Healthcare And Computer Energy Savings – Turn them off and save money

That is right – turn off your computer when not using it and the medical world could save millions of $$$. Why don’t they energy manage their data networks? Because they don’t have to, they think they are Gods.

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http://it.med.miami.edu/x1159.xml

Computer power management

What’s the big deal?

Research shows that personal computers (PC) are not being actively used during the vast majority of the time that they are kept on.  It is estimated that an average PC is in use 4 hours each work day and idle for another 5.5 hours.  It’s also estimated that some 30-40 percent of the US’s work PCs are left running at night and on weekends.

Office equipment is the fastest growing electricity load in the commercial sector.  Computer systems are believed to account for 10 percent or more of commercial electricity consumption already.  Since computer systems generate waste heat, they also increase the amount of electricity necessary to cool office spaces.  (Yes, they lower the cost of heating somewhat.  That’s not a big factor in Miami.)

For the Medical Center, we estimate the savings from PC power management to be hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, even without factoring in increased office cooling costs.  Considerable savings are also possible from easing wear-and-tear on the computers themselves.

If you’d like to make a savings calculation for yourself or your organization — on electricity, dollars, trees, CO2 emissions — you can do that here.

Isn’t this “automatic” on most computers?

Almost all computers and monitors sold in the US today come with ENERGY-STAR energy-saving features.  But they generally don’t work unless you set them.

Both Windows and Apple/Mac systems allow you to set the amount of idle time that occurs before the system goes into “standby” or “sleep”  mode:

  • On Microsoft (Windows) systems, times are set in the Power Options section of the Control Panel.  Get there by the following path: Start > [My Computer >] Control Panel > [Performance and Maintenance >] Power Options.
  • On Apple (OS X) systems, standby and power option settings are set under System Preferences.  Go there and then select Energy Saver.

Standby/sleep modes are suitable for when your computer is idle for an hour or more.  A full system shut-down and power-off is appropriate at the end of the work day.

Will power management hurt my computer?

It’s a myth that turning computers off and on shortens their lives — unless you turn them off many, many, many times every day.  It’s also a myth that starting the computer requires a lot of “extra energy”: it actually only takes the equivalent of a few seconds of running time power.

Computers generate a lot of heat — principally from their central processor units (CPU).  Allowing a “cool down” during a power-off period will generally increase the life span of the entire system.  Allowing your computer to rest its moving parts, like the spinning hard drive, cooling fans, etc., will tend to increase the life-span of those components.

The reboot of the system that takes place when power is restored has another positive effect.  Many software patches and upgrades require a reboot to be fully installed and functional.  A computer that is only rarely rebooted may lag behind on software updates, and accordingly be more vulnerable to malware attacks.

Is there any downside to power management?

Obviously you have to consider the value of your time too.  A fully powered-down “off” computer takes a considerably longer time to restore to operational status than one in stand-by mode.  One in stand-by takes longer to restore than one that is fully on — although not much longer.

We’re not recommending you turn your system entirely off unless you plan to be away from it for a long time — such as at the end of the work day.  We do recommend setting a sleep/stand-by mode for when your system is idle for 30-60 minutes or more.

Unless your system is controlling an ongoing process, such as running/monitoring laboratory equipment, there is usually no good reason to leave it on when you are away for extended periods.  And many good reasons not to.

How does power management work?

Power management savings come from reducing hardware power to sleep levels when the computer is not fully active.   Idle-ness is defined by an absence of mouse or keyboard activity (and no on-going processes for applications) for a set time period.

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That’s right they saved hundreds of thousands of $$$. So how many Medical Centers like this exist? Well how many Major Universities are there in the US. That is right…hundreds of millions of $$$$

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State Journal Register Refuses To Publish My Letter On Toxic Waste In Coal

I hardly ever use this blog as a personal soapbox but the State Journal Register has taken to publishing OP/ED pieces and long letters from one James Monk “President” of the Illinois Energy Association extolling the virtues of coal and opposing proposed Cap and Trade Policies. So here is a letter they did not run:

Editor

State Journal Register

One Copley Plaza

Springfield, IL 62701

Emailed – 12/31/09

Dear Editor:

How ironic it must be to work at the SJ-R these days. First, on a single day, you run an OP/Ed piece by Ann Coulter that claims global warming is “all made up”.  On the back page of that same section you run an AP article about the many changes we humans will have to make to “adjust” to global warming. Are the facts overwhelming the “opinions” yet?

