate would be just as damaging. The Senate should allow and encourage a full debate on this pernicious policy rather than cramming this legislation through with little to no discussion of the economic perils it would bring to the nation's future.
Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Cap and Trade

Today it is time to talk about cap and trade. I am sure now that it is going to be imposed as a priority program in the USA and very likely in both India and China. It can become the first international revenue/expenditure model in place that will help create common cause on a global scale.

It took the fear of global warming (wrong reason) to make this program possible. By monetizing the disposal of CO2, it becomes profitable to solve the problem. This means that it creates demand for solutions that is driven by something other than altruism. I have thought for years that any and all waste disposal problems were best monetized just like this so that the invisible hand of the market can do its magic. Otherwise that invisible hand is quite happy to send it downstream unto its neigbours.

We have reached an historical pass in which even the statist gimme crowd supports such an idea, although they would never admit that they are calling on Adam Smith. It is actually the right thing to do and it needs to be fully internationalized, while grandfathering and scheduling out the advantage players, including India and China.

I find it offensive that we have torn down obsolete super polluters and shipped them off to China. These are now twenty years older and long paid for and surely ready for disposal. Much better technologies are now available and need to be encouraged by fast write offs and loan support.

A really good start in the USA since the cash value of a ton of carbon may be about $40.00 would be to convert all agricultural subsidies into carbon credits upon the farm sequestering the appropriate ton of carbon in the farm’s soils. If Europe did the same, we will have killed two birds with one stone. The farmers will actually earn their subsidies. The subsidies will no longer be paid by the tax payer but by the carbon polluters. With any luck that will jump start the terra preta soil revolution in the USA.

It will also establish a new global agricultural regime that will be more easily directed into extending these same systems everywhere else. I would love to subsidize new terra preta soils in the Phillipines at the rate of $40 per acre per year per ton of carbon while converting tropical soils into lush croplands forever. That would swiftly put millions to work establishing family farms like the family farms that existed in the Amazon for thousands of years. And modern mechanization allows these operations to be economically sized and operated.

This will also swiftly end slash and burn agriculture.

I know that this can be done right. My misgivings come from the unlimited capacity of the stupid and ignorant to divert programs like this into their own dreams of self aggrandizement, making it all messy for everyone else.

We only need to look at the ease which the mortgage industry bought off Congress to prolong their death spiral to know how possible this is. Can we keep them honest or do we have to walk through a history of swindles before it is done right? I am not too trusting these days.

Roosevelt and his brain trust did get a lot of things right back in the thirties. That is why I was so disturbed when Congress merrily took of the governors as a late action of the Clinton administration. To be followed by a smuck whose grasp of economic history was modest and clearly prone to been hoodwinked by folks he thought were on his side.

Obama and his brain trust have an opportunity to get this right, principally because the folks in office on both sides of the house have a lot to account for. But he better be prepared for an arm wrestle. Clinton ran into an unchastened house that was unprepared to give up anything and this immediately emasculated him for the entirety of his mandate.

So far Obama’s cabinet choices are fairly conservative and certainly careful. And he already knows what is top of the agenda as the auto industry has been given a stay of execution for three months to sort things out.

By the way, a subsistence farmer can be expected, using terra preta, to sequester one ton per year of carbon while upgrading one acre of soil per year. Therefore, removing 100,000,000 tons of carbon per year requires 100,000,000 families to be paid $40 for a total of $4 billion dollars. Maybe we can get Mohammed Younis to administer the program rather than the UN.


Connecting the Carbon Dots

By Nick Hodge Friday, December 19th, 2008
Pee-Wee Herman used to sing, "Connect the dots... laa la laa la laa," as he leapt into the magic screen.

No, I haven't been hanging out with Pee-Wee in movie theaters. But his advice on connecting the dots is applicable in the context of financial and political realms... and the trends and investment ideas that emerge.

Since the election in November, a series of dots have been emerging that indicate it's time to take a serious look at recently-established carbon ETFs and ETNs.

Connecting the Carbon Dots

In naming his climate change and energy team last week, Mr. Obama nominated Lisa Jackson to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

In her previous position, Jackson led the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where she is credited with helping put New Jersey in a leadership role on the issue of climate change and with encouraging the state to adopt a moratorium on building new coal plants.

She also championed the reduction of emissions. And, in 2007, New Jersey became the third state, behind California and Hawaii, to pass a law that mandates steep emissions cuts over the next four decades.

