April 2009

DeSmogBlog: What About Me?

by William Yeatman on April 7, 2009

Yesterday DeSmogBlog added 7 more entries to its Global Warming Denier Database, which is touted as “an extensive database of individuals involved in the global warming denial industry.”

I took a look at the Database, and I am outraged. Why I am I not on the list!!??

Not only am I an unabashed global warming denier*, I personally contribute almost as much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as mega-emitter Al Gore, alarmist hypocrite.

I understand that I might be too small a fish to warrant entry onto the list. After all, I am a lowly policy analyst. That said, the author of the Global Warming Denier Database, Kevin Grandia, lists “event planning” as an area of expertise, and I’ve been a caterer, so perhaps I am suitably qualified.

In any case, if you are reading this, please contact DeSmogBlog (here) and demand that I, William Yeatman, join the list of global warming deniers.

* It hasn’t warmed in 7 years. Al Gore says that “there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer.” Well, emissions keep going up, yet temperatures stay the same. Where’s the warming?

LibertyWeek 37: Slicin’ and Dyson

by Richard Morrison on April 6, 2009

Your host Richard Morrison sits down this week with special guest co-hosts Michelle Minton and William Yeatman for LibertyWeek 37 (regular co-host Cord Blomquist is on the road). We start off with a profile of visionary physicist and global warming skeptic Freeman Dyson, then spend some time WILBing around to improve our productivity at the office, and move on to sixteen full ounces of barkeeper honesty. Finally we take a look at the Chicago factor in Olympic News.

The newest altruist: Fidel Castro

by Julie Walsh on April 6, 2009

in Blog

“The financial crisis is not the only problem. There’s another worse one, because it has to do not with the means of production and distribution but with our very existence. I’m referring to climate change. Both are here and will be discussed simultaneously,” Castro said in the latest of his commentaries on current events.,” according to the Latin American Herald Tribune.

He’ll fit right in with the altruistic designers and promoters of the Waxman-Markey bill, which is “modeled closely on the recommendations of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP)”  industry lobbying organization.

Cooler Heads Digest 3 April 2009

by William Yeatman on April 6, 2009

in Cooler Heads Digest

Announcements

  • You can now receive tweets on the global warming battle by following cooler_heads on Twitter! You’ll receive links to new blog posts on globalwarming.org and thoughts and links from CEI’s global warming team experts.
  • The George C. Marshall Institute has released two new studies on the Economic, Environmental, and Energy Security Consequences of a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

In the News

Video: Marc Morano debating Joe Romm on RollCallTV
Part 1: Starts at 3:45 min.
Part 2: Starts immediately

Congress Balks at Obama’s Cap and Trade Proposal
Wall Street Journal, 3 April 2009

Technology is the Answer to Climate Change
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Wall Street Journal, 3 April 2009

Embracing Trendy Green Policies did not Help the British Tories
Iain Murray and Matthew Sinclair, National Review Online, 1 April 2009

Wall Street Sees “Bucks to be Made” in House Climate Plan
Nathanial Gronewald, New York Times, 2 April 2009

Enviro Group Sues Obama Administration Over New CAFE Standards
Business Week, 2 April 2009

Is Our President a “Carbon Communist”?
Chris Horner, Human Events, 1 April 2009

We’re Experiencing a Very Deep Solar Minimum
NASA, Science.NASA.gov, 1 April 2009

Climate Change Scepticism is Going Mainstream
Chris Ayres, TimesOnline, 1 April 2009

The Obama Administration Risks a Cap and Trade War
Wall Street Journal, 30 March 2009

News You Can Use

We listed the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s March 29 cover story on Freeman Dyson in last week’s news stories, but we want to mention it again.  Nicholas Dawidoff’s fascinating profile of the great physicist focuses on the fact that Dyson is a “Global-Warming Heretic” even though his political views are orthodox left.  The alarmist community is not pleased.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Waxman and Markey Roll Out Monstrosity

The House Energy and Commerce Committee this week released a draft of the energy-rationing bill that Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) plan to mark up in May. The official summary of the bill can be found here and the text of the draft bill here.  A summary analysis by the Heritage Foundation can be found here. The centerpiece of the 648-page bill is a cap-and-trade program, but it contains many other provisions designed to constrict energy supplies and raise prices.