But it got worse on December 29th. On that day you ran a long letter to the editors by the appropriately named James Monk, President of Illinois Energy Association arguing that regulation of coal fired powerplant byproducts as hazardous waste will harm the economy of the nation. While on page 6, on the back of page 5, is a long article with the headline: MERCURY POLLUTION UP IN ILLINOIS. This was blamed on coal fired powerplants. Constiuent components of the coal byproducts can contain arsenic, beryllium, boron, cadmium, chromium, chromium VI, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, selenium, strontium, thallium, and vanadium, along with dioxins and PAH compounds. This sounds very toxic to me.

After the 200 million gallon spill in Tennessee, this 130 million lb. yearly ticking time bomb needs to be declared toxic and cleaned up. I don’t think that coal is as cheap to burn as some people claim. You SJ-R guys are only a page away from getting the facts (or truth) on the same page as the OP/Ed page, congratulations.

Doug Nicodemus

948 e. adams st.

riverton, IL  62561

629-7031

dougnic55@yahoo.com

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The Koch Bros – Doing business in the oil hood and damn climate change

What more can you say about a couple of spoiled rich kids whose daddy helped form the John Birch Society and was in the KKK. You can send em to school, dress em up and make em smell pretty. You can not make them smart or socially responsible. They pay Walter Williams and George Mason (alleged) University a loto money to be their best black man however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries

The Koch brothers also operate the Koch Family Foundations, a major source of funding for conservative and libertarian political causes in the United States, including think tanks such as the Cato Institute. Their father helped found the John Birch Society, though neither brother is a member or supporter of the organization. David’s political activism also included running as the vice presidential nominee of the United States Libertarian Party in 1980, when he and running mate Ed Clark finished fourth with 921,299 votes.

In April 2006, the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation announced it had contributed $1 million to help preserve the tallgrass prairies of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Chase County, Kansas. The donation made to the Kansas Prairie Legacy Campaign is reportedly the single largest private donation in the State’s history.[citation needed] Currently Liz Koch is the president of the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation and has been reported as saying that the Flint Hills of Kansas were a special place for both Fred and Mary Koch.

Koch Industries also founded Americans for Prosperity, formed as a successor to Citizens for a Sound Economy. Koch Industries and its subsidiaries spent more than $20 million on lobbying in 2008 and $5.6 million in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group. [10][11]

Rich Fink, a Koch executive vice president, is a member of the board of directors of Americans for Prosperity. Previously he served as president of Citizens for a Sound Economy. He also founded the Mercatus Center.

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BURN BURN BURN that’s all they want to do.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/16

The Tea Partiers
Charles and David Koch
CEO and Executive Vice President, Koch Industries

The multibillionaire brothers not only run the nation’s largest private energy company, they rival Exxon in funding the front groups that spread disinformation about the dangers of climate change. Over the years, the Kochs and their foundations have lavished millions on climate deniers at the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, which Charles founded in 1977. Cato, in turn, supports the work of Patrick Michaels, a leading climate denier who attempts to discredit the international scientific consensus on global warming while accepting money from coal companies. As author Thomas Frank observes in What’s the Matter With Kansas?, “Koch money subsidizes the mass production of bad ideas.”

One major recipient of Koch cash is Americans for Prosperity, where David chairs the foundation’s board. In addition to fomenting last summer’s town-hall brawls over health care reform, AFP sponsored a “Hot Air Tour” on climate change, deploying a manned balloon at 75 events for the purpose of “Exposing the Ballooning Costs of Global Warming Hysteria.” At the events, the group’s president, Tim Phillips, grossly exaggerated the costs of climate legislation, calling it a trillion-dollar tax on American families.

Last October, at an AFP summit attended by David Koch, the assembled Tea Partiers screened a climate-denial film that accused advocates like Al Gore of wanting to take civilization “back to the Dark Ages and the Black Plague.” Such events, Koch proclaimed, “bring to reality the vision” of “fighting for the economic freedoms that made our nation the most prosperous society in history.” Last year, seeking to defend its own prosperity against a carbon-capped future, Koch Industries spent more than $8.5 million on lobbying.

