It’s little wonder why the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list doesn’t include anyone accused of breaking federal environmental laws. It’s hard to argue that a father-son team accused of illegally importing Alfa Romeo sports cars that don’t meet U.S. tailpipe emissions standards is the criminal equivalent of the likes of Usama bin Laden or the other hardened sociopaths for whom the FBI warns the public to remain on the lookout.
December 2008
Barack Obama announced his new energy team at a press conference Monday, sending a subtle slap down to President Bush by saying his administration would "value science" and "make decisions based on the facts."
Scientists skeptical of the assertion that climate change is the result of man's activites are criticizing a recent Associated Press report on global warming, calling it "irrational hysteria," "horrifically bad" and "incredibly biased."
With his choices of top aides in the areas of economics and national security, President-elect Barack Obama veered toward the center of the Democratic Party. He’s mostly appointed people who initially supported the misbegotten Iraq war (and keeping nominal Republican Robert Gates on) to national security posts and people with Clinton-era experience to positions dealing with economic issues.
In the News
Obama Nominates Climate Alarmists for Science Posts
Juliet Eilperin & Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 19 December 2008
EPA Goes Man-Hunting
Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com, 18 December 2008
Not Evil, Just Wrong
Hannity’s America, 15 December 2008
Cooling on Global Warming
Benny Peiser, Wall Street Journal, 16 December 2008
No Rush to New Kyoto?
Chris Horner, Human Events, 16 December 2008
Obama Makes Appointments for Energy, Environment Posts
Oil and Gas Journal, 16 December 2008
Power to the People
William Yeatman & Wayne Crews, Fredericksburg Free Lance Star, 14 December 2008
News You Can Use
Chu on China
“China’s addition of 90GW of coal-fired power plants installed in 2006 alone is expected to emit over 500 million tons of CO2 per year for their 40 year lifetimes. This is (sic) compared to the entire European Union’s Kyoto reduction commitment of 300 million tons of CO2.”—From Dr. Steven Chu’s congressional testimony March 2007. President-elect Barack Obama has nominated Dr. Chu to become Secretary of Energy.
Inside the Beltway
Obama’s Energy and Environment Team
Myron Ebell
Earlier this week, CEI sent out a press release headlined, “Obama Interior, Agriculture Appointees Complete Anti-Energy Team.” I don’t know what I was thinking. President-elect Obama clearly is not finished staffing his anti-energy team.
Today, Obama announced that he would nominate John Holdren to be his science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Dr. Holdren is a physicist who has become a radical apostle of global warming alarmism and energy-rationing policies, which Rob Bradley of the Institute for Energy Research detailed in a paper for CEI. Currently, he is Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center. The Woods Hole Research Center should not be confused with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, although the name was chosen so that you would confuse it. The Woods Hole Research Center is an environmental group that is tricked up to look like a scientific organization. Holdren was also a co-chairman of the self-styled National Commission on Energy Policy.
Dr. Lubchenco is professor of marine biology and zoology at Oregon State University. The Heinz Center, another scientific-appearing environmental group, gave her their Heinz Award in the Environment in 2002. She and Holdren are both past presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Holdren and Lubchenco are on the scientific fringe of global warming alarmism. They make claims that are not supported by the scientific literature. My colleague Julie Walsh has assembled some quotes from Holdren here. We’ll try to put together some from Lubchenco as well and post them on the globalwarming.org blog.
Much more can be said about them individually, but suffice it to say that the Obama Administration’s energy and climate team is a disaster. While he has chosen moderate establishment Democrats for the macro-economic jobs, his micro-economic policy appointees on energy policy will wreck the economy for a generation if President Obama and the Congress adopt their policies.
Around the World
EU’s Climate Plan Is All Smoke and Mirrors
Iain Murray
So if the EU has just put together an agreement to reduce emissions by 20% by 2020, why are the climate alarmist groups calling it “a dark day” and “an embarrassment”?
Well, the answer is because the actual agreement is for a 4% reduction (also explained in the last link, but Roger Pielke Jr does it better). And that may be null and void if a global agreement doesn’t emerge at Copenhagen next year, which it probably won’t.
Note also that the “rich” countries of the EU-15 have actually failed to make any dent in their emissions since the early 1990s and that the former Eastern bloc countries have failed to reduce emissions since 2000. Of course, they have a recession that will reduce emissions over the next couple of years, and if they’re silly enough to adopt the policies that will turn it into a Great Depression, they might just hit their targets. There will be singing and dancing among the ruins, I am sure, when that takes place.
Across the States
California, New Jersey
Los Angeles has a solar power measure on the ballot for the city referendum this March. Measure B, titled “Green Energy and Good Jobs for Los Angeles,” would require the LA Department of Water and Power to build 400 megawatts of distributed generation on publicly owned rooftops. The LA Times reports today that Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller warned that the solar measure could result in “substantial increases” to the electricity bills of DWP customers. In 2000, L.A. announced it would become the “Solar Capital of the World,” with solar panels on 100,000 rooftops by 2010. Three years and $80 million later–to outfit 600 rooftops at a cost of $13,000 each–the city cancelled the project as cost-ineffective, 99,400 buildings short of its goal.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection released its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The proposals were crafted by former DEP head Lisa Jackson, who was tapped this week by President-elect Barack Obama to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. The plan has three components. The first is Governor Corzine’s Energy Master Plan (read here why it’s a boondoggle). The second part of the plan is to regulate tailpipe emissions from cars, but a federal court have yet to decide whether states have the authority to regulate fuel efficiency, and even if they did, the $100 billion regulatory burden would ruin the American auto industry. The final component is New Jersey’s participation in a regional energy rationing program that is designed to increase the price of energy.
