The world will burn around 1.2 billion more tons of coal per year in 2017 than it does today — an amount equal to the current coal consumption of Russia and the United States combined.

Today’s Climatewire (subscription required) summarizes data and projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) from which we may conclude that EPA regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is increasingly irrelevant to global climate change even if one accepts agency’s view of climate science.

Basically, it all comes down to the fact that China’s huge and increasing coal consumption overwhelms any reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions the EPA might achieve.

From the Climatewire article:

Chinese coal consumption surged for a 12th consecutive year in 2011, with the country burning 2.3 billion tons of the carbon-emitting mineral to run power plants, industrial boilers and other equipment to support its economic and population growth.

In a simple but striking chart published on its website, the U.S. Energy Information Administration plotted China’s progress as the world’s dominant coal-consuming country, shooting past rival economies like the United States, India and Russia as well as regional powers such as Japan and South Korea.

China’s ravenous appetite for coal stems from a 200 percent increase in Chinese electric generation since 2000, fueled primarily by coal. Graph courtesy of U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

In fact, according to EIA, the 325-million-ton increase in Chinese coal consumption in 2011 accounted for 87 percent of the entire world’s growth for the year, which was estimated at 374 million tons. Since 2000, China has accounted for 82 percent of the world’s coal demand growth, with a 2.3-billion-ton surge, the agency said.

“China now accounts for 47 percent of global coal consumption — almost as much as the rest of the world combined,” EIA said of the latest figures.

 Climatewire also observes:

The rising consumption numbers reflect a 200-plus percent increase in Chinese electricity generation since 2000, with most of the new power coming from coal-fired power plants. Chinese growth averaged 9 percent per year from 2000 to 2010, more than twice the 4 percent global growth rate for coal consumption. And when China is excluded from the tally, growth in coal use averaged only 1 percent for the rest of the world over the 2000-2010 period, according to EIA. . . .

According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, China’s share in global coal consumption is more than twice that of the demand for oil in the United States. And last year China reigned as both the world’s No. 1 coal producer (3.7 billion metric tons) and the world’s top buyer of foreign coal, with an estimated 270 million tons of imports, according to the China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association.

In its latest projections on global coal demand, issued last month, IEA said that by 2017 coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world’s leading energy source, with every region of the world except the United States relying more heavily on the carbon-intensive energy resource.

In fact, the world will burn around 1.2 billion more tons of coal per year in 2017 than it does today — an amount equal to the current coal consumption of Russia and the United States combined, IEA noted.

CEI’s Myron Ebell appeared on E&E-TV this morning to discuss the upcoming vote on Senator Inhofe’s (R-OK) CRA vote to end the EPA’s mercury and air toxic’s rule. You can watch the video here. Here is a snippet of the conversation:

Monica Trauzzi: Myron, the Senate is expected to take up a measure this month that would change the future of EPA’s mercury and air toxics rule. There are two proposals that are actually being discussed on the Hill right now and the first is by Senator Inhofe and that would scrap the rule entirely. The second is by Senators Alexander and Pryor, and that would give utilities a little extra time to comply with the rule. What’s your take on the proposals and the overall impact on industry?

Myron Ebell: Well, first, the House has already passed legislation with a quite significant majority to block the utility MACT rule. Senator Inhofe’s resolution is brought under the Congressional Review Act and, therefore, it only requires a majority of those voting and it cannot be blocked by the Majority Leader or require a 60 vote, procedural vote. So, his is actually doable in the Senate. The Alexander Pryor legislation, I think Senator Alexander, who we might think of as the next Dick Lugar, is trying to provide cover for Democrats in tough election races to say that they’re voting for something that has absolutely no chance of passage, because their bill would take 60 votes, whereas Senator Inhofe’s much better resolution, which would block the rule entirely, only takes 50. The Alexander-Pryor legislation would only delay the implementation by a couple of years. So, instead of giving utilities four years, they would have six years in order to shut down their coal-fired power plants essentially.

Monica Trauzzi: But isn’t that a good thing? I mean couldn’t that help industry if they had a little extra time to comply and apply some of these technologies?