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There is a place that they can burn in and I Hades I believe is the place for it:

http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Go-Hi/Hades.html

In Greek mythology, Hades was the god of the underworld, the kingdom of the dead. (The Romans called him Pluto.) Although the name Hades is often used to indicate the underworld itself, it rightfully belongs only to the god, whose kingdom was known as the land of Hades or house of Hades.

Hades was the son of Cronus* and Rhea, two of the Titans who once ruled the universe. The Titans had other children, the gods Zeus* and Poseidon* and the goddesses Demeter*, Hera*, and Hestia. When Hades was born, Cronus swallowed him as he had swallowed his other children at birth. However, Zeus escaped this fate, and he tricked Cronus into taking a potion that made him vomit up Hades and his siblings.

Together these gods and goddesses rebelled against the Titans and seized power from them. After gaining control of the universe, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus drew lots to divide it among themselves. Zeus gained control of the sky, Poseidon took the sea, and Hades received the underworld.

The Underworld Kingdom. The kingdom of the dead was divided into two regions. At the very bottom lay Tartarus, a land of terrible blackness where the wicked suffered eternal torments.
Read more:

Hades – Myth Encyclopedia – mythology, Greek, god, names, ancient, people, children, evil, fire http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Go-Hi/Hades.html#ixzz0eUsHq0ie

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More tomorrow

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Rep. Joe Barton – You can’t regulate God

But you CAN regulate the airlines, the world’s Air Forces, the Coal companies, and the water born freight business. You can regulate the Navy and you can regulate the 500 largest point of source polluters. But trying to regulate Al Gore proved difficult:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqUHM2gf5g4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Barton

Barton was born in Waco, Texas to Bess Wynell Buice and Larry Linus Barton.[1] He graduated from Waco High School. He attended Texas A&M University in College Station on a Gifford-Hill Opportunity Award scholarship[2] and received a B.S. in industrial engineering in 1972. An M.Sc. in industrial administration from Purdue University followed in 1973. Following college Barton entered private industry until 1981 when he became a White House Fellow and served under Secretary of Energy James B. Edwards. Later, he began consulting for Atlantic Richfield Oil and Gas Co. before being elected to Congress in 1984.[3]

Barton was elected to represent Texas’s 6th congressional district in his first attempt, defeating Democratic opponent Dan Kubiak with 56% of the vote in a contest to succeed Phil Gramm, who left his seat to run for the United States Senate that year. He was one of six freshmen Republican congressmen elected from Texas in 1984 known as the Texas Six Pack. He received 88% of the vote in 2000, 71% of the vote in 2002 against Democratic challenger Felix Alvarado, and 66% of the vote in 2004 against Democratic challenger Morris Meyer.[citation needed]

In 1993, Barton ran in the special election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the resignation of Lloyd Bentsen, who became Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. Barton finished third in the contest and missed a runoff slot.[citation needed]

Congressman Barton is the Ranking Minority Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee.[

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Rep. Barton has been regarded as a climate change denier[5] and his opposition to addressing global warming has been consistent and long-term. As a chairman with primary responsibility over the energy sector, Barton has consistently acted over the years to prevent congressional action on global warming.[11] In 2001, Barton declared, “as long as I am chairman, [regulating global warming pollution] is off the table indefinitely. I don’t want there to be any uncertainty about that.”[12] Barton led opposition to amendments that would have recognized global warming during consideration of the Energy Advancement and Conservation Act in 2001, opposing an amendment to require the President to develop and implement a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels as called for by the non-binding United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the U.S. is a party to.[13] In 2003, Barton again opposed amendments that would have recognized global warming during consideration of the National Energy Policy Act of 2003, opposing a nonbinding amendment that would have put Congress on record as saying that the U.S. should “demonstrate international leadership and responsibility in reducing the health, environmental, and economic risks posed by climate change.”[14] In July 2003, Barton offered an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act to remove language that both recognized global warming and called on President Bush to reengage with the international community to find solutions.[15] In addition, Barton has consistently opposed proposals to reduce the nation’s dependence on oil.[16][17][18]