These include: a renewable mandate for electric utilities; funding for carbon capture and storage technology research and a performance standard for new coal-fired power plants; a low carbon transportation fuel standard; new emissions standards for trains, ships, and heavy equipment; developing a smart grid that can control your thermostat; and new energy efficiency standards for buildings, appliances, utilities, industries, and government facilities. All this is quite surprising.  A cap-and-trade program works best if there aren’t a lot of other overlapping programs. Adding all these new programs means that emission reductions achieved by cap-and-trade would come at a much higher cost. It also implies that Representatives Waxman and Markey don’t have much faith in cap-and-trade, which suggests that they have been paying attention to the failing European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme.

Also of note is a requirement that utilities “must demonstrate that its customers have achieved a required level of cumulative electricity or natural gas savings relative to business-as-usual projections.”  It sounds like the bill would do for the family home what the Obama Administration has done to General Motors.

Instead of pre-empting California ‘s emission standards for new vehicles, Waxman and Markey would direct the executive branch to negotiate to try to harmonize federal and conflicting state auto fuel economy programs. However, the draft bill does pre-empt the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. That is a notable recognition that doing so would create a regulatory nightmare.

The cap-and-trade provisions are peculiar and complicated and will require much closer study than I have given them.  The baseline year is 2005, and the targets for emissions reductions are -3% by 2012, -20% by 2020, -42% by 2030, and -83% by 2050.  It appears that the initial reductions could be met through the current economic downturn and by buying a few carbon offsets rather than by making emissions reductions.  Indeed, the carbon offset provisions are remarkably generous.  The cap-and-trade title would also create a huge “strategic reserve” of rationing coupons that could be sold “in case prices rise faster than expected.”  The draft bill does not say how many of the rationing coupons would be given away for free and how many would be auctioned.  That decision will apparently be made later after the various special interests have a chance to threaten and plead.

Waxman and Markey also include provisions to create a trade war and destroy the World Trade Organization. They call it “ensuring domestic competitiveness.”  Similar provisions to “assist” consumers with higher energy bills were left blank and are to be filled in later.

The most astonishing thing in the Waxman-Markey draft is that they state openly that the cap-and-trade provisions “are modeled closely on the recommendations of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership.”  That is to say, the powerful big business special interests that are to be regulated got to write their own regulations. I wonder who will benefit from that, consumers or the big companies that belong to US CAP?  I seem to recall that Chairman Waxman has criticized and even investigated Republicans who introduced bills that were written by outside special interests. That was different, I guess. The second most astonishing thing is how little attention the mainstream media and environmental pressure groups have given to this fact that the regulated are being allowed to write the regulations.

Senate Budget Resolution Includes Good Intentions

Senators passed their version of the budget resolution by a 55-43 margin on Thursday. Several amendments related to the President’s budget proposal to raise $646 billion in federal revenues from a cap-and-trade program were voted and adopted.  The Senate agreed on a 67 to 31 vote to an amendment offered by Senators Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) that says that cap-and-trade should not be included in budget reconciliation legislation.  Reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered and so require only a simple majority to pass.

Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) amendment that states that revenues derived from selling rationing coupons under cap-and-trade should be used to help people pay their higher energy bills was passed by a 54 to 43 vote.  But then the Senate passed a competing amendment from Senator John Thune (R-SD) by an 89 to 8 margin.  It states that any energy-rationing legislation passed should not raise energy or gasoline prices. And by a 54 to 44 vote, Senators agreed to an amendment offered by Senator Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) that urges that any climate legislation passed does not cause significant job losses.

