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AAA Says Certain Ethanol Fuel Can Damage Cars, Asks EPA to Remove From Pumps

The recently approved use of E15 fuel made from blending gasoline and ethanol could damage vehicles and void warranties says the American Automobile Association (AAA), which is urging the federal government to ban it from the market.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the fuel earlier this summer, but AAA says only five percent of vehicles on the road are approved by the manufacturers to use the special blend they say causes significant problems such as accelerated engine wear and failure, fuel-system damage and false “check engine” warning lights.

The auto club conducted a recent survey it says identifies confusion among consumers as to which vehicles can use the fuel — 95 percent of those surveyed had never heard of E15, which contains 15 percent ethanol.

“It is clear that millions of Americans are unfamiliar with E15, which means there is a strong possibility that many motorists may improperly fill up using this gasoline and damage their vehicle,” said Robert Darbelnet, AAA president. “Bringing E15 to the market without adequate safeguards does not responsibly meet the needs of consumers.”

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), former chairman of the House Science Committee, said the findings confirm concerns on Capitol Hill that the fuel can damage cars.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Bans BP From New Government Contracts After Oil Spill Deal

(Reuters) The U.S. government banned BP Plc on Wednesday from new federal contracts over its “lack of business integrity” in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, possibly imperiling the company’s role as a top U.S. offshore oil and gas producer and the No. 1 military fuel supplier.

The suspension, announced by the Environmental Protection Agency, comes on the heels of BP’s November 15 agreement with the U.S. government to plead guilty to criminal misconduct in the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The British energy giant agreed to pay $4.5 billion in penalties, including a record $1.256 billion criminal fine.

BP and its affiliates are barred from new federal contracts until they demonstrate they can meet federal business standards, the EPA said. The suspension is “standard practice” and BP’s existing U.S. government contracts are not affected, it said.

The EPA acted hours before a government auction of offshore tracts in the Gulf of Mexico, a region where BP is the largest investor and lease-holder of deep-water tracts and hopes for further growth. BP is also the top fuel supplier to the U.S. military, the largest single buyer of oil in the world.

Suspension of contracts could give the government leverage to pressure BP to settle federal and state civil litigation that could top $20 billion if a court finds BP was grossly negligent in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Read more from this story HERE.

EPA at it Again: Teaching Guide Tells Non-English Speakers to Spy on Neighbors, Workplace

(CNSNews.com) – The Environmental Protection Agency has published a teaching guide designed to teach adult non-English speakers the language with a curriculum on environmentalism, including a homework assignment telling students to “observe” their neighbors, school and workplace to see if recycling is taking place.

In the “Teach English, Teach About the Environment,” under the heading “Civic Integration Activity” in the beginner’s level Lesson Plan One on recycling, the following questions are asked:
1. Ask students to observe whether their neighbors recycle their waste.
2. Ask students to observe whether the school or their workplace recycles waste material.
3. Ask at the following class what they observed.

In the same lesson, the homework – or “home support activity” – is to calculate how much each student adds to the “waste stream.”

“Have students weigh themselves on their bathroom scale at home,” the guide states. “Then have them weigh themselves with the bag of household garbage thrown out each day. Multiply the weight difference by seven days, 30 days, and 365 days to get a sense of the amount of garbage generated by each student.”

The teaching guide focused on what the EPA calls the three Rs – recycle, reuse and reduce.

Read more from this story HERE.

Left-wing ‘Watchdog’ Group Turns on Obama Admin, Demands Investigation into EPA Chief Lisa Jackson’s Secret Emails

photo credit: USACEpublicaffairsLiberal group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a self-described “watchdog” organization, has turned on President Barack Obama’s administration for its handling of EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s alleged use of secret email accounts.

On Tuesday, CREW demanded the EPA’s inspector general, Arthur Elkins, investigate Jackson and other EPA employees for using the accounts.

CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said in a statement announcing the demand that Jackson’s “practice of using fictitious email accounts to conduct official EPA business, shielding the contents from public view, conflicts directly with her responsibility to follow federal records law.”

“The fact that others may have engaged in such conduct before her tenure is no justification,” Sloan said. “‘Everybody does it,’ is an excuse for kindergarteners, not cabinet officials.”

“Complying with the Federal Records Act is not optional,” Sloan added. “The EPA’s illegal and devious practices undermine the ability of Congress, outside watchdog groups, and citizens alike to request and receive full information from the agency. The IG should investigate immediately to ensure messages are being properly saved and learn what, exactly, it is that Administrator Jackson and other EPA employees are trying to hide from the American public.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Conservatives’ Opening Salvo: Senator Vitter Vows to Block Potential Romney EPA Chief

photo credit: RETECH Conference and ExhibitionIf Mitt Romney wins the election on Tuesday, he can expect another battle to begin almost immediately: The fight to block his moderate allies from key administration positions.

