May 2009

That would be Karl Bohnak, chief meteorologist at WLUC-TV on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, who calls global warming alarmism his “pet peeve” and finally got so fed up with it that he wrote to his congressman, Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak. He shared his letter in a blog post on his station’s Web site:

For years as a broadcast meteorologist, I kept silent about the issue of “global warming.”  Declaring skepticism labeled you (and still does) as an anti-environmentalist. After former VP Gore’s movie hit the big screen, I could remain silent no more.  “An Inconvenient Truth” was filled with so many gross distortions and outright scientific misrepresentations; I felt it was my obligation to speak out….

CO2 is not a pollutant and it’s not a problem.  The problem is rent-seeking corporations looking to cash in on cap and trade and low-output, high-cost alternative energy.  As your Michigan House colleague Congressman Dingell says “cap and trade is a tax, and it’s a great big one.”  This is not the time to raise energy prices, which is what this bill will surely do.  I believe the majority of your constituents will suffer adversely if this legislation is passed.

After receiving Stupak’s standard constituent letter, Bohnak responded with some data that clarified some of the congressman’s misconceptions. Then Bohnak addresses readers of his blog, and specifically takes aim at his own industry — the media:

Note Congressman Stupak’s response on the issue of higher energy costs.  He states that he wants to make sure “unreasonable costs” are not passed on to consumers.  I ask, “What are unreasonable costs?”  I do not want to pay ANY higher costs (reasonable or unreasonable) for a problem that just isn’t there.

I ask you to look at the data.  Don’t fall for the line that “An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing this unusual warming of our planet.” Majority rule is not how science is conducted.  If one wants to play that game, there’s a growing segment of scientists that have declared themselves “global warming skeptics.” Get as much information as you can, but you will NOT get it from the mainstream media (MSM).  The MSM is in the business of whipping up fear (look at the recent swine flu story).  Stories that the world is heading toward a precipice are right up its alley.  Also, there is at least one corporate media owner (My note, not Bohnak’s: this is General Electric, owner of NBC) that has a high stake in seeing this bill passed.

A subtly brave statement by Bohnak, considering his station’s network affiliation. Good for him.

Sending Us Back to 1875
U.S. Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas), Washington Times, 10 May 2009

The war against global warming evidently starts at home, where President Obama says the price of electricity will “necessarily skyrocket” when the government caps carbon dioxide and issues emissions permits that utilities can buy and sell to one another.

Is Copenhagen Already Dead?
Terence Corcoran, National Post, 12 May 2009

The great global policy push for massive climate control laws and big fat taxes on carbon appear to be heading into a brick wall. From Australia to British Columbia, from Washington to Copenhagen, there are growing signs that the much anticipated replacement for the Kyoto Accord will be as dead as Kyoto before it arrives.

Expose Cap-and-Trade Costs
Jason Chaffetz, Washington Times, 12 May 2009

Government gets more of our money, and utility companies get the blame when they pass on the tax increase to consumers.

Maybe forever! 

On April 30, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) placed a hold on the nomination of Regina McCarthy as Assistant Administrator of the EPA Office of Air and Radiation. “The nominee has failed to address serious concerns” about how the EPA would regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act, once the Agency finalizes its endangerment finding, Barrasso stated. 

The endangerment finding will compel EPA to establish GHG standards for new motor vehicles. This will make carbon dioxide (CO2) a pollutant “subject to regulation” under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program. An estimated 1.2 million previously unregulated buildings and facilities emit enough CO2 each year (250 tons) to qualify as “major stationary sources” under the PSD program. All would become vulnerable to new controls, monitoring, paperwork, penalties, and litigation. In 2003, the average PSD permit cost each applicant $125,120 and 866 burden hours to obtain.

Last week, Sen. Barrasso asked Ms. McCarthy how she would protect small businesses from PSD lawuits. The nominee replied that she will “request that I be informed if any such notice is filed with regard to a small source, and I will follow up with the potential litigants.” Barrasso commented: “The solution to this problem is not to have government officials go around asking litigants not to sue. That is not a solution and entirely unrealistic. I expect more.”