Some people are claiming that passing the Thune amendment means that cap-and-trade is dead in the Senate because cap-and-trade would only work if it raised energy prices. But all these votes are hortatory and non-binding on future Senate votes.  The unavoidable reality is that the colossal revenues that can be generated by auctioning cap-and-trade rationing coupons are an irresistible prospect for many in Congress. Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) told the Washington Post that cap-and-trade was “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time” (you can almost hear his lips smacking). Or as I have been putting it, “the biggest tax increase in history.” So a House-Senate conference committee on the budget could still decide to use budget reconciliation to sneak cap-and-trade through the Senate.

Around the World

Though the G-20 countries decided on a $1.1 trillion package, no agreements were made in regard to climate change. Greenpeace executive director John Sauven’s angst is noted: “Tacking climate change on to the end of the communique (two short paragraphs) as an afterthought does not demonstrate anything like the seriousness we needed to see. Hundreds of billions were found for the IMF and World Bank, but for making the transition to a green economy there is no money on the table, just vague aspirations, talks about talks and agreements to agree.” (parenthetical added)

China now calls for developed countries to give a full 1 percent of their GDPs to developing nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

In April, the President will host a Major Economies Meeting to lay the groundwork for an international agreement at Copenhagen later this year. This is the new name for the process set up by President George W. Bush, which he called the Major Emitters Meeting.

In the States

California

The California Senate voted this week to increase the state’s renewable power mandate to from 20% to 33% of total load by 2020. However Sen. John Benoit ( R-Palm Desert ) said the increased mandate for solar, wind and geothermal power will not only hurt residents who are already having trouble paying their bills, but will also drive manufacturing firms out of the state. “We are going to make ourselves the greenest Third World economy in the world,” he said.

Tennessee

Last Saturday while climate realists were celebrating Human Achievement Hour, some climate alarmists were refraining from using energy for Earth Hour. But not all. Although Al Gore turned off most of his lights, the blue hue from the use of televisions or computers and brightly-lit trees in his garden evidenced his Do As I Say mentality.

Here We Go Again With the Wilkins Ice Shelf

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on April 3, 2009

in Blog, Features

This is CNN (you know, no bias; no bull) — so complete the last sentence from this article’s first few paragraphs for me:

A large ice shelf is “imminently” close to breaking away from part of the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists said Friday.

Satellite images released by the European Space Agency on Friday show new cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf where it connects to Charcot Island, a piece of land considered part of the peninsula.

The cracks are quickly expanding, the ESA said.

Scientists are investigating the causes for the breakups and whether it is linked to…

So guess which of the following completes this last sentence excerpted from CNN’s report? Your choices:

1) …wind and wave conditions.

2) …volcanic activity.

3) …stress caused by ice growth.

4) …natural processes.

5) …global climate change.

Remember, it’s no bias and no bull, so your choice should be a difficult one. Right?

Climate alarmists call for more groupthink

by Marlo Lewis on April 3, 2009

Nothing is more Orwellian than quoting Orwell to attack freedom of thought and discussion. Today’s ClimateWire (subscription required) provides a case in point. “Scientists need to stop doublespeak on climate, [PR] experts say,” reports Christa Marshall. By doublespeak, Orwell meant a political orthodoxy so pervasively embraced as a party line that everybody sheepishly repeats and even believes manifest falsehoods: Ignorance Is Strength, Freedom Is Slavery, War Is Peace.

But to the PR experts cited by Marshall, “doublespeak” means that the world’s scientists, journalists, and government agencies do not all speak about climate change with one voice.

Because of this “doublespeak,” say the experts, “The dangers of global warming are not getting through to the public.” I have a better explanation. Blaming SUVs for hurricane Katrina sets off the public’s B.S. detector, as do implausible scenarios of sea levels rising 20 feet and the climate “tipping” into an Ice Age in our lifetimes or those of our children.

Be that as it may, when these PR experts (who presumably would be happy to have university departments, science journals, and government agencies pay them for their services) say that scientists must do a better job of communicating with the public, what they really mean is that scientists must do a better job of scaring people.

What Orwell would resent most is their demand that every scientist, scientific organization, and agency speak in unison. Although outrageous, this attempt to collectivize scientific discourse–this campaign to turn climate science into a party line–is hardly surprising or new. In fact, it is the arguably the very purpose for which the IPCC was established in the first place.

