Western Climate Initiative An Economic Disaster
As pointed out [here], Oregon Governor Ted “Screw the Economy In the Name of Pure Idiocy” Taxandgougeme has gone hog wild for Cap and Stifle global warming alarmist craziness. We’re not alone in that assessment; the estimable and usually equanimitable (equinanimous?) Rogue Pundit calls the Goober’s insanity “Cap and Betrayed” [here].
The sleazy leftish insider group perping the fraud on Oregon and other western states is an outfit called the Western Climate Initiative. Their economic chokehold shenanigans are [here].
Now the Western Business Roundtable has called the WCI on their miserable and pointless psycho-social strangulations:
Western Climate Plan Could Prolong Recession, Weaken Power Grids and Will Not Change Future Temperatures Over A Century
Plan Could “Chase Away” Tens of Billion Of Dollars In High-Tech Investment From Western States
Western Business Roundtable Press Release [here]
Denver, CO (Feb. 18, 2009) — A new study says that a climate action plan promoted by several Western governors could prolong the economic recession, weaken already overburdened Western power grids and will deliver a temperature “benefit” of only one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius even after a century of operation.
The study [here], commissioned by the Western Business Roundtable, found that the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade plan could “chase away tens of billions of dollars in high technology investment from the West to other regions” and would “further stress the West’s already strained electricity grid, increasing the threat of potentially catastrophic power outages.” …
The analysis of the WCI plan was conducted by Management Information Services, Inc., a highly regarded economic analysis firm that conducts studies for both renewable and fossil energy organizations. The WCI’s proposed regional cap-and-trade plan was unveiled last September by the governors of California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Montana.
The study unveiled three findings that [Jim Sims, President and CEO of the Western Business Roundtable] said were “a bit shocking.”
The first was the WCI plan’s assumption that virtually no baseload power plants would be deployed in the West through the year 2020 fueled by either hydropower, natural gas, coal or nuclear energy, even though nearly all experts predict that the West will experience significant growth in energy demand and will need more baseload power plants to maintain reliability.
The second finding was that the WCI recommends that virtually all growth in the West’s electricity demand should be met by mostly intermittent power generation, such as solar and wind farms, and demand reduction. Most experts believe that such a rapid and large deployment of highly variable power sources onto the region’s electrical grid would greatly increase the risk of system failure.
“If the WCI is in fact recommending that we deploy virtually no new baseload power plants, that we and rely solely on renewables and demand destruction, this is a proposal that would weaken the West’s already over-burdened high-voltage transmission grid and could easily deepen or lengthen our economic recession,” Sims said. “President Obama understands the need to aggressively and rapidly build next-generation baseload power plants, including those that capture and sequester GHGs. He knows, as do policymakers across the West, that economic growth is closely tied to availability of affordable energy and a stable and reliable energy infrastructure and that carbon management policies must balance environmental goals with the demands of economic recovery and job creation.”
The third finding is that “the very climate science now driving climate policy in Congress, that of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, predicts that the WCI plan would result in a virtually immeasurable reduction of future global temperatures over the next century of one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius.”
“We were frankly a bit shocked by this last finding, but the numbers come straight from the IPCC science and they pretty much speak for themselves,” Sims said. “If the IPCC’s own scientific assumptions and climate change formulas predict such a meager temperature benefit from scenarios that range from the WCI plan all the way to shutting down all fossil fuel power plants in America 100 years, it casts a long shadow on those who say we must take extreme action now without thinking through the entire cost-benefit equation. …
Does it strengthen the West’s bargaining position in the upcoming federal policy debates over national GHG mitigation measures?
“This analysis concludes that the WCI plan does not meet any of these objectives,” Sims concluded.
The Goober is stark naked and running amok through the streets of the capital. He’s gone off the deep end in his attempts to bomb and burn Oregon’s economy back to the Stone Age (another case-in-point [here]).
Somebody get a net. Back in your cage, Goober.