Myron Ebell: Sure, it could, but the fact is that there is no technology that will help these coal-fired power plants comply. So, we’re just essentially extending the killing off of coal-fired power plants. This bill has no chance of passage. That’s the key thing. It’s only being introduced to try to peel votes off of the Inhofe resolution.

Monica Trauzzi: So, you’re talking about the Alexander-Pryor bill?

Myron Ebell: Yes, it has, it would require 60 votes and there aren’t, if there aren’t 50 votes for the Inhofe resolution, there certainly aren’t going to be 60 for the Alexander bill.

Watch the rest here, or read the entire transcript here.

There’s a big lie making the rounds that EPA’s ultra-expensive new mercury regulation is worth the cost ($10 billion annually) because it will protect fetuses from developmental disorders.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is the most prominent perpetrator of the mercury lie. Recently, she gave a pep talk to a group of collegian environmental activists trying to shut down campus coal fired power plants, during which she said:

“It’s so important that your voices be heard, that campuses that are supposed to be teaching people aren’t meanwhile polluting the surrounding community with mercury and costing the children a few IQ points because of the need to generate power.  It’s simply not fair.”

Over at Think Progress Green, Brad Johnson does his part to spread mercury disinformation, by pooh-poohing Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky) for having claimed (correctly) that the mercury rule won’t have any benefit for babies and pregnant women. According to Johnson,

“The glimmer of fact in Whitfield’s claims is that the health costs of mercury poisoning of our nation’s children over decades of unlimited coal pollution are difficult to quantify. Mercury poisoning is rarely fatal and hard to detect, but causes undeniable, insidious developmental harm to fetuses and babies.”

Naturally, environmentalist special interests are the worst propagators of this mercury mendacity. The day that EPA Administrator announced the final mercury rule, Sierra Club launched a television advertisement depicting a little girl learning to ride a bike, while a voiceover states:

“When this little girl grows up her world will have significantly less mercury pollution because President Obama and the EPA stood up against polluters and established the first-ever clean air standards. This action means that our air, water, and food will be safer from mercury pollution and heavy metals generated by coal-fired power plants. Like you, President Obama understands that reducing toxic mercury pollution increases the possibilities to dream big.”

Global atmospheric mercury might or might not be a problem—I don’t know. But I do know that mercury emissions from U.S. coal fired plants pose a negligible danger to fetuses. And I know this because EPA told me so.

Mercury emissions aren’t a direct threat to humans; rather, they settle onto bodies of water, and then make their way up the aquatic food chain. Because mercury is a neurotoxin, the fear is that pregnant women can engender development disorders in their fetuses by eating fish that have bio-accumulated mercury. Accordingly, EPA identifies pregnant women as the population at highest risk from U.S. power plant mercury emissions.

The graph below is taken from page 51 of EPA’s Technical Support Document: National-Scale Mercury Risk Assessment Supporting the Appropriate and Necessary Finding for Coal and Oil-Fired Electric Generating Units, which is essentially EPA’s justification for regulating mercury. I’ve crudely photo-shopped the graph to highlight the supposed threat posed by U.S. coal fired power plants to pregnant women.

Three notes: (1) In the proposed rule, EPA stated that 2016 projections for mercury emissions (29 tons) reflect current emissions, so this graph (the “2016 scenario”) represents the current mercury threat; (2) EPA “interpreted IQ loss estimates of 1-2 points as being clearly of public health significance” (p. 17 of the Technical Support Document); and (3), the columns of the graph, “Watershed percentiles,” refer to freshwater, inland bodies of water, and the degree to which they have been polluted by mercury (i.e., the 99^th watershed percentile refers to the top one-percent mercury-polluted freshwater, inland body of water).

According to EPA’s own analysis, the new mercury regulation serves to protect America’s population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen, who eat 300 pounds of self-caught fish reeled in exclusively from the most polluted bodies of water.  Notably, EPA failed to identify a single member of this supposed population. Instead, these people are assumed to exist. Is that a plausible assumption?

Even if there are one or two pregnant super-anglers with voracious appetites for self-caught fish from the most polluted lakes and rivers, a 1.1 improvement in IQ is such a slight benefit that it could not possibly be disassociated from statistical noise. EPA’s mercury regulation, therefore, is a double whammy of nonsense. It would benefit an apparitional population with a statistically invisible improvement, all for only $10 billion a year. What a deal!