In 2005, prompted by a February 2005 Wall Street Journal article,[19] Rep. Barton has launched an investigation into two climate change studies from 1998 and 1999.[5] In his letters to the authors of the studies, he requested not just details on the studies themselves but significant information about their entire lives and previous studies. This has been widely regarded as an attempted attack on the scientists rather than a serious attempt to understand the science,[20] although some view it as a normal exercise of the committee’s responsibility and an effort to make possible scientific debate on a subject within its jurisdiction.[21][22] The Washington Post condemned Barton’s investigation as a “witch-hunt“.[23] Environmental Science & Technology, an obscure policy journal often cited by politicians, including Barton, reported what it said was scientific proof that global warming science is wrong.[24] See also Barton’s own response to this controversy in The Dallas Morning News.[25] The dispute expanded with Sherwood Boehlert‘s House Science Committee taking a strong interest.[26]

In 2006, Barton earned two “environmental harm demerits” from the conservative watchdog group Republicans for Environmental Protection, the first “for derailing floor passage of a sense of the House resolution … acknowledging climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”; the second, “for holding hearings, in his role as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, designed to intimidate climate scientists and raise doubt about the impacts and causes of climate change.”[27] The hearings were held by Barton’s committee on July 19, 2006, chaired by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), Chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations; there, several skeptics testified regarding the hockey stick graph.

During Former Vice President Al Gore‘s testimony to the Energy and Commerce Committee in March, 2007, Barton asserted to Gore that “You’re not just off a little, you’re totally wrong,”[28] thus reinforcing his denial that carbon dioxide emissions contribute to global climate change.

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/15

The Inquisitor
Rep. Joe Barton
Republican, Texas

As ranking Republican on the House energy committee, Barton is a mini version of Sen. James Inhofe. In his view, the climate is changing for “natural variation reasons,” and humans should just “get shade” and learn to adapt. “For us to try to step in and say we have got to do all these global things to prevent the Earth from getting any warmer is absolute nonsense,” he insists. “You can’t regulate God.”

During the Bush era, Barton bottled up all climate legislation and pushed to open up public lands for drilling by private interests. He also targeted leading climate scientists, demanding that they provide Congress with detailed documentation of their financial interests. (Barton himself has received $1.4 million from oil and gas donors, plus $1.3 million from electric utilities.) The inquisition drew sharp rebukes, even from Barton’s fellow Republicans. Your “purpose seems to be to intimidate scientists rather than to learn from them,” then-Rep. Sherwood Boehlert told Barton. The effort “to have Congress put its thumbs on the scales of a scientific debate” is “truly chilling.”

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With liars like this can the republic survive?

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Fred Singer – He has been making up science since he said cigarettes wouldn’t kill you

Of course he has been in favor of bad air for 50 years…so at least he is badly consistent….

Oh it’s Jam Band Friday and I am going to do something a little different….today i bring you the Grammy Picks by State Journal Register writers Rhys Saunders, Brian Mackey and Brian Murphy. Caution – most of these songs I have never heard – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAwjZLztd28&feature=related

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7JthgTMHDU )

He lies about the atmosphere, he also lies about his credentials

http://www.desmogblog.com/people/fred-singer

18 November 09

Fred Singer, lacking nobility, still claims the Prize

Climate skeptics are, not surprisingly, hitting the European speaking circuit in the weeks leading up to the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen. But what is surprising is that notorious global warming denier S. Fred Singer was described at a skeptic conference today as a Nobel prize winner, a flat out lie.

According to a Belgian journalist who alerted DeSmog to Singer’s appearance today at a skeptic conference in the European Parliament building, Singer was described in event materials as:

“a reviewer of IPCC reports, he shares the 2007 Nobel peace prize with Al Gore and 2000 others.”

The idea that Fred Singer shares any part in the IPCC/Gore Nobel prize is laughable, of course.  Other than Mr. Gore, the Nobel committee recognized only the IPCC authors, and they all received framed Nobel certificates.  If Singer can produce a framed Nobel, I’ll produce my Olympic gold medal (Singer must eat cereal too, I sure enjoy the prizes inside, although I’ve never seen a Nobel peace prize before).

