The Environmental Improvement Board is accepting comments now and holding a public comment period on the New Mexico-only carbon emissions cap. The hearing will be held on December 5. If you can make it up to the meeting, by all means, please do so. If not, at least take 5 minutes and send some written comments to the board. I have sent mine and pasted them below. Feel free to use parts of my comments in your own letter!
RE: REPEAL OF 20.2.100 NMAC
December 1, 2011
Ms. Carmella Casados
Board Administrator
Environmental Improvement Board
Harold Runnels Building
1190 St. Francis Drive, Room N-2153
Santa Fe, NM, 87505Dear Ms. Casados:
The following are my comments in support of repeal of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Program 20.2.100 NMAC.
I write to strongly urge the Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) to repeal the program above. While the science on global warming and the potential for humans to positively or negatively impact the climate through their actions remains unsettled, there is no doubt that this carbon cap will increase the cost of electricity for New Mexicans.
New Mexico is one of the poorest and most sparsely-populated states in the nation and cannot afford to further regulate its economy in ways that will make it less economically-competitive. And, while environmentalists tout the supposed economic benefits of carbon caps in spurring “renewables” like wind and solar, the reality is that these energy sources cost more and are less reliable than existing power sources.
While private citizens and businesses should feel free to adopt these power sources if they so choose, the EIB and, by extension New Mexico’s government, should not force such power sources on unwilling consumers, many of whom have low income levels and are unable to pay the higher costs associated with these power sources.
Simply put, if so-called “renewables” are the future of electric generation, this future will come in its own time and way which could be completely different from current expectations. It is not the role of government to pick winners and losers while sticking consumers with the bill. Please repeal the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Program.
Sincerely,
Paul J. Gessing
President
Burke E. Nelson, PhD
11201 Oakland NE
Albuquerque NM 87122
RE: REPEAL OF 20.2.100 NMAC
December 2, 2011
Ms. Carmella Casados,
Board Administrator, Environmental Improvement Board
Harold Runnels Building
1190 St. Francis Drive, Room N-2153
Santa Fe, NM, 87505
Dear Ms. Casados:
The following are my comments in support of repeal of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Program 20.2.100 NMAC.
As a Scientist, I am highly skeptical of global warming fears. There simply is no clear evidence that climate change is any different, or more severe, than it has been throughout the Earth’s long history. In any event, what we do in the State of New Mexico will have a totally negligible effect on the Earth’s climate. This Program will, however, have a very negative impact on our economic future. Raising the cost of electricity, which this will inevitably do, will cost this state jobs and lost economic opportunity. The way to improve the health of our citizens is to improve their chances for good jobs and decent salaries, not saddle the state with a useless Program.
Sincerely,
Burke Nelson, PhD
Ms Carmellla Casados
Board Administrator
Environmental Improvement Board
Harold Runnels Building
1190 St. Francis Drive N-2153
Santa Fe NM 87505
Ms Casodos:
I would strongly suggest that repealing 20.2..100 NMAC would be in the best interest of New Mexican citizens. I wonder if your board members had taken the time to read the geologic history of the earth. If you had, you would have seen that drastic changes in both the structure and atmosphere had been taking place. Would you believe that in the early history of the earth, the atmosphere was predominately composed of carbon dioxide and other toxic gasses.
Citizens living on fixed incomes,the poor and the jobless and with rapidly escalating increases in prices any further unnecessary costs would not be in the best interests of New Mexican citizens
Sincerely:
Thomas Servilla
Ms. Carmella Casados
Board Administrator
Environmental Improvement Board
1190 St Francis Drive, Rm N-2153
Santa FE NM 87505
4 December 2011
Ms Casados,
I write to strongly support the action to repeal the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Program 20.2.100.
The State EIB Web Site says that our climate has been destabilized by the increasing amount of CO2 in the air but there has been no warming, none, since the El Nino episode of 1998.
Please let me say that again, despite the claims of “global warming,” and CO2 now at 391 PPM, there has been NO WARMING in the past 13 years.
The state EIB web site says that there will be 25 ft of sea level rise by the year 2100, but the Envisat data show only 2 inches per century as the rate of rise in the last decade. NASA satellite data, as reported by JPL and the Colorado University Climate 4 You site, show half a centimeter of Sea Level decrease (!) in 2010.
The EIB web site talks about Greenhouse Gas Warming as if it is a fact, but the upper air radiosonde data, as shown in the HadAT2 data set from the Hadley Center in the UK, show no warming, none, from the period 1958-2005.
The EIB web site talks about the use of climate model predictions of greenhouse warming, and the PCM simulations, zonal mean atmospheric temperature change, all forcings, shows from 1958-1999, a hot spot at the 300 millibar level, which is about 30,000 Ft MSL. However, when the US and Hadley Centre upper air observations are examined, there is no greenhouse warming noted at all.
The EIB Web Site makes use of the UN IPCC as a reference, and cites alarm at modest surface warming in the latter half of the 20th century, but the data from Keigwin in Science in 1996, showing data from the Sargasso Sea, shows that the present temperatures are near the average of the past 3000 years.
Greenland ice sheet data reported by Dr. R. B. Alley of Penn State show, from the GISP2 site, that the temperature in the Medieval Warm Period was 1C warmer than the present, temperature in the Roman Warm Period was 2C warmer than today, and that the Minoan Warm Period was 2.8C warmer than the present.
Surely you will agree that the Science of climate change is far from settled and that the State of New Mexico should get the Science correct before it attempts to use Science as a basis for policy decisions, such as CO2 reductions.
Warmest Regards,
Bob
ROBERT W. ENDLICH
5010 Noche Bella Loop
Las Cruces NM 88001-2521