1. Everything you’ve heard about fossil fuels may be wrong, Michael Lind (Salon):

The arguments for converting the U.S. economy to wind, solar and biomass energy have collapsed. The date of depletion of fossil fuels has been pushed back into the future by centuries — or millennia. The abundance and geographic diversity of fossil fuels made possible by technology in time will reduce the dependence of the U.S. on particular foreign energy exporters, eliminating the national security argument for renewable energy. And if the worst-case scenarios for climate change were plausible, then the most effective way to avert catastrophic global warming would be the rapid expansion of nuclear power, not over-complicated schemes worthy of Rube Goldberg or Wile E. Coyote to carpet the world’s deserts and prairies with solar panels and wind farms that would provide only intermittent energy from weak and diffuse sources.

A healthy, optimistic look at future energy supplies.

2.  Obama taps former energy CEO, green group co-founder for Commerce Chief, The Hill’s Energy & Environment Blog:

Obama praised Bryson in a statement Tuesday announcing his decision.

“I am pleased to nominate John Bryson to be our nation’s Secretary of Commerce, as he understands what it takes for America to succeed in a 21st century global economy,” he said. “John will be an important part of my economic team, working with the business community, fostering growth, and helping open up new markets abroad to promote jobs and opportunities here at home.”

As Tim Carney tweeted, (thousands of different) “Subsidies!” are apparently the answer.

3. The Streetwise Professor comments on the case brought forth by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission against oil speculators (More Reuters commentary here.):

Corner manipulation cases are hard: the CFTC has never won one.  Trade impact manipulation cases in which it is alleged that buying or selling created false perceptions of demand are even harder to analyze and prove.  Thus, just based on the nature of the allegation alone, the CFTC has filed a very challenging case.  When one looks at the evidence the CFTC presents in its complaint, the odds become even higher.  For the January episode in particular, the most straightforward interpretation of the evidence cuts squarely against the allegations.  This will be a very difficult case for the agency to win.

There’s another lesson here that has been lost in all of the hue and cry over the filing of the complaint.  CFTC has been examining the oil market with a fine tooth comb going back to 2005 if memory serves.  If this is the best case they can find after all that, the oil market must be pretty damn clean.

Remember, speculation does play a beneficial role, as explained here by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren.

4. More Weather Deaths? Wanna Bet?, Donald Boudreaux in The Wall Street Journal

So confident am I that the number of deaths from violent storms will continue to decline that I challenge Mr. McKibben—or Al Gore, Paul Krugman, or any other climate-change doomsayer—to put his wealth where his words are. I’ll bet $10,000 that the average annual number of Americans killed by tornadoes, floods and hurricanes will fall over the next 20 years. Specifically, I’ll bet that the average annual number of Americans killed by these violent weather events from 2011 through 2030 will be lower than it was from 1991 through 2010.

If environmentalists really are convinced that climate change inevitably makes life on Earth more lethal, this bet for them is a no-brainer. They can position themselves to earn a cool 10 grand while demonstrating to a still-skeptical American public the seriousness of their convictions.

But if no one accepts my bet, what would that fact say about how seriously Americans should treat climate-change doomsaying?

Do I have any takers?

A potential acceptance by Roger Pielke Jr.

Energy blogger Robert Rapier has an excellent post about the naive hatred shown towards the fossil fuel industry by what he calls Democrats. I’m not completely convinced that its a position held by all of those on the left (rather than environmentalists, a subset of the left) but the knee-jerk anti energy sentiments tend to aggregate more on that side of the isle. Read the whole thing, especially his thoughts on clueless celebrity activism. He quotes an environmentalist who struggled to come to this realization:

There was virtually nothing in my office—my body included—that wasn’t there because of fossil fuels… I had understood this intellectually before—that the energy landscape encompasses not just our endless acres of oil fields, coal mines, gas stations, and highways…. What I hadn’t fully managed to grasp was the intimate and invisible omnipresence of fossil fuels in my own life…. I also realized that this thing I thought was a four-letter word (oil) was actually the source of many creature comforts I use and love—and many survival tools I need. It seemed almost miraculous. Never had I so fully grasped the immense versatility of fossil fuels on a personal level and their greater relevance in the economy at large.

