The environmental movement, only recently poised for major advances on global warming and other issues, has suddenly found itself on the defensive as high gasoline prices shift the political climate nationwide and trigger defections by longtime supporters.
June 2008
Thus, I am thankful to Al Gore for proving that even in a high profile demonstration project these "solutions" won't work. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research reports that Gore's home in Nashville has increased its energy usage by 10% in the past year.
Taking a break for a moment from domestic politics, let's turn to our supposed model for rationing GHG emissions: Europe. The EU has just released its report to the UNFCCC, “Annual European Community greenhouse gas inventory 1990–2006 and inventory report 2008” (summary here). The short version of the story is that the report does not support either a claim that the EU is “on track” to meet emission reduction promises, or that the ETS is a success.
This is true although the document claims a 2006 GHG emission reduction of 08.% over 2005, following on an equivalent reduction in 2005 over 2004.
That of course won't get them anywhere near where they need to go, and I'm still poring over details (though already I've encountered extensive explanations of wholesale revisions of past claims, "no explanation offered" about certain important claims, and an admission that certain reduction data is facially suspect and likely to be the subject of revision).
But notable is how different this is from preliminary indications, detailed earlier here. One possible explanation for the discrepancy is one reality that jumps out in a first reading of the report, that the GHG reductions largely did not come from CO2.
Still, those early reports from industry just don't jibe that well with the official Brussels claim of a reduction. As I wrote here, there is every reason to take this and all EU GHG reports with a grain of salt given the EU's rather breathtaking willingness to fudge its numbers.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
That the presidential race inhabits every nook and cranny of the mind of cable television news hosts became ridiculously clear in a Wolf Blitzer interview with Chevron Corp. CEO David O'Reilly:
Blitzer: You know you have — you and ExxonMobil, the Big Oil companies –have a huge public relations problem. In all the recent polls, when the American public is asked, who do you blame for these huge gas prices at the pump, they — more than any other single source — they blame Big Oil. They blame you. What's going on?…
Blitzer: There's other blame, but more than any other single source, they blame Big Oil….
Blitzer: Because you have had record profits, right?
O'Reilly: We're investing those record profits.
Blitzer: But billions and billions of dollars in profits, more than ever before….
Blitzer: You know that Barack Obama says if he's president, he wants a windfall profits tax. He wants to take a chunk of your profits right now and give it back to the American people. John McCain opposes that, as you know. So I assume you would like to see John McCain elected president?…
Blitzer: So, I guess, given the stark difference when it comes to Big Oil between Obama and McCain — let me rephrase the question — do you want McCain to be elected?
Talk about obsessed — and can someone please tell me how that's "rephrasing the question?!"
If you read the whole interview, CNN's iReporters show themselves to be better questioners than the Blitzer.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
As Drudge notes today, $4-per-gallon-(plus!) gasoline has put environmentalists on their heels (it's the economy, stupids!), with arguments from their apologists getting ever sillier:
John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, opposed new offshore drilling in his 2000 presidential campaign. He said Tuesday that he now supported lifting the long-standing ban.
"I believe it is time for federal government to lift these restrictions and put our own reserves to use," the Arizona senator said in a Houston speech on energy security….
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) decried McCain's stance. "He ought to know he'd ruin Florida's $65-billion tourism economy by allowing oil rigs off the coast."
Dear Senator: Do the math. If folks can't afford the fuel (airline tickets, etc.) it takes to travel to the Sunshine State or other like places, you aren't going to have a "tourism economy."
Now what will the environmentlists do? China’s lead in CO2 emissions keeps growing. Reports the New York Times:
China has clearly overtaken the United States as the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas, a new study has found, its emissions increasing 8 percent in 2007. The Chinese increase accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the year’s global greenhouse gas emissions, the study found.
The report, released Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, found that in 2007 China’s emissions were 14 percent higher than those of the United States. In the previous year’s annual study, the researchers found for the first time that China had become the world’s leading emitter, with carbon emissions 7 percent higher by volume than the United States in 2006.
Many experts had been skeptical of the earlier study, whose results were less clear-cut than those released Friday. The International Energy Agency had continued to say only that China was projected to overtake the United States by the end of 2007. Now there is little doubt.
“The difference had grown to a 14 percent difference, and that’s indeed quite large,” said Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the Dutch agency. “It’s now so large that it’s quite a robust conclusion.”
China’s emissions are most likely to continue growing substantially for years to come because they are tied to the country’s strong economic growth and its particular mix of industry and power sources, the researchers said.
So remind me again why the U.S. is supposed to wreck it’s economy in an attempt to lower CO2 levels …
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) today announced that he wants to end the federal government’s moratorium on offshore drilling for oil and gas. Instead of a blanket ban, he prefers that states decide for themselves whether or not to allow exploration and extraction of fossil fuel deposits off their coastlines.
In light of McCain’s new federalist offshore drilling policy, his continued support for the federal government’s moratorium on drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t make much sense. After all, an overwhelming majority of Alaskans want to lift the ban.
By McCain’s reasoning, Florida and California should get to dictate drilling policy on federal lands 100 miles off their coasts, but Alaska shouldn’t be afforded the same privilege on federal land located within its borders.
Apparently, McCain believes that some states have more rights than others.
For a quarter-century, drilling for oil and gas off nearly all the American coastline has been banned in part to protect tourism and to lessen the chances of beach-blackening spills.
In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Our friends at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research have been looking at Al Gore's personal residential energy consumption again, and things are only getting more embarrassing for the world's foremost global warming alarmist:
In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”
In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.
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