Conservatives are quietly making preparations to begin lobbying for these posts to be filled by reliable conservatives. Of course, this may also entail opposing some of Romney’s first choices — a fight whose opening salvo has already begun.

Sen. David Vitter is already sending signals he would attempt to block James Connaughton – Romney’s likely choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (This is significant; Vitter is in line to become ranking member in the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.)

According to The Hill, Vitter cited “emissions limits, potential restriction of offshore drilling and green energy funding — reflect an increasingly uniform GOP energy platform that Romney also has embraced,” as concerns about Connaughton.

Vitter also said “he could not support Connaughton’s previous backing for cap-and-trade rules for various types of emissions.”

Read more from this article HERE.

Mark Levin Suing EPA to Disclose Devastating Regulations it Intends to Implement After Election

As we reported yesterday, the EPA has prepared numerous new regulations for implementation after the November election that would effectively destroy the US economy.

Today, the Daily Caller reports that Mark Levin’s legal group, Landmark Legal Foundation, is suing the EPA to force the agency to disclose what regulations it intends to implement after November:

Conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin’s legal group is suing the Environmental Protection Agency to obtain documents pertaining to the regulations the agency plans to implement after the election.

Levin’s law firm, the Landmark Legal Foundation, filed the lawsuit in federal court this week, seeking a court order directing the EPA to preserve and produce all records related to the agency’s regulatory plans after the presidential election.

The suit argues that news stories and political observers have indicated the EPA is “intentionally delaying the issuance of controversial new regulations until after the November election” with the possibility that “a) the Obama Administration is improperly politicizing EPA activities; b) EPA officials are attempting to shield their true policy goals from the public; and/or c) EPA officials themselves are putting partisan interests above the public welfare.”

In August, Landmark, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, sought all the records dealing with rules and regulations from Jan. 1 to Aug. 17, 2012 that have not been finalized. The EPA acknowledged receipt of the request in August, but denied the group’s request to expedite the process.

Landmark appealed the denial, the EPA again refused to expedite the process this week.

The EPA’s Planned Destruction of the U.S. Economy

If there was no other reason to defeat President Obama in November, it would be the planned destruction of what is left of the U.S. economy by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2012” the minority staff (Republican) of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has issued a chilling review of a massive rise in the costs of living for all Americans, massive layoffs in all sectors of the economy, and the destruction of the nation’s energy and manufacturing sectors.

The report provides a nightmarish look at the regulations that EPA plans to initiate, having put them under cover prior to Election Day in order to hide President Obama’s agenda of attacking the energy sector and businesses large and small.

Here’s a list of the regulations:

Greenhouse gas regulation via the Clean Air Act
An Ozone rule
Hydraulic Fracturing
Florida’s Numeric Nutrient Criteria
EPA’s water guidance under the Clean Water Act
Stormwater regulation
Tier II Gas regulations
Boiler MACT rule
Cement MACT rule
316(b) Cooling Tower rule
Coal ash
Farm dust regulation
Spill prevention control and Countermeasure rule

These proposed regulations in aggregate, if enacted—that is to say if not stopped by congressional action based on Republican control of both the House and Senate—would prove disastrous, starting in 2013.

Read more from this story HERE.

EPA Encouraging Schools to Set-Up Snitch Patrols to Report Energy Wasters

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is celebrating Children’s Health Month this October by providing information and health tips on its website, including the importance of energy efficiency in schools.

On the website page is a link to a 26-page EPA report entitled, “Sensible Steps to Healthier School Environment.” In the report’s chapter on Energy Efficiency, the EPA presents a box with items to help establish “Energy Efficiency Opportunities for Schools.”

One of the items in the box reads, “Educate students and staff about how their behaviors affect energy use. Some schools have created student energy patrols to monitor and inform others when energy is wasted.”

For example, the Arizona Public School’s website provides information for setting up energy patrols. The website states “emphasize social action through environmental education gives students a chance to do something about environmental problems instead of just hearing about them.”

The APS website says that patrol members can be provided with ID tags, vests and clipboards. Their responsibilities include leaving reminders to better conserve energy in rooms they find that have the lights on but are unoccupied.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawsuit: EPA Conducted Gas Chamber-like Experiments on Elderly, Infirm at University of North Carolina

An Eco-Fascist Gassing Experiment with Diesel Fumes at the EPA

By Mark Musser. [T]he EPA has been conducting human experiments on people by piping diesel fumes from a running truck mixed with air into their lungs at a North Carolina university. The agency has ginned up yet another green crusade — the lethal dangers of diesel fumes. They even had a gas chamber set up to accommodate the environmental research project that shockingly recalls the death camps in Poland.