Comfort, check. Survival, check. And this is a common phenomena by many who engage in similar types of activism against fossil fuels. The individuals who have worked to make our lives, while often getting rich in the process, are reviled by a good portion of the population. A prime example is the newest assault on the Koch brothers by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.):

Waxman, the energy panel’s top Democrat, on Friday urged committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to press Koch – a refiner helmed by billionaire brothers active in conservative politics – about whether it’s invested in oil sands projects that would benefit from TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

The GOP aide attacked Waxman’s Friday letter to Upton, calling it a “transparently political stunt that has absolutely nothing to do with the real issues at stake – lowering gas prices, jobs, and energy security.”

Industries that stand to benefit from economic activity tend to lobby for it. A Koch representative has stated that they aren’t involved with the project, but even if they are, who cares? It will make another good zinger on ThinkProgress.org, but other than that I fail to see its relevance. Or consider the millions of words written about the “dirty polluters” across the internet. Fossil fuels aren’t perfect, but they actually work, and life on planet earth without them would be much more miserable.

Last Thursday, the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee held a hearing on “Environmental Protection Agency Mining Policies: Assault on Appalachia.” Video and written testimony are available here. For detailed descriptions of the EPA’s outrageous war on Appalachian coal production, click here, here, or here. Suffice it to say, EPA has subverted the Administrative Procedures Act to enact a de facto moratorium on mining. It engineered a new Clean Water Act “pollutant,” saline effluent, which the EPA claims degrades water quality downstream from mines by harming a short lived insect that isn’t an endangered species. The hearing on Thursday was part 1; this Wednesday, the subcommittee is scheduled to hear from EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

I attended the hearing, and at the media table, I picked up a Sierra Club “Beyond Coal Campaign” press release, by Director Mary Anne Hitt. It is an excellent window into the lying and exaggerations frequently employed by environmental extremists in order to demonize coal. Below, I reprint the entire press release, sentence by sentence (in bold), each followed by a rebuttal (in italics).

Sierra Club: “This Committee’s leadership is trying to stack the deck against Appalachian miners, families and businesses.”

Stacking the deck!? This is absurd. To be sure, all four witnesses before the Subcommittee were opposed to the EPA’s war on Appalachian coal, but that was by BIPARTISAN agreement. Indeed, the only Democrat to show up was Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), the Ranking Member of the full Committee, who opposes the EPA’s machinations more than Republicans, due to the fact that his State is the largest coal producer in Appalachia, and is, therefore, harmed most.

[Update, May 11, 1:57 PM. I was mistaken that Rep. Nick Rahall was the only Member of the Minority Party to attend the hearing. Subcommittee Ranking Member Timothy Bishop (NY) gave an opening statement and then left. I got confused because Rep. Nick Rahall took his seat. Also, Rep. Jason Altmire came in after testimony was heard.

That said, the Hearing was bipartisan in unanimous fashion. Rep. Bishop spoke of a "pendulum" that had swung too far; Rep. Altmire, at today's hearing [part 2], thanked the first panel, and then noted “our support as a group to cultivate our own resources” and further promised to “do anything we can do to lesson the burden”; also today, Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA) said that, “anytime something like this rises to the level of the House, it suggests there’s a problem.”]

Sierra Club: “Despite the severe threats that mountaintop removal coal mining poses to the health of Appalachian families and the environment, not a single community member affected by mountaintop removal has been invited to speak to this Committee.”

For starters, mountaintop mining poses no threat “to the health of Appalachian families” and essentially zero impact on the “environment.” As I explain in detail here, the EPA’s war on Appalachian coal is predicated on protecting an insect that lives for a day, and which isn’t even an endangered species.

