The White House Blog

You Can't Believe Everything You Read

Posted by Dan Pfeiffer on February 04, 2011 at 04:55 PM EST

As valuable as the internet can be in helping to spread information, most people know that you can’t believe everything you read, and they should check the source before relaying every alarming story they read. One such story is going around the internet over the past two days claiming that the Obama Administration is somehow responsible for the rolling blackouts in Texas that have caused terrible hardship for so many Texans. The source is questionable and the story is unquestionably false.

According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, these blackouts were actually the result of extreme cold temperatures and high winds, which led to a variety of mechanical failures at more than 50 power plants around the state.

Anytime communities experience major outages, it is a cause for concern, and major utilities and regulators are investigating steps that can be taken to decrease any weather related vulnerability of power generating plants in the state that, unlike their northern counterparts which experience extreme cold every winter, are often not designed to withstand such rare weather conditions.

Some are trying to blame these blackouts – which the industry has already provided explanation for – on Clean Air Act standards under consideration to curb dangerous pollution, including carbon pollution. While these claims gained traction on the internet, there is a major problem with this theory – no power plant in Texas has yet been required to do anything to control carbon pollution.

In December the EPA announced its intent to update important Clean Air Act standards that for decades have decreased harmful pollution and protected public health. In the coming months the EPA will work closely with key stakeholders, including industry, to develop a commonsense standard for currently unchecked, dangerous carbon pollution. Any standard, which will leverage existing technologies and only apply to the largest polluters, will not be proposed until later this year, allowing an extensive public comment period, and following that additional input no final rule is scheduled to be in place until late 2012.

Despite these modest steps, many continue to mischaracterize this process – making unsubstantiated claims about the impact this will have on everything from industry to energy prices. This most recent effort simply underscores a willingness to ignore the facts to further an agenda that seeks to stop the EPA from sensible updates to the Clean Air Act.

Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director

read on http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/02/04/you-cant-believe-everything-you-read

Alex Responds:

White House Attacks Prison Planet.com Report On Blackouts

Alex Jones & Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 5, 2011
- Lies about Texas not being affected by draconian EPA rules on greenhouse gases.
- Deception about clean burning coal-fired plants producing “carbon pollution”.
- Spin in denying EPA and Obama administration have publicly stated and openly embarked on mission to destroy coal industry by blocking construction of new power plants.
The White House has publicly responded to the controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s agenda to bankrupt the coal industry and its connection to this week’s blackouts across the country, by attempting to deny the link in a rebuttal that amounts to nothing more than a tissue of lies, deception and spin.
In a blog that appears on the front page of WhiteHouse.gov, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer begins by claiming that the story came from a “questionable” source and is “unquestionably false,” without even naming the source. Frightened that Americans might actually read the source and make their own minds up based on the facts, Pfeiffer fails to provide a link to our original article that was subsequently picked up by the Drudge Report, Fox News and numerous other media outlets.
Pfeiffer then oversimplifies the debate by building a straw man argument based around the premise that “the Obama Administration is somehow responsible for the rolling blackouts in Texas,” before blaming the outages on cold weather.
By framing the argument to make out as if we claimed Obama flipped a switch and the lights went out is completely deceptive. Of course the cold weather has shown that the country is vulnerable to blackouts, but that vulnerability is a direct result of the Obama administration’s stated goal to bankrupt the coal industry and its proven track record, through the enforcement of EPA regulations, of blocking power plants from being built that would be able to handle the extra demand.
Pfeiffer then claims that the blackouts were a result of power plants experiencing “mechanical failures,” completely ignoring the fact that the blackouts were planned and were made necessary because of a lack of supply to meet increased demand. That’s why Texas had to rely on Mexico to meet its power shortfall, an offer that was subsequently suspended.
Very meaty, lots of videos and links, read on @http://www.infowars.com/white-house-responds-to-blackout-controversy/