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXG0YMv5Fvk )

Last week at the Copenhagen climate summit, we saw Christopher Monckton, the head of the delegation for the oil industry-friendly Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), accuse young climate change activists of being “Nazis” and the “Hitler youth.”

Another member of Monckton’s Copendenier delegation is a gentleman by the name of S. Fred Singer, who is well known to our team at the DeSmogBlog.

Readers might say why are you picking on this guy? You did not post much extra stuff about a lot of the earlier people?  The answer is that he is that he is the only one purporting to be a scientist…and he is from that bastion of lying and cheat…George Mason University. God typing that made me feel unclean.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-grandia/copendenier-fred-singer-o_b_390152.html

In fact, we once received a letter from Singer’s lawyer threatening to sue us after we reported that Singer once did work for the cigarette lobby. We never heard back from Singer after we sent along all the research behind our claim.

Like Monkcton, Singer has an “expert” opinion on many subjects. Not coincidentally, many of these expert opinions greatly assist the work of various industries looking to avoid being saddled with expensive health and environmental regulations.

Our research team recently came across a 1996 Washington Times article by Singer, titled Anthology of 1995’s Environmental Myths [pdf]. In the article, Singer outlines “five topics that demonstrate distortion or misuse of science in shaping policies.”

The five are: global warming, the hole in the ozone, second-hand tobacco smoke, the “Radon scare” and toxic substances in our food.

Take a read of Singer’s article and ask yourself this: what would our planet and people be like today if we had listened to Singer’s advice 13 years ago? Then ask yourself: why would anyone in their right mind trust his supposedly “expert” opinion – or the opinions of those in his delegation – here at the Copenhagen climate talks.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Xr-JFLxik )

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY )

But the real deal is this:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/13

The Hack Scientist
Fred Singer
Retired physicist, University of Virginia

A former mouthpiece for the tobacco industry, the 85-year-old Singer is the granddaddy of fake “science” designed to debunk global warming. The retired physicist — who also tried to downplay the danger of the hole in the ozone layer — is still wheeled out as an authority by big polluters determined to kill climate legislation. For years, Singer steadfastly denied that the world is heating up: Citing satellite data that has since been discredited, he even made the unhinged claim that “the climate has been cooling just slightly.” Last year, Singer served as a lead author of “Climate Change Reconsidered” — an 880-page report by the right-wing Heartland Institute that was laughably presented as a counterweight to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s scientific authority on global warming. Singer concludes that the unchecked growth of climate-cooking pollution is “unequivocally good news.” Why? Because “rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests.” Small wonder that Heartland’s climate work has long been funded by the likes of Exxon and reactionary energy barons like Charles Koch and Richard Mellon Scaife.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYaiGB7eYU8 )

Don’t worry Radon Gas won’t hurt you. What a scientist hahaha

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA )

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Don Blankenship – He blows the tops off mountains and pushes the rubble into the valleys

These are the guys I think should lead the list but he is number 12 here. Don’t just take it from me or Tim Dickinson

http://www.grist.org/article/don-blankenship-seventh-scariest-person-in-america/

Don Blankenship: Seventh scariest person in America

Massey Energy CEO is a really bad dude

24 Oct 2006 5:40 PM
by David Roberts

The venerable print magazine Old Trout was recently relaunched with a splashy issue on “The Thirteen Scariest Americans.” I was asked to write up the scariest American from an environmental point of view.

The choice was not difficult. The scariest polluter in the U.S. is Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy. The guy is evil, and I don’t use that word lightly.

The issue is out now. (Look for it on a newsstand near you!) The folks at Old Trout have given me permission to publish an expanded version of the piece after a suitable period of exclusivity. So watch for that at the beginning of December.

In the meantime, check out three things.

First, there’s this longish New York Times piece on Blankenship from Sunday. In the usual style of mainstream reportage, it is studiously neutral in tone, woefully downplaying the environmental destruction Massey does and the thuggish tactics Blankenship has imposed. But you can get a pretty accurate general picture of the guy.