Short of amending the Clean Air Act, however, there may be no solution–which means Sen. Barrasso may have to keep the “hold” on for a very long time. The law clearly states that an entity must obtain a PSD permit before it builds or modifies a facility with the potential to emit 250 tons per year (TPY) of a regulated air pollutant, and all kinds of non-industrial facilities–office buildings, big box stores, apartment complexes, enclosed malls, heated warehouses, even commercial kitchens–actually emit 250 TPY of CO2.

In his press release, Barrasso cites a Wall Street Journal article stating that Kassie Siegel, Director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, plans to sue EPA if the Agency does not apply PSD requirements to small sources. Siegel denied this in an email to Greenwire (subscription required): “The Center for Biological Diversity is not going to sue the EPA to regulate small sources of carbon dioxide, nor is anyone else.” But she cannot possibly know that no NIMBY activist somewhere will not file a PSD suit to block or delay construction of new Wal-Mart stores, strip malls, fast food restaurants, etc.

Besides, as Borrasso pointed out in a press release last Friday, in its comment on EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Center for Biological Diversity lauds the PSD program as “an effective tool for reducing GHG emissions” precisely because ”it applies to a wide array of sources that will emit in excess of the applicable statutory thresholds of 250 or 100 tons per year.”

The Center further comments that, “the asserted belief of EPA officials that the statutory requirements are burdensome or not ‘efficient’ as they should be simply does not excuse the agency from following the law. The EPA has no authority to weaken the requirements of the statute simply because political appointees don’t like the law’s requirements.”

The Center files lots of lawsuits, and they just established a $17 million litigation fund to ensure that U.S. environmental statutes are “fully implemented” to reduce GHG emissions. In keeping with this, the Center’s ANPR comment argues that EPA “must” establish National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for CO2 of no more than 350 parts per million. Even outright de-industrialization of the United States would likely be insufficient to meet that standard. Maybe that’s why the Center has no plan to sue EPA to regulate small sources. If the Center successfully sues EPA to set NAAQS for CO2 at 350 ppm, there won’t be many businesses left to regulate.

David Bookbinder, chief climate council for the Sierra Club, similarly dismissed Borrasso’s concerns about PSD regulation of small sources. Asked what his response to Borrasso would be, Bookbinder told BNA (subscription required): “Nothing you could print.”

Yet earlier this year, the Sierra Club decided not to put a stay on Bush EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s interpretative rule limiting PSD to air pollutants currently subject to emission controls–a category that does not include CO2. Bookbinder acknowledged to Greenwire that if Johnson’s rule were simply overturned, EPA would have to regulate small sources of CO2. He explained: ”The Clean Air Act has language in there that is kind of all or nothing if CO2 gets regulated, and it could be unbelievably complicated and administratively nightmarish for both EPA and the states if they were to yank the Johnson memo and not have something in place that makes it clear that we’re going after only the very large sources.”

The real nightmare would be for the firms regulated, not the regulators. Like Siegel, Bookbinder presumes to speak for all potential litigants. In reality, neither Sierra Club nor Center for Biological Diversity has a monopoly on Clean Air Act litigation. The law is clear–250  tons is the threshold for regulation. And all it takes is one NIMBY activist to file the citizen suit that forces EPA to follow the law.

President Obama could quickly fix the whole problem if he wanted to. All he’d have to do is offer legislation to preclude EPA regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Nearly all Republicans and many Democrats in Congress would vote for it, because it would protect our ailing economy from litigation-driven regulatory excess.

But Obama will not do this, because he wants to use the threat of EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act as a legislative hammer to beat opponents of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill into submission. This is too clever by half, however, as I argue here and here. If EPA does bring the might and fury of the Clean Air Act down upon CO2 emitters, Obama will have to take major responsibility for the increase in energy prices, the lost jobs, and the shuttered businesses.

