Ah, I was waiting for the real rabid liberals to come out, with delusional name calling because they don't have an argument that can make an iota of sense! The real issue is how bad did New York need the Amazon proposal...it was liberal Democrats that in doing something correct in needing to approve the Amazon deal because the high taxes they imposed on industry was losing companies and hence thousands of jobs to a more conservative business climates. Now your liberal (socialist) idiots have proven that New York City is not a place to set-up shop.

“No nation on earth has reduced carbon dioxide emissions as much as the U.S. since 2005. Our CO2 emissions have fallen to their lowest level in 25 years – largely because of increased use of clean natural gas – while the rest of the world’s CO2 emissions have risen 50 percent since 1990.”

Not quite. Natural gas, when burned, produces CO2 and water. The more BTU's, the more CO2, whatever fossil fuel is used. What the dirty fuels add is pollution particles like sulfur, soot, etc. But if you burn carbon (in the presence of oxygen of course), you get carbon dioxide, and you also get hydrogen dioxide--water--because fossil fuels all contain carbon in the complex form of hydrocarbons (hydrogen atoms).

The smoggy parts choke us, while the carbon dioxide part cooks us by the greenhouse effect--a simple fact demonstrated by looking at a greenhouse (or our next door planet Venus, which is so much hotter than we are for this very reason). Long ago in grade school I was taught that carbon dioxide is a harmless gas produced by natural gas, abundant in our air, but it was not yet clear that world industrialization would produce more than the planet could assimilate. For a time, perhaps the added CO2 generated more plant life, and the plants released more oxygen accordingly, but the added heat began (first in the seas) to reduce the supply of plant life. The earth can cool itself by melting down some ice, but as winters get shorter, the supply of ice decreases (clearly visible in satellite photos). Thus the global warming actually gives us polar vortexes in winter as Earth tries to cool things down.

I use clean coal (anthracite) to heat my house because it is cheaper than gas (per BTU), and it does not smoke and choke like the cheaper dirty coal used in power plants. The radiant cast iron stove keeps the house cozy and is especially nice in the living areas around the stove. But it produces CO2 just like gas does. I could use dirty coal if I could find it around here, but the fumes, soot and smoke remind me too much of the after life.

The reason EPA is happy for us to burn hard coal at home (no regulatory restraints) is that it is far cleaner than using electric heat at home, because of the dirty power plants and the lost energy over the power lines, and it is also cleaner than fuel oil (which is kerosene). Hard coal is almost all carbon compared to other fuels (over 90%). EPA regulations discourage burning wood, even though it is replenishible and uses trees already cut, unless the stoves are designed to burn all the particles as well as the logs. Logs rotting in the woods produce as much CO2 as burning them does, but this has been healthy for the forest, as plants want CO2 (and give off oxygen, keeping the carbon).