Second, watch this short clip from Bill Moyers‘ PBS special Is God Green? At the end there’s an archival clip of Blankenship from 1984. To me it’s absolutely mesmerizing. I’ve probably watched it 50 times. The sunken, lifeless eyes, the flat affect, the utter lack of empathy … like I said, it bespeaks psychopathy. I’ve shown it to a bunch of other people and they don’t find it quite as chilling as I do, so your mileage may vary:

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/12

The Climate Killers

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming

TIM DICKINSON

The Coal Baron
Don Blankenship
CEO, Massey Energy

In an age when most CEOs are canny enough to at least pay lip service to the realities of climate change, Blankenship stands apart as corporate America’s most unabashed denier. Global warming, he insists, is nothing but “a hoax and a Ponzi scheme.” His fortune depends on such lies: Massey Energy, the nation’s fourth-largest coal-mining operation, unearths more than 40 million tons of the fossil fuel each year — often by blowing the tops off of Appalachian mountains.

The country’s highest-paid coal executive, Blankenship is a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will. He recently financed a $3.5 million campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently ruled against his company, and he hung out on the French Riviera with another judge who was weighing an appeal by Massey. “Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office,” Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia once observed. “He would be twice as accountable and half as feared.”

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Trust me, if he could sell you coal and make you eat it he would.

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Tom Donohue – He even lies about his member’s positions

Shouldn’t they fire this useless puke.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/11

The Know Nothing
Tom Donohue
President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

As the de facto chief of American business and industry, Donohue has turned the biggest lobbying presence on Capitol Hill into the biggest friend of climate polluters. In the first nine months of last year, the Chamber spent $65 million — three times more than ExxonMobil — mounting a campaign to block Congress from placing limits on carbon pollution. “Not only has the Chamber spent decades denying the existence of the climate crisis,” Al Gore observed, “now it is dedicating a significant quantity of resources and money attempting to prevent Congress from taking action.”

The extreme anti-climate position staked out by Donohue runs counter to the position of his own members. Of the 23 companies on the Chamber’s board that made their position on climate legislation public, only four are against it — and three of those are coal companies. Yet the Chamber claims, in scaremongering language, that climate legislation threatens to “completely shut the country down” and “virtually destroy the United States.” For his part, Donohue is proudly ignorant of the risks that a changing climate poses to the business community: “Is the science right? Is science not right? I don’t know.”

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Like I have been saying all these last 2 weeks everyone should read Burn and Climate Killers in the Rolling Stone.

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Dick Gephardt – He pollutes minds as well as the air

This pains me almost as much as Mary Landrieu. I never worked for Dick but he was always good on so many issues. C’est la vie…sigh

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/jones



Dick Gephardt’s Spectacular Sellout

By Sebastian Jones

This article appeared in the October 19, 2009 edition of The Nation.

September 30, 2009

In March, months after the government gave an unprecedented $85 billion to AIG, the insurance giant released a list of counterparties, exposing some of the world’s top financial institutions as the real recipients of the bailout. First among its peers, Goldman Sachs got a whopping $12.9 billion, despite having claimed in September to be insulated from AIG’s troubles. Based on these revelations, Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, who had dogged the financial industry since the crisis began, told his staff to prepare a letter calling for an investigation.

Two Congressional staffers familiar with the matter told The Nation that a draft was circulated to House members on March 23. Within hours, Cummings’s office had received a phone call from a lobbying firm hired by Goldman Sachs, making an “insistent but polite” request for a meeting. Cummings, intending to send the letter regardless, granted the audience, and so it was that top Goldman executives like president Gary Cohn and CFO David Viniar arrived the next day. They brought someone else too, a big-name Democratic politician with serious populist credibility: Dick Gephardt.

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But the real issue here is pollution.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/9

The Arm Twister
Dick Gephardt
CEO, Gephardt Group

The former House majority leader now uses his considerable political clout as a lobbyist for Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company. Working behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, Gephardt has emerged as the most credible proponent of “clean coal” — an imaginary technology being touted by the industry as an alternative to limits on carbon pollution. (“Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes,” says Al Gore. “It does not exist.”) In July, Gephardt was the keynote speaker at the Clean Coal Technology Conference, an honor bestowed after he helped win $1 billion in stimulus funding for FutureGen, a “clean coal” boondoggle promoted by Peabody. That’s a significant return on the $1.7 million that Peabody and the FutureGen Industrial Alliance have invested in Gephardt Group’s services since 2007. His firm also lobbies for Ameren, the nation’s fourth-dirtiest utility, as well as for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The head of Peabody’s Washington office, Fred Palmer, marvels at the access the ex-congressman still enjoys on Capitol Hill: “I can meet with a lot of people, but I’m Fred Palmer. He’s Dick Gephardt.”

