The New York Times editorial board has come out in favor of the Obama administration’s carbon dioxide limits for new power plants, which would effectively prevent new coal-fired power plants from being built.
“The move, the first in a suite of executive actions on climate change promised by President Obama in June, is a welcome sign of his determination to move ahead on his own authority and bypass a Congress whose interest in tackling global warming is virtually nil,” proclaims the Times editorial page.
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled carbon emissions limits for new power plants. Coal-fired power plants would be limited to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, which is currently an impossible standard to meet as even the most advanced coal plants emit 1,800 pounds of carbon per megawatt hour.
Only new natural gas-fired power plants would be able to meet the new emissions standard set forth by the EPA, as natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal when burned for energy. Coal plants can only meet the EPA’s standard by installing expensive, unproven carbon capture and storage technology.
The Times editorial acknowledges this, but brushes it off and urges the administration to continue pressing on in their quest to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
“Our advice to Mr. Obama and his new E.P.A. administrator, Gina McCarthy, is to ignore industry’s usual claim that the sky is falling and push ahead,” the editorial board writes. “For various reasons — the recession, the closing of some coal-fired plants, the tough new automobile mileage standards — the United States has made commendable progress in reducing its emissions, and is halfway toward meeting Mr. Obama’s pledge at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in 2009 to reduce its emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.”
“But the news from the rest of the world — steadily increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, rising sea levels, more violent weather events, persistent droughts — is not encouraging. The burden on the United States to set a positive example is as heavy as ever,” the editorial concludes.
As the Times urges the U.S. to cut carbon emissions to halt global warming, climate scientists are struggling to explain why the Earth has not seen any significant warming in the past 15 years.
Some scientists have argued that the world’s oceans have absorbed much of the heat and others say it’s due to the natural climate cycle.
“All other things being equal, adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will have a warming effect on the planet,” said climatologist Judith Curry, a leading global warming skeptic. “However, all things are never equal, and what we are seeing is natural climate variability dominating over human impact.”
“This unpredicted hiatus just reflects the fact that we don’t understand things as well as we thought,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder and critic of the global warming establishment. “Now the IPCC finds itself in a position that a science group never wants to be in. It’s in spin management mode.”
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