As for the Sierra Club’s nonsense about the Committee not having invited a “single community member affected by mountaintop removal,” there is an extremely likely explanation: No such “community member” exists. In May 2010, I travelled to Charleston, West Virginia, to attend an EPA field hearing on its Appalachian coal crackdown. It took place in the Charleston Civic Center, and there were probably 2,000 people in the room, of which I’d guestimate that 1,980 were against the EPA. Of those that supported the EPA’s assault on Appalachian coal production, 10 worked for the EPA, and the rest were from environmentalist organizations. There were no “community members affected by mountaintop removal.” The upshot is that the only people in this affair who are “affected” are the coal industry and support industry workers who are at risk of losing their jobs.

Sierra Club: “Mountaintop removal is not the economic cure-all that many in Congress claim it to be.”

Wrong again! Mountaintop mining might be anathema to radical environmentalists at the Sierra Club, but it’s absolutely essential for the Appalachian coal industry’s competitiveness vis a vis coal production west of the Mississippi.

Sierra Club: “In reality, it costs miners their jobs through mechanization, jeopardizes their health and puts state budgets even deeper into debt.”

Regarding the first clause: If mountaintop mining “costs miners their jobs,” then why do miners support it? As for the second clause, it is an unequivocal fact that local and state governments in Appalachian States rely on the coal industry for a significant part of their tax revenues. For example, at the May EPA field hearing, Logan County (West Virginia) School Superintendent Wilma Zigmond said that, “coal keeps the lights on and our schools running,” after noting that property taxes from coal mines contribute more than $17 million annually.

Sierra Club: “There is a better way.”

Really! That’s great. Please, tell me this better way! (I sure hope it’s not windmills and solar panels)

Sierra Club: “Clean, safe and affordable alternatives exist to power our nation—without the high economic and health costs or destruction that come with mountaintop removal coal mining.”

D’oh! She was talking about wind mills and solar panels. The fact is, you can’t replace reliable, affordable energy (like coal power) with unreliable, expensive energy (like wind mills and solar panels). It just doesn’t work. I’ll also reiterate that the “high economic and health costs or destruction that come with mountaintop removal mining” is limited to an insect that lives for a day, and which isn’t even an endangered species.

Sierra Club: “In this time of economic uncertainty, it is more important than ever for Americans to seek out safe, cost-effective solutions to our energy crisis.”

This is ridiculous. “In this time of economic uncertainty,” it is important for people to have jobs, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SIERRA CLUB OPPOSES. Moreover, the most “cost-effective” solution to our “energy crisis (?)” is coal. I’ll grant that coal mining is more dangerous to Americans than the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels in China. [To be sure, as a free marketer, I'm a proponent of China's right to sell America wind turbines and solar panels without restrictions, in order to cheapest meet the foolish green energy production quotas that our politicians subject us to.]

Sierra Club: “Mountaintop removal coal mining simply doesn’t fit this bill.”

Perhaps in bizzarro world, but not here on planet earth.

Not content with destroying coal in the United States, there are ongoing assaults on allowing U.S. companies to export coal. It’s one thing to destroy coal in favor of more expensive energy in an advanced economy where consumers have more disposable income to absorb the blow of rising energy costs, but to deny developing countries access to electricity is an absurd form of “liberalism.” See a recent GW.org post on similar plans at the World Bank to discontinue funding coal-fired power plants.

China and other developing countries might be flirting with solar panels and windmills (mostly to sell them to the United States), but these renewables aren’t going to actually power any significant portion of their ever growing demand for energy anytime soon. And remember, despite the fact that you might want to protect the environment, you might not feel that way if you’ve never driven a car or turned on a light switch. As this report notes:

China, on the other hand, has emerged as a leader in developing clean, renewable energy, but its demand for coal is still staggering, and growing, and China is predicted to build 2,200 new coal-fired electric plants by 2030.

The report is full of suspicious economic analysis, like the idea that shutting down coal exports (economic activity) can somehow help our country reach long term prosperity because the funds could be used for investments to focus on diversifying our economy, whatever that means. Ending coal exports would somehow help our economy’s diversification. Note that coal exports would also help lower the trade deficit, which groups like CAP seem worried about.

It’s not completely clear to me that the port being used for exports is being subsidized by any governmental bodies (hopefully its not), but they don’t specifically mention any subsidies, so I suspect its mostly being completed with private sector money. Perhaps the authors think our omniscient government should confiscate those private dollars and pick their own pet project instead.