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So to Dick we must say – Smoke gets in our eyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTxZOEdEE8I

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James Inhofe – Why does this man even deserve to be heard on Global Warming

The quick answer is that he doesn’t deserve to be listen to. He has no background for it. But often that is the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe

James MountainJimInhofe (born November 17, 1934) is an American politician from Oklahoma. He is a member of the Republican Party and currently serves as the senior Senator from Oklahoma. A former the State Representative and Senator, Inhofe served eight years in the United States Congress before election to the Senate in 1994.

Inhofe is among the most vocal global warming skeptics in the US Congress and is also known for his general opposition to LGBT rights, his support for the state of Israel, and his legislative efforts to make English the national language of the United States.

Inhofe was born in Des Moines, Iowa and moved with his family to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was a child. He was a member of the Class of 1953 at Tulsa Central High School,[1] and served in the United States Army from 1957 to 1958.[2][3]

In 1959, Inhofe married Kay Kirkpatrick, with whom he has four children. Inhofe received a B.A. degree from the University of Tulsa in 1973, at the age of 38.In his business career, Inhofe was a real estate developer and became president of the Quaker Life Insurance Company; during this time, the company went into receivership. It was liquidated in 1986.[4]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/7

God’s Denier
Sen. James Inhofe
Republican, Oklahoma

As the former chairman and ranking Republican of the Senate environment committee, Inhofe is one of the GOP’s loudest and most influential voices on climate change. The senator from Oklahoma calls global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” insists that carbon dioxide is not “a real pollutant,” and doesn’t worry about rising sea levels, because, if all else fails, “God’s still up there.”

Far from being marginalized, Inhofe continues to hold remarkable sway: In November, he organized fellow GOP members to boycott the environment committee’s debate on climate legislation. He also marshaled the ranking GOP members of all six committees with jurisdiction over climate change to write Sen. Barbara Boxer, warning her that proceeding without Republicans would “severely damage” prospects for the bill’s passage. The move helped cloud the bill’s future, diminishing America’s bargaining position at the Copenhagen climate negotiations. “We won, you lost,” Inhofe gloated to Boxer during a committee hearing. “Get a life.”

In December, the senator also vowed that a resurgent GOP would block the EPA from curbing carbon pollution: “After the 2010 election,” he said, “I guarantee we’ll have the votes to do it.”

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Good God and we still have 10 more to go. I do not know how much longer I can keep this up.

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Marc Morano – There is a name that few people will recognize

I have been posting for the last 8 or 9 days about the article below and the related book Climate Killers. Please read them so you will know who the enemy is and what to do about it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns/

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He is the master of the bad word. He sits around and thinks up phrases like Nature Nazis, Envirowussies, and the “fear promoting business”. He hides behind the skirts of his right wing masters. You never see him in public and if only he had a last name like Drudge….but he doesn’t…he sounds like a quarterback and looks like a pug.

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/6 

The Drudge of Denial
Marc Morano
Founder, Climate Depot

Morano, who worked for Sen. James “Global Warming is a Hoax” Inhofe, left Congress last year to set up shop as the Matt Drudge of climate denial. Today he runs Climate Depot, a website whose sponsor is funded by oil heir Richard Mellon Scaife. A private version of a congressional blog that Morano ran for Inhofe, the site serves as a clearinghouse for climate kooks. “He’s a central cell of the climate-denial machine,” says Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace. “He’s been very effective in delaying action on this crisis.”

Morano says climate scientists are in the “fear-promoting business” and accuses them of waging a “war on modern civilization.” But it’s Morano who trafficks in wild claims, routinely distorting the work of climate scholars and charging that “proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 billion.” A former producer for Rush Limbaugh, Morano gained fame as one of the first to trumpet Swift-boat lies about John Kerry’s military record. Andrew Watson, a British climate professor who recently debated Morano on the BBC, said it best in a whispered aside at the end of the show: “What an asshole.”

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Should be Dan Morono, don’t you think? 

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