New Jersey, under Jackson's direction, also helped establish the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first mandatory, market-based CO2 emissions reduction program in the United States.

A "market-based" program means it is possible to profit from reducing emissions.

And I suspect, under her leadership, the EPA will push through a similar measure that covers the entire country. You may know it as a cap-and-trade system.

Her new boss is certainly on board. The 'agenda' section of his website has the following three things to say about changing our carbon habits:

· Reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions 80 Percent by 2050

· Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050

· Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change.

Obama has already said he'll consider asking the EPA to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, which is something they should've been doing already, but Bush declined to do so after saying that such a plan would turn the EPA into the "de facto regulator of the economy."

In response, Jackson sent a forceful letter to the EPA saying that "the past eight years have demonstrated a shocking, yet consistent, irresponsibility on the part of the federal government to engage in any meaningful way... in implementing sustainable solutions to reduce emissions."

I think the policies she intends to carry out in her new position are clear.

Here we have an attack rant against cap and trade. He is right of course, if no carbon ever gets sequestered, and he is not about to investigate the possibilities. The object is to monetize the carbon waste stream. My object is to use that to monetize the two billion or so subsistence farmers so that their enterprise is recognized as capital.



The Cap And Trade Fraud - Global Warming Scams

by Jack Ward

The big buzz in the political world is 'cap and trade'. What is cap and trade and where did this idea come from?

The cap and trade concept came from the UN's Kyoto Protocols. Cap and trade is based on the flawed premise that anthropogenic activities (humans) are causing global warming by increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The American Physical Society (APS), which represents nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its previous position on climate change. APS editor, Jeffrey Marque said, "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the ICCP (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution." The UN IPCC computer modeling contains numerous exaggerations and extensive errors which led to the global warming hoax.

Virtually all human activities (work and play) results in the release of CO2. A cap and trade scheme would limit the release of CO2 that countries, corporations, and individuals could emit. Those that exceed this arbitrary carbon cap would be required to buy or trade a carbon credit from a country, corporation or individual that did not exceed the arbitrary cap. A carbon credit is a permit that allows a country, corporation, or an individual to emit a specified amount of carbon dioxide. These credits are bought and sold on carbon trading markets just like stocks. Contrary to stocks that have an actual value, the value of carbon credits is artificially created by governments for the sole purpose of generation income from a commodity that has no actual value. In a free market economy no one in their right mind would pay good money for a commodity that has no value without government coercion.

The buying, selling, and trading carbon credits will not remove one molecule of CO2 from the atmosphere. But, the purpose is not to eliminate CO2, it is to generate income for the government, redistribute wealth, and control the people. Yet Obama said, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers."

According to the Congressional Budget Office this new energy tax will cost businesses and individuals trillions of dollars. In addition, legislative analysts have predicted that millions of jobs will be lost if legislation implementing the cap and trade proposal is passed. Once these schemes are allowed, the government will be able to regulate and control all carbon emissions. This will give the government complete control over travel, lifestyle and what ever businesses and citizens consume and produce. This is the change Obama desires.

Cap and trade advocates chose the Hegelian Dialectic to sell this draconian plan. Georg Hegel's theory of the dialectic was used by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to sell their economic theory of Communism. The Hegelian Dialectic is used to guide thoughts and actions that lead to a predetermined solution. Here is how it's done:

* First, create a problem of monumental proportions.

* Second, stir up hysteria by every means possible.

* Third, when people hysterically demand a solution to the contrived problem, offer predetermined solutions that will take away rights, cost considerable money, and put more power in the hands of the power-grabbing bureaucrats.

Global warming zealots are using the Hegelian Dialectic to push their environmental agenda to the detriment of the American people. People are being brainwashed into believing the planet is being threatened by global warming. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, even claims that she was elected to 'save the planet'. Al Gore, the self appointed high priest of global warming, lectures everyone to reduce their energy consumption. But don't be fooled. Neither Peolsi nor Gore walks the walk. Both are multi-millionaires that live in energy gobbling mansions.

These elitist Liberals want to re-create a serf / royalty society, with them representing the royalty class. You will know when this global warming hype is for real when Gore, Pelosi, and their ilk give up the amenities of the 'rich and famous' and live in 1600 sq. ft. houses, fly coach, and use mass transit. Until then, their hot air is the cause of global warming. Every aspect of your life will be adversely affected if our politicians are allowed to implement any of these fraudulent cap and trade schemes.

Jack Ward is an independent columnist