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner was present at the Kyoto negotiations back in 1997, and predicted their failure because of the inability to get the developing nations like China to commit to emissions reductions. He has recently returned from the Poznan Conference of the Parties aimed at drawing up Kyoto II, and is of the opinion that nothing has been learned from history. He has set out his concerns in a letter to President-elect Obama (copy below).
Of course, in many ways the developing nations are right to object to the imposition of emissions restrictions. Emissions represent the fastest way out of poverty for their peoples. That's why, as I argue here, we need to think again and move away from the emissions reduction paradigm as the only solution to the global warming risk. Nevertheless, Rep. Sensenbrenner is to be congratulated for calling attention to at least one reason why the current approach is doomed to failure.
Letter follows.
+++++
The Honorable Barack Obama
President-Elect of the United States
451 6th St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20002
Dear Mr. President-Elect:
On November 18, speaking by videotape to the Bi-Partisan Governors’ Global Climate Summit, you invited Members of Congress who would be attending the 14th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poznań, Poland to report back to you on what they learned there. I have just returned from serving as the only Member of the U.S. House of Representatives to observe the negotiations and the only Member of Congress to observe the entire final week. I am happy to accept your invitation.
By way of background, I currently serve as the Ranking Republican Member of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, a committee created by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 110th Congress to study policies, strategies and technologies to substantially and permanently reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. I have attended three prior UNFCCC Conferences of Parties and led the U.S. House delegation to Japan, which observed the 1997 negotiations that produced the Kyoto Protocol.
I am deeply concerned that the current negotiations, which are intended to lead to a new international treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol next year in Copenhagen, are recreating Kyoto’s fatal flaws. Specifically, any treaty that does not include legally binding and verifiable greenhouse gas emissions reductions from developing countries will not be ratified by the U.S. Senate because it will not accomplish the fundamental goal of reducing global emissions.
You are aware of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which the U.S. Senate adopted by a 95-to-0 vote on July 25, 1997, expressing the sense of the Senate that the U.S. should not be a signatory to an agreement that does not include specific scheduled commitments to limit greenhouse gas emissions for developing countries or will result in serious harm to the U.S. economy. Because the Kyoto Protocol failed to satisfy these requirements, neither President Clinton nor President Bush submitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification. At a meeting in Poznań, Senator John Kerry and Vice President Al Gore agreed that an international treaty must include mandatory emissions reductions from developing countries.
The current negotiations seem to be leading toward a similarly flawed outcome. At another meeting in Poznań, I met with negotiators from foreign countries, including China and India. These countries, the first and third largest CO2 emitters in the world, clearly stated that they would not accept legally binding emissions reductions.
The impasse that international negotiators have reached indicates that a new strategy is necessary. I am eager to assist you in emphasizing that, without legally-binding, verifiable commitments from all nations, global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are neither scientifically nor politically achievable.
I look forward to scheduling a more detailed briefing.
My best wishes to you and your family during this holiday season.
Sincerely,
F. James Sensenbrenner
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ91oXYce9M 285 234]
Not evil, just wrong.
From the author of the New York Times bestselling Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) comes Red Hot Lies, an exposé of the hypocrisy, deceit, and outright lies of the global warming alarmists and the compliant media that support them. Did you know that most scientists are global warming skeptics? Or that environmental alarmists have knowingly promoted false and exaggerated data on global warming? Or that in the Left's efforts to suppress free speech (and scientific research), they have compared global warming dissent with "treason"? Shocking, frank, and illuminating, Chris Horner's Red Hot Lies explodes as many myths as Al Gore promotes.
Click here to purchase.
President-elect Barack Obama’s nominations of Senator Ken Salazar to be Secretary of the Interior and of former Governor Tom Vilsack to be Secretary of Agriculture complete a team that opposes affordable energy. As Governor of Iowa, Mr. Vilsack was a leading promoter of the ethanol boondoggle. Colorado Senator Salazar says he is for more oil production on federal land, but has tried to stop one oil and gas project after another on federal land in Colorado.
Senator Salazar and Governor Vilsack will join Dr. Steven Chu, who has been nominated to be Secretary of Energy, and Carol M. Browner, who has been appointed White House energy and global warming “czar.” Ms. Browner is a close ally of former Vice President Al Gore, who advocates closing down all coal-fired power plants and banning new ones, even though coal provides half of America’s electricity. Dr. Chu has declared that coal is “his worst nightmare” and supports European levels of gasoline taxes of four or more dollars a gallon.
If President Obama allows his energy team to pursue their goals, American taxpayers will be required to pay tens of billions of dollars to special interests such as ethanol producers and windmill owners and American consumers will see huge increases in electricity and gasoline prices.
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