Not surprisingly, the EPA is now in the process of being sued for conducting dangerous experiments on human guinea pigs. The courts will decide whether or not serious laws and practices were violated, including the international Nuremberg Code that was set up after sixteen Nazi doctors were executed for medical terrorism. After the barbaric fallout of Nazi Germany, where many people were treated like experimental animals, the Nuremberg Code was designed to be an international governing set of principles to regulate the practice of human experimentation. The whiff of the Jewish holocaust is therefore unmistakable.

When the Nazis found out how difficult it was in practice to shoot so many Jews on the Eastern Front at the outset of the war, they switched to gassing them en masse at death camps with engine fumes. Such gassing methods became notorious at Treblinka, where almost one million Jews were killed.

In the early part of the war, the infamous commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, visited Treblinka. Hoess testified at Nuremberg that the Treblinka motor room used tank and truck engines to pipe diesel fumes into the gas chambers. According to Hoess, it usually took about half an hour before the gas chambers fell silent. Another half-hour passed before the doors were opened.

Hoess commented that the engine fumes at Treblinka were not always entirely effective in killing the Jews. While all the victims fell unconscious, many of them were still alive and had to be shot afterwards. Adolf Eichmann told Hoess that they were experiencing the same problems in other death camps at the time. Auschwitz used Zyklon B, which was far more effective. Read more from this story HERE.

The EPA’s Disturbing Human Experiments

By Arnold Ahlert. If the shocking allegations contained in a lawsuit filed last Friday by responsible science advocate Steven Milloy are accurate, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a major scandal on its hands. As reported by the National Legal and Policy Center, Milloy initiated litigation in U.S. District Court in Virginia, based on evidence he accumulated via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He alleges that the EPA engaged in disturbing experimentation that deliberately exposed human beings to airborne particulate matter the agency itself considers lethal. The experiments were conducted at EPA’s Human Studies Facility at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “That EPA administrator Lisa Jackson permitted this heinous experimentation to occur under her watch shocks the conscience,” said Milloy.

The suit accuses the EPA of paying as many as 41 participants $12 an hour to breathe in concentrated diesel exhaust, for as long a two hours at a time. The exhaust was directly piped in from a truck parked outside the Chapel Hill facility. According to the lawsuit, the fine particulate matter, called “PM2.5,” was piped in at levels 21 times greater than what the EPA calls its “permissible limit.”

Yet even that phrase is misleading. In testimony delivered to Congress in September of 2011, EPA chief Lisa Jackson claimed that exposure to fine particulate matter of 2.5 microns–or less–was lethal. ”Particulate matter causes premature death. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should,” she testified at the time.

Milloy learned about the experiments last year, after reading about them in a government-supported scientific journal. In June, he filed a complaint with the North Carolina Medical Board, accusing Drs. Andrew Ghio and Wayne Cascio, both of whom were employed by the EPA, along with Dr. Eugene Chung, who worked for the University of North Carolina, of violating EPA standards of conduct in human research and the Hippocratic Oath. “During these experiments, the study subjects were intentionally exposed to airborne fine particulate matter (‘PM2.5′) at levels ranging from 41.54 micrograms per cubic meter to 750.83 micrograms per cubic meter for periods of up to two hours,” Milloy wrote to Dr. Ralph C. Loomis, president of the NC Medical Board. “The EPA also believes that PM2.5 is carcinogenic to humans,” he added.

Dr. David Schnare, a former EPA litigator who is now director of American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center, which filed the lawsuit, painted a detailed and chilling picture of exactly how the experiments were conducted. “EPA parked a truck’s exhaust pipe directly beneath an intake pipe on the side of a building,” he revealed. “The exhaust was sucked into the pipe, mixed with some additional air and then piped directly into the lungs of the human subjects. EPA actually has pictures of this gas chamber, a clear plastic pipe stuck into the mouth of a subject, his lips sealing it to his face, diesel fumes inhaled straight into his lungs.” Read more from this story HERE.

Will EPA Regulate Hamburgers Now? Study Shows They Pollute More Than Semi-Trucks

Photo credit: ginnerobot

A UC Riverside study found that commercially cooked hamburgers cause more air pollution than diesel trucks.

The study, which focused on commercial charbroilers found in burger restaurants, said the equipment generates grease, smoke, water vapors and combustion products, which emit a large amount of particulate matter into the air.

“For comparison, an 18-wheeler diesel engine truck would have to drive 143 miles on the freeway to put out the same mass of particulates as a single charbroiled hamburger patty,” said Bill Welch, the principle engineer.

Researchers at UCR, who found few regulations for the restaurant emissions, said they’re developing a contraption to trap the particulates.

“Our goal is to find something cost-effective and technically feasible to reduce the smoke,” said Welch.

Read more at this story HERE.