Is a Carbon Tax a Conservative Idea Whose Time Has Come? Thoughts on the R Street – Heartland Debate

by Marlo Lewis on June 16, 2013

in Blog, Features

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On Thursday, the R Street Institute and the Heartland Institute held a debate in a Washington, D.C. auditorium on the proposition: “Resolved: Under no circumstances should conservatives support a tax on carbon emissions.” About 150 people attended.

Arguing for the proposition were James Taylor of Heartland and David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation. Arguing against were Andrew Moylan of R Street and former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) of the Energy and Enterprise Institute.

After the debate, moderator and Reason Foundation science correspondent Ron Bailey called for a division of the house. A majority of the audience opposed the proposition. The next day Bailey reported on Reason’s blog that “About 60% of Conservatives Support a Carbon Tax.” When this headline provoked the ire of some conservatives, Bailey said it was meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek.

Whether offered in jest or not, Bailey’s headline is false. Had he put the question to the 150 or so movement conservatives who attend Grover Norquist’s Wednesday Meeting, the head count might have been 148-2 — with only Moylan and Eli Lehrer of R Street standing in favor of a carbon tax.

Most people who attend carbon tax events in D.C. are ‘progressives.’ I suspect many who came to the debate were staunch carbon taxers and would not have stood for the proposition even if Taylor and Kreutzer dazzled with the oratory of Abe Lincoln and Dan’l Webster.

An unfortunate word choice may also have tilted the straw poll against the proposition. Prudence counsels us never to say never. In some circumtances, bad choices are the only way to avoid even greater evils. The categorical formulation (“under no circumstances”) made the proposition literally unreasonable.

Here’s what the debate was really about: “Resolved, a carbon tax is a conservative idea whose time has come.” That proposition is almost farsical on its face. Even some greenies in the room might have had to swallow hard before standing up for it.

Let’s review some of the back and forth.

Do carbon taxes pick winners and losers?

Inglis led off by arguing that a conservative energy policy does not “pick winners and losers.” What conservatives want is an “impartial cop on the beat.” That’s a carbon tax, which applies equally to all forms of energy and then lets the “free market” decide. Not so — not even close.

A carbon tax discriminates against carbon-based (fossil) fuels. That’s its core function! Inglis might as well say that a nuclear tax applies equally to all forms of energy and lets the free market decide. Just because the market sorts out the effects of a discriminatory tax does not make the tax non-discriminatory. [click to continue…]

Climate Models: “Epic Failure” or “Spot on Consistent” with Observed Warming?

by Marlo Lewis on June 10, 2013

in Blog, Features

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NASA scientist Roy Spencer recently posted on his Web site some startling graphs produced by John Christy, his colleague at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The graph immediately below compares the linear-trend temperature projections of 73 climate models with the linear trend of observed temperatures for the bulk tropical atmosphere during 1979-2012.

CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT

The 73 models are part of the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP-5), a collaborative effort of 20+ modeling groups to inform the IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The Project’s three main objectives are to “evaluate how realistic the models are in simulating the recent past,” “provide projections of future climate change” out to 2035 and 2100, and “understand some of the factors responsible for differences in model outputs” such as different estimates of feedback effects.

Christy’s graph reveals what Spencer calls an “epic failure” of the models to match the actual behavior of the tropical atmosphere. Models that overestimate recent warming are likely to overestimate future warming as well.

Of course, observational systems may have biases and errors, but that is an implausible explanation for the mismatch. The observations come from two satellite and four radiosonde (weather balloon) datasets, which all independently give “virtually identical trends.”

What about the subset of U.S.-designed models — do they get the trend right? Nope. Take a gander at the next graph.

CMIP5-19-USA-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT

[click to continue…]

Where Does America’s Oil Come From? (An Update)

by Marlo Lewis on June 7, 2013

in Features

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In 2005, 60% of all petroleum consumed in the U.S. came from imports. The conventional wisdom then and for several years thereafter was that America was fated to become ever-more-dependent on increasingly costly petroleum imports.

Peak oil alarm was in vogue, popularized by books such as Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life after Gridcrash (2006), Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (2006), A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash – We’re Running Out and Don’t Have a Plan (2007), Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (2008), and Confronting Collapse: Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World (2009).

M. King Hubbert, the originator of peak oil theory, correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. domestic petroleum production would peak between 1965-1970. He also forecast a peak in global production by the late-2000s. In 2008, many commentators interpreted spiking crude oil prices as confirmation of Hubbert’s theory.

But Hubbert, who died in 1989, did not live to see the “shale revolution.” During the past decade, advances in directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing have made it economical to extract oil from the pores of rock. Although U.S. petroleum production is still lower than it was at its peak in 1970, it has increased every year since 2008 with no end in sight.

Citi GPS, a highly respected analytic group, argues that “surging supply growth” from fracked shale formations, deep-water wells, and Canada’s oil sands could “transform North America into the new Middle East by 2020.” Peak oil, if it exists at all, is likely decades away, not around the corner, as the books cited above assumed.

