It looks like the Carbon Killer crowd is none too happy with energy security in Virginia. NAM’s congratulations-turned-sympathy:

Last week we congratulated Dominion Power for being granted an air quality permit that will allow a coal-fired power plant to be constructed in Wise County, Virginia. Goodness knows the region needs the electricity.

Naturally, a group of young protesters tried to block Dominion’s headquarters this morning, so it’s clear we’ve got another cause celebre for the silly self-righteous. The rhetoric from some of the “youth” as posted at the It’s Getting Hot in Here website is revealingly silly, self-righteous and yet ultimately totalitarian.

Of course, the activists are now, well, activating in the name of James Hansen.

Be sure to check out Heritage’s Morning Bell:

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the Environmental Protection Agency will release a document later this week that could become “the legal roadmap for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S.” Using the Clean Air Act, lawyers at the EPA claim they have the authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. Such a decision would unleash a regulatory Pandora’s Box, vesting the EPA with vast control over the entire economy. Worse yet, when regulating pursuant to the Clean Air Act, the EPA is forbidden to take into account the economic costs of their regulations.

• From Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist: McCain, Obama and their hot air on global warming … (meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor puts it more politely)
• Dems’ energy plan stumbles, Hollywood’s history with offshore drilling, 1910 emissions level, and more — see the roundup from the Minority on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee
• Nuff said: “Marxism at Work: Climate Change”
• Going un-green? Kroger’s done with its global warming policy
• More evidence of global cooling?
• UK unions are lobbying for “green” shop stewards to push environmentalism in the workplace
• Newsbusters: Newsweek Blames Midwest Floods on Global Warming
• UK energy bills are set to climb by over 200 pounds a year to help pay the costs of an EU emissions-cutting goal
• Double jeopardy: Green electricity users in Australia face ‘double bills’
• More bad news for Europeans: Carbon tax means fewer travellers at main Dutch airport: report
• Rhetoric that falls in the “not comforting” category: “The world’s will to tackle climate change is irresistible”
• “If you were trying to develop a less effective means of kicking the gasoline habit and coping with climate change you’d be challenged to improve on North America’s misguided biofuels policy”

We just caught a re-run of a recent episode of Dirty Jobs. It’s already one of the best shows on TV. But we can’t recommend this episode highly enough. Virtually every segment made the point that while good stewardship of the environment is important, many “green” types are pompous and ignore incentives for going green — preferring, of course, mandates.

Check it out when you can.

Today, McKinsey notes, we produce about $740 of GDP for each ton of CO2 we emit. To cut global warming emissions 72% by 2050, as some want, we’ll have to produce $7,300 of GDP per ton of C02 emitted.

Such an extraordinary leap of productivity would be like compressing the entire Industrial Revolution — which lasted from roughly 1830 to 1955 — into just 42 years. While GDP is expected to grow 3.1% annually over that time, our energy productivity will have to increase 5.6% a year. That would require major technological advances nowhere on the horizon. It ain’t going to happen.

The price tag? Roughly 0.6% to 1.4% a year of GDP by 2030. World GDP is now about $64 trillion. So every year we’d have to fork out about $896 billion in current dollars to meet the goal.

That’s about as brilliant as a snuffed-out light bulb. Congrats, environmentalists, you really know how to add 2 + 2 and come up with 0 economic sense.

Heh. It’s not often we get the chance to point to Get Fuzzy, one of the best comic strips running. But it begs the question, would a cap-and-trade system work for weasels any better than it would for carbon? We think not. You decide.

There will be no Christmas, kids, and the Earth is about to experience Armageddon. That happy thought comes from the latest, and overly dramatic, scientific warning that the ice at the North Pole might melt this year. While the headlines say it’s a done deal, even the alarmist scientists say the odds are just better than 50-50. Here’s the worry:

The polar regions are experiencing the most dramatic increase in average temperatures due to global warming and scientists fear that as more sea ice is lost, the darker, open ocean will absorb more heat and raise local temperatures even further. Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, who was one of the first civilian scientists to sail underneath the Arctic sea ice in a Royal Navy submarine, said that the conditions are ripe for an unprecedented melting of the ice at the North Pole.

Why are we not worried? Because global warming is going to take a ten-year break! (which means Santa can’t use the global warming hype to gyp us on presents this year … sweeeet)

No, not the terrible band. The scaremongering scientist. Get the details over at Shopfloor.org

From the darkest corners of the InterWebs comes a blog dedicated to all things fail and all things panda. It takes a sick mind to come up with it. We pass this one along for a weekend chortle.

It must be a free market site. It says “no red pandas.” Nice!