Could carbon capture and storage keep the lights on in a carbon-constrained future?

by Marlo Lewis on April 2, 2009

in Blog

Only if the costs decline dramatically, a recent Congressional Research Service report suggests, as I discuss here. Currently, the costs of carbon capture and storage (CCS) are too high to justify continuing investment in coal-based power–the source of 50% of U.S. electricity–under increasingly stringent caps or taxes on CO2 emissions.

In addition, the storage component of a CCS system must be very nearly leak proof or it will flunk federal environmental impact assessments. As Cal Tech chemist Nathan Lewis observes, “The collective leak rates of the reservoirs must be significantly lower than 1%, sustained over a century-to-millennium time-scale. Otherwise, after 50 to 100 years of sequestration, the yearly emissions will be comparable to the emission levels that were supposed to be mitigated in the first place.”

Finally, even if economical and leak-proof, CCS must overcome the NIMBY forces who seem bent on blocking any and all energy projects, from wind farms to desert solar concentrator arrays. According to an MIT report (see p. ix), the pipeline network required to transport all the CO2 from U.S. coal power plants to underground storage sites would rival the U.S. oil or natural gas pipeline networks in size. 

So, can CCS keep the lights on in a carbon-constrained future? Only if three conditions are met: costs fall dramatically, the storage sites are virtually leak proof, and NIMBYs get out of the way.

Markets Rally on Hopes of Regulatory Relief

by Hans Bader on April 2, 2009

The stock market has gone up by 280 points so far today, fueled by FASB’s vote to relax rigid mark-to-market accounting rules, which require financial institutions to value assets at their current fire-sale prices, and magnify boom-bust economic cycles.

The market may also be getting a boost from the Senate’s earlier vote undercutting the Obama Administration’s proposed $2 trillion cap-and-trade carbon tax, which would impose burdens on the economy akin to Herbert Hoover’s disastrous 1932 Revenue Act at the beginning of the Great Depression.

The market’s rise contrasts with its fall in the weeks after passage of Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which Obama falsely claimed was needed to avert “disaster” and “irreversible decline.” Obama made that claim even though the Congressional Budget Office, controlled by his own Congressional allies, admitted that the stimulus package would shrink the economy over “the long run.”

Many commentators have called for relaxation or repeal of mark-to-market accounting rules to stem the financial crisis, including former FDIC Chairman William Isaac, Congressmen Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) and Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), the Wall Street Journal, John Berlau, Jeff Miller, Holman Jenkins, Newt Gingrich, and the Republican Study Committee.

While pushing through $8 trillion in bailouts, and trillions more in debt from massive budget increases, the Obama administration has until recently ignored inexpensive possible ways of mitigating the financial crisis like reform of “mark-to-market” accounting rules.

The Obama administration’s footdragging on accounting-regulation reform is inconsistent with the rationale for its trillion-dollar toxic-asset buy-up program, which defies mark-to-market concepts in a much more extreme way than a mere relaxation of mark-to-market accounting rules. The Treasury Secretary claims taxpayers won’t lose a full trillion under Obama’s toxic-asset program, because the assets aren’t as worthless as their current market prices suggest. But if that’s true, why did he continue to insist on federal accounting rules that force banks to value their assets at the current depressed market prices? Either the accounting rules were right — in which case taxpayers will end up losing a trillion dollars — or they were wrong, amplifying financial panics — in which case the rules should be repealed, so that banks, not taxpayers, will be able to take the risk of holding the assets. (If these accounting rules, known as “mark-to-market” accounting, had been in place in the late 1980s, “every major commercial bank would have collapsed,” wiping out the economy).

It’s not even clear that all these bailouts are needed. As William Seidman, the banking official who helped clean up the S&L Crisis as head of the RTC, notes, the government’s $170 billion AIG bailout was absurdly expensive and wasteful. “We paid off huge debts that AIG had in the swaps market, which we probably did not have to do. We bought a number of assets from AIG at high prices, which we probably did not have to do.”