In a previous post, I discussed the Energy Information Administration’s  July 2011 analysis of U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The EIA updated its analysis in May 2013. What has changed?

Basically, there’s more of the same. Already by 2010, more than half of all the oil we consumed came from the U.S. But whereas the balance then was 51% domestic and 49% imports, the balance as of 2012 was 60% domestic and 40% imports (exactly the reverse of the percentages in 2005).

imports_domestic_petro_shares_demand-small 2010

imports_domestic_petro_shares_demand_2012

[click to continue…]

Video: CEI Senior Fellow Chris Horner Presentation on EPA FOIA Scandals

by William Yeatman on June 7, 2013

in Blog

On Monday, May 20, in room 406 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building, the Competitive Enterprise Institute held a Congressional staff and media briefing on “EPA’s FOIA Scandals: ‘Richard Windsor,’ Gina McCarthy, and the Abuse of Power,” given by Chris Horner, author of The Liberal War on Transparency and CEI Senior Fellow. Video of Chris’s presentation is available below.

EPA’s FOIA Scandals: “Richard Windsor,” Gina McCarthy, and the Abuse of Power from CEI Video on Vimeo.

Social Cost of Carbon: Interagency Group Predictably Predicts Climate Change Worse Than Predicted

by Marlo Lewis on June 5, 2013

in Blog, Features

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Hold the presses! A U.S. Government interagency working group has just released its updated Technical Support Document (TSD) on the social cost of carbon (SCC).

This is joyous news in some circles. “The ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ Is Almost Double What the Government Previously Thought,” Climate Progress enthuses. Why are they pleased? Because the higher the SCC, the stronger the (apparent) case for suppressing the production and export of hydrocarbon energy in general, and for blocking the Keystone XL pipeline in particular.

SCC is an estimate of how much damage an incremental ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions does to humanity and the biosphere. SCC estimates are driven by assumptions about such issues as climate sensitivity (how much warming results from a given increase in CO2 concentrations), climate impacts (how warming will affect weather patterns and sea-level rise), economic impacts (how changes in global temperature, weather, and sea-level rise will affect agriculture and other climate-sensitive activities), and technological change (how adaptive capabilities will develop as climate changes).

Modelers feed the assumptions into computer programs called “integrated assessment models” (IAMs). By tweaking those values, the modeler can get pretty much any result he desires. Outcomes also vary based on the discount rate selected, i.e., how much people are assumed to value income in the future compared to income in the present.

Using three IAMs, three discount rates (2.5,% 3,% and 5%), and a fourth value representing low-probability catastrophic impacts, the interagency group calculates four SCC estimates for the year 2020. In the working group’s 2010 TSD, the SCC estimates were $7, $26, $42, and $81 (2007$). In the updated TSD, the corresponding estimates are $12, $38, $58, and $129 (2007$). Excuse me, but even for the high-impact projections, the updated estimate ($129) is 59% higher than the 2010 estimate ($81), which is more than a tad shy of “almost double.”

Let’s cut to the chase. Those who say the SCC is bigger than the government previously thought merely recycle the old saw that climate change is ”worse than scientists previously thought.” They are mistaken. The climate change outlook is better than we have long been told.

One reason the updated estimates are higher is that the IAMs contain an “explicit representation” of sea-level rise “dynamics.” Are the modelers keeping up with the scientific literature? Consider two recent studies

  • King et al. (2012): The rate of Antarctic ice loss is not accelerating and translates to less than one inch of sea-level rise per century.
  • Faezeh et al. (2013): Greenland’s four main outlet glaciers are projected to contribute 19 to 30 millimeters (0.7 to 1.1 inches) to sea level rise by 2200 under a mid-range warming scenario (2.8°C by 2100) and 29 to 49 millimeters (1.1 to 1.9 inches) under a high-end warming scenario (4.5°C by 2100).

If 21st century sea-level rise is more likely to be measured in inches rather than feet or meters, shouldn’t SCC estimates decline?

And what about the 15-year period of no-net warming, which the climate science establishment did not predict and still struggles to explain? The warming pause is hard to square with the mantra of “worse than we thought.” It is evidence that the SCC is lower than they thought.

Let’s look at the disconnect between what they predicted and what happened.  The graph below comes from NASA scientist Roy Spencer:  [click to continue…]

The Inanity of the Global Solar Panel Market

by William Yeatman on June 4, 2013

in Blog

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Last week, the Wall Street Journal gave a fascinating snapshot of the stupidity of the global solar market. As it is with all good news reports, the first paragraph says it all:

BEIJING—Solar-panel makers in China are open to raising prices and limiting exports to the European Union as a way to avoid steep trade tariffs, industry representatives said Thursday.

Allow me to put this in perspective. European consumers want solar panels. Indeed, they are forced to want them, due to Soviet-style green energy production quotas enacted by the EU. That’s the context: Europeans wanting/having to buy this product.

Against this backdrop, manufacturers in China are OFFERING to raise prices. They aren’t colluding to make more money; rather, they are voluntarily raising prices against their better judgment. Why? Because EU officials are threatening to raise prices by slapping tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels (which, again, are products that Europeans want to buy).