Finally, we get to the real question:

Though Washington state officials are considering the effects of climate-change-causing emissions stemming from shipping the coal across the western United States, there are no legal requirements to consider the carbon pollution from burning the coal half a world away.

Can we also control the climate policies of other sovereign nations? Liberals have proudly discussed the possibility of a carbon tax on imports from countries that have not adopted emission reductions strategies, but they have yet to publicly propose an export ban or tariff on coal. Perhaps its in the pipeline.

Finally, from a Washington-state based blog:

Certainly not least among our concerns should be the moral decision of whether to feed the growing coal addictions of other countries even as we combat climate change by gradually eliminating large-scale sources of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S

Breathe easy, Seattle. Coal exports will certainly be helping some of the 1.4 billion people on this earth who don’t have access to any electricity at all.

CEI’s Iain Murray has an op-ed in The Washington Times today explaining what can be learned from the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan.

Here’s an excerpt:

Without this vigorous defense of nuclear, the Obama energy plan will have a massive hole at its core – one that cannot be filled by wind and solar power any more than it can be filled by fairy dust. The obvious answer is for the administration to stop its war on coal, but that is unlikely. The only other plausible choice is natural gas, derived by hydraulic fracturing – a procedure that environmentalists are already trying to ban. If they want to keep their plan going in any workable form, the president and Mr. Chu need to tell Americans unequivocally where their future power is going to come from, and push back against ideological environmentalists who are trying to ban practical sources of energy.

Read the rest here.

For years, certain natural gas producers, led by Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, have pursued a myopic strategy of demonizing coal in an effort to seize a larger share of the electricity generation market.

It started in 2008, when Chesapeake funded an unsigned “Dirty Coal” advertising campaign. It featured black and white photos of children, with coal smudged faces, looking sad. Having set the table with anti coal propaganda, McClendon then teamed up with the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope to implement a legislative strategy. The pair traveled around the country, pitching natural gas as the “bridge fuel” to a green energy future.

They scored one major success, in Colorado. There, ex-Governor Bill Ritter had made the “New Energy Economy,” the centerpiece of his administration. As such, he was receptive to fuel switching as a way to meet his Climate Action Plan, a non-binding mandate to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 2008 levels. As I’ve written about at length here, the Ritter Administration engaged in a number of deceptions to carry Chesapeake’s water.

All along, CEI has warned the gas industry that it was playing directly into the hands of environmental special interests, for whom all hydrocarbons–not just coal–are considered “dirty.” It’s an ancient strategy: Divide and conquer. Today, it’s the greens and gas taking down coal; tomorrow, it will be the greens taking down gas.

And so it has come to pass, as is explained in an excellent article titled, “Greens Sour on Natural Gas,” by Bob King, from yesterday’s Politico.  It starts,

Whatever happened to the romance between the environmental lobby and natural gas?

After years of basking in a green glow as the cleanest fossil fuel and a favorite short-term choice to replace cheap-but-dirty coal, gas now finds itself under attack from environmentalists, filmmakers and congressional Democrats — and even from some scientists who raise doubts about whether its total emissions are as climate-friendly as commonly believed.

Read the rest here.

Have you seen Spike TV’s new show on coal mining in West Virginia? I haven’t, but I’ve read the Washington Post’s review, and while it didn’t tell me anything about the show, it did provide an interesting insight into jaded lens through which the mainstream media views the coal industry.

January 28′s “TV Column” starts

“You know that West Virginia coal mine that’s the star of Spike TV’s new reality series “Coal,” from the same guy who brings you Discovery’s “Deadliest Catch”"

O.K….so far so good. But in the second paragraph, the post television critic takes an unexpected turn:

“Federal inspectors have cited the Canadian coal company that they say owns the mine for 19 health and safety violations during the nearly three months the TV crew was filming there.”

The remainder of the article is given to the hazardous nature of coal mining. In fact, the regulation of underground mines is an extremely technical and controversial subject. If the Washington Post wants to run stories about this issue, they should be in Section A, written by someone with expertise on the matter. Section C should keep to entertainment.