That includes a huge unneeded windfall for the investment bank formerly headed by Treasury Secretary Paulson, Goldman Sachs, a major donor to liberal politicians, which received billions of dollars from taxpayers that it did not even need, through the AIG bailout.

Obama’s record-breaking tax and spending increases violate his campaign promises to enact a “net spending cut” and not to raise taxes “in any form” on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

Ironically, Obama’s “cap-and-trade” carbon tax might have the perverse effect of increasing, rather than reducing, greenhouse gas emissions. Cap-and-trade is a pernicious “form of tax farming.”

What would it take to reduce CO2 levels to 350 ppm?

by Marlo Lewis on April 2, 2009

in Blog

“Climate 350″–for 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere–is fast becoming the new mantra of Gorethodox believers in climate doom and coercive energy rationing. Columbia University will host a conference on the topic next month, featuring NASA scientist James Hansen as the keynote speaker.

But as Newsweekreporter Sharon Begley points out, just to limit atmospheric concentrations to 450 ppm, nations would have to build 10,000 new nuclear power plants–one every other day from now until 2050–plus a mind boggling 1 million solar roof top panels per day from now until 2050. Even then, 450 ppm is attainable only if global energy efficiency improves by a whopping 500%, population grows only to 9 billion (instead of 10 billion or 11 billion), and global GDP grows at an anemic (near recession) rate of 1.6% per year.

What would it take to lower CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm? According to Begley’s source, Cal Tech chemist Nathan Lewis, global CO2 emissions would have to drop to zero by 2050.

Absent revolutionary changes in energy production, distribution, conversion, and storage–Nobel-caliber breakthroughs that nobody can plan or predict–lowering CO2 emissions to 350 ppm is impossible without draconian cutbacks in population, economic output, or both. Whether they realize it or not, the Climate 350 Club is asking us to go back to the caves.

For additional discussion, see my post on Masterresource.org.

Senate votes to kill cap-and-trade?

by Marlo Lewis on April 2, 2009

in Blog

Well, not overtly, but the Senate voted 89-8 for an amendment to the Fiscal year 2010 budget resolution (S. Con Res. 13), introduced by Sen. John Thune (R-SD), which would prohibit any future greenhouse gas cap-and-trade initiative from increasing gasoline prices and electricity rates for U.S. households and businesses.  

As University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. points out, “The entire purpose of cap and trade is in fact to increase the costs of carbon-emitting sources of energy, which dominate US energy consumption. The Thune Amendment thus undercuts the entire purpose of cap and trade.” In other words, it is impossible to vote for the Thune amendment and support cap-and-trade and be consistent, candid, or straight with the American people.

Who voted for the Thune amendment? A whole bunch of cap-and-traders including Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), John McCain (R-AZ), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and John Warner (D-VA).

Boxer tried to square the circle, proposing legislation, adopted 54-43, to compensate consumers for higher energy prices via tax rebates. But rebates after-the-fact are not the same as prohibiting measures that increase energy prices in the first place. Does anyone really believe that if carbon permit auctions under President Obama’s cap-and-trade initiative raise $646 billion or even $1.9 trillion for the Treasury, spendaholics in Congress will not use one dime of the boodle to fund pet projects, “green” jobs, or health-care “reform”?

Pielke, Jr. concludes on a cheery note:

The Thune Amendment effectively kills cap and trade as a mechanism for reducing emissions. I have little doubt that the legislation will go forward, and it likely will pass in some form and do many things. Its just that reducing emissions won’t be among them. Cap and trade is dead, but the charade will go on.

A consumation devoutly to be wished. On the other hand, it ain’t over ’till it’s over. We should not underestimate the capacity of politicians to insist on having their cake and eating it. Again, Boxer pretends to see no contradiction between voting for Thune and supporting Obama’s $646 billion to $1.9 trillion energy tax. The Thune amendment could also be jettisoned or vitiated by House-Senate conferees.

Nonetheless, the Thune amendment shows the path to victory. Cap-and-traders fear public retribution over high electricity and gasoline prices more than they fear the alleged horrors of global warming. Our task is obvious–keep calling cap-and-trade an energy tax, because that is what it is.

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