Keep in mind as well that the EU’s threatened tariff would co-exist with national-level subsidies, known as “feed in tariffs,” designed to suppress the price of solar panels. This is true in Germany and Spain, off the top of my head, and likely true in other countries.

So there’s an EU policy that forces Europeans to buy solar panels. Yet there is also an EU policy meant to make solar panels much more expensive. Finally, there are several European policies meant to make them much cheaper. Got that?

Such are the endless and inefficient complexities wrought when government creates an industry out of whole cloth, as any member of the Gosplan could have told you.

Winning Voter Support Makes Politicians Sound Normal on Energy Policy

by William Yeatman on June 3, 2013

in Blog

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E&E EnergyWire (subscription required) last week reported that Virginia Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has endorsed federal legislation that would open offshore Virginia to oil and gas drilling. This is a major shift from his failed 2009 campaign, during which he opposed offshore drilling. On energy policy, McAuliffe also has done a U-turn on coal. In 2009, he pledged to never allow a coal fired power plant; now, he doesn’t mention coal-fired power, but his campaign does support increased coal exports.

McAuliffe’s abrupt shift in energy policy mirrors President Barack Obama’s performance during debates with GOP candidate Mitt Romney in late 2012. During his first term, President Obama’s administration imposed a suite of policies meant to inhibit hydrocarbon energy production in the United States. Yet during the debate, when the American public was paying attention, the President championed his supposed support for more oil and gas drilling, and even claimed to be a booster of the coal industry.

‘Unleash the Energy Export Revolution’ – Mark Mills

by Marlo Lewis on June 3, 2013

in Features

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Today in National Review Online, Mark Mills has a terrific column titled “Unleash the Energy Export Revolution.” He begins by calling out the irrationality of our government’s current anti-energy export policy: 

On May 17, the Department of Energy (DOE) approved just the second license in America to export natural gas. Nineteen more applicants still wait. Yes, private businesses, willing to spend tens of billions of private capital, are lined up for a schoolyard game of “Mother May I” to get permission to export a product that the U.S. is uniquely good at manufacturing. So good, in fact, that America is now the world’s No. 1 producer, with no end in sight. What a world. 

Or, as comedian Yakov Smirnov might say, “What a country!”

Mills makes several salient points. [click to continue…]

Stranger than Fiction: Ethical Abomination “Richard Windsor” Wins EPA Award for Ethics

by William Yeatman on June 3, 2013

in Blog

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Over at National Review, Eliana Johnson has an excellent post about my colleague Chris Horner’s latest FOIA find. Evidently, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson took her Congressional-mandated transparency training using her false identity, “Richard Windsor.”And Mr. Windsor did well, because she was rewarded with three certificates attesting to her being a “scholar of ethical behavior.”

Documents released by the agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that, for three years, the EPA certified Windsor as a “scholar of ethical behavior.”

The agency also documented the nonexistent Windsor’s completion of training courses in the management of e-mail records, cyber-security awareness, and what appears to be a counter-terror initiative that urges federal employees to report suspicious activity.

The EPA made the certifications public in response to a FOIA request from Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who was tipped off to Jackson’s use of the Windsor account by agency employees while he was researching his 2012 book, The Liberal War on Transparency. Horner says that the EPA probably issued agency-wide training requirements for anybody who wished to maintain an active e-mail address, “never contemplating a false identity or fake employee would be created.”

So…EPA’s bloated bureaucracy thought that Lisa Jackson’s alias, the existence of which is a violation of transparency ethics, was a real person, and the agency awarded him/her a citation for ethics. Ladies and gentleman, your taxes at work!

This strange juxtaposition (i.e., Lisa Jackson ostensibly demonstrating her ethical behavior in the act of committing a gross ethical violation) immediately brought to mind the end of Billy Madison, when Billy’s nemesis, Eric, had a meltdown over “business ethics.” [click to continue…]

John Christy: Climate Change Overview in Six Slides

by Marlo Lewis on May 31, 2013

in Blog, Features

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Yesterday, Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) hosted a climate change conference in a technology park in Fairmont, W.Va.

A mixed panel of warmistas and skeptics featured Marc Marano of Climate Depot, Scott Denning of Colorado State University, Jim Hurrell of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Joe Casola of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, Annie Petsonk of Environmental Defense Fund, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, and John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who participated by satellite link.

I emailed Dr. Christy and asked for permission to post his presentation on GlobalWarming.Org; he promptly sent me the files.

Dr. Christy’s Power Point presentation is available here. The accompanying text is available here. The main takeaway points:

  • Popular scare stories that weather extremes – hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods — are getting worse are not based on fact.
  • In the U.S., high temperature records are not becoming more numerous.
  • Climate models significantly overestimated warming during the past 15 years.
  • Even if climate models were correct, a 50% reduction in U.S. CO2 emissions by 2050 would avert only 0.07°C of warming by 2100.
  • If a policy is not economically sustainable, it’s not politically sustainable.
  • The climate change impact of enhancing CO2 concentrations has so far been small compared to the public health and biospheric benefits provided by affordable, carbon-based energy.

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