On Guns and Climate, Elites Are Out of Touch
Michael Barone, RealClearPolitics.com, 11 May 2009

Many years ago, political scientists came up with a theory that elites lead public opinion. And on some issues, they clearly do. But on some issues, they don’t. Two examples of the latter phenomenon are conspicuous at a time when Barack Obama enjoys the approval of more than 60 percent of Americans and Democrats have won thumping majorities in two elections in a row. One is global warming. The other is gun control. On both issues, the elites of academe, the media and big business have been solidly on one side for years. But on both, the American public has been moving in the other direction.

Climate Controls Too Costly Down Under
Wall Street Journal, 11 May 2009

It’s turning out that the biggest problem with carbon taxes is political reality. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has just announced he will delay implementing his trademark cap-and-trade emissions trading proposal until at least 2011. Mr. Rudd’s March proposal would have imposed total carbon permit costs (taxes) of 11.5 billion Australian dollars (US$8.5 billion) in the first two years, starting in 2010. This would have increased consumer prices by about 1.1% and shaved 0.1% off annual GDP growth until at least 2050, according to Australia’s Treasury. Support has fallen among business groups and individuals who earlier professed enthusiasm for Aussie cap and trade. Green gains were negligible; Australia accounts for only 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Spin Doctors Try To Rescue Energy Rationing Bill
Peter Nicholas & Jim Tankersley, Los Angeles Times, 11 May 2009

In the debate over his top environmental goals, President Obama is backing away from “cap and trade.”

Obama promised to end the military’s ban on gays, but his Administration has not done so. In fact, it recently kicked out a West Point graduate “who is fluent in Arabic and just returned from Iraq,” just because he’s gay. Never mind that there is a severe shortage of Arabic speakers and translators in the U.S. military. (Liberal gay groups seem to have given him a pass on this issue, perhaps because he has promised to push another bill they support — the federal hate-crimes bill — which would erode civil liberties).

This is just one in a long line of broken campaign promises by Obama, like his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.

The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits left behind by the Bush Administration from $4.4 trillion to $9.3 trillion. His record-setting budgets flagrantly violate his promise to propose a “net spending cut.”

Obama broke his campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year by signing a regressive SCHIP excise tax increase, and by proposing a cap-and-trade energy tax that could charge up to $2 trillion, a massive cost that Obama himself has said will be passed “on to consumers,” as well as homeowners and motorists. (In 2008, Obama privately admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that if he was elected, electricity bills would “skyrocket” under his Administration, but it didn’t report that).

Over and over again, Obama has broken his campaign promise to give the public five days of notice before signing bills into law, including his very first law, the trial-lawyer backed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Obama also repeatedly made false claims about the Supreme Court decision that the Ledbetter law overruled, misstating the facts of that case and how long it gives employees to sue over pay discrimination.

Obama broke seven campaign promises dealing with transparency and clean government in signing the $800 billion stimulus package, much of whose contents were secret until shortly before Congress voted on it, and whose 1400 pages went unread by most Congressmen who voted on it.

Obama’s broken promises are part of a larger pattern of dishonesty. Obama claimed his $800 billion stimulus package was needed to avert “irreversible decline.” But the Congressional Budget Office concluded before and after its passage that the stimulus package will actually cut the size of the economy in the long run. Obama’s budgets don’t add up, either, piling up $9.3 trillion in red ink, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a staggering $2.3 trillion more than Obama claimed.

Climate Tax Will Pollute Your Prosperity
Grover Norquist, Washington Times, 6 May 2009

The leaders of the Democratic Party, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are already trying to shift the blame for the sledgehammer blow they have aimed at Americans who work in manufacturing and those who use energy in heating or air conditioning their homes.

Blue Dogs Press Pelosi To Shelve Cap-and-Trade
Mike Soraghan, The Hill, 6 May 2009

Democratic centrists are pressing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to set aside a flagging climate change bill to focus on what they think is a more achievable goal: overhauling the nation’s healthcare system.