Cooler Heads Digest 12 February 2010

In the News

Blizzards Warm-up Climate Debate
Casey Curlin, Washington Times, 12 February 2010

Harvard Hometown Plans Draconian Climate Regime
Joshua Miller, FoxNews, 12 February 2010

Climategate Panel Needs an Overhaul
Benny Peiser & David Whitehouse, GWPF, 12 February 2010

IPCC’s Errors Were Deliberate?
Richard North, EU Referendum, 12 February 2010

The Carbon-Trading Shell Game
Mark Shapiro, Harpers, February 2010

Why the EPA Is Wrong about Recent Warming
Chip Knappenberger, MasterResource.org, 11 February 2010

A Blizzard of Hype
Patrick Michaels, Planet Gore, 11 February 2010

Shoddy Climate Research
Detroit News editorial, 10 February 2010

The Global Warming Thrill Ride Comes to an End
National Review editorial, 10 February 2010

New York Times Swings, Misses, on IPCC Story
Walter Russell Mead, American Interest, 9 February 2010

Australia’s Wild Camels Escape Carbon Executioner
Ean Higgins, The Australian, 8 February 2010

Credibility Is Melting
Mark Steyn, Macleans, 7 February 2010

BBC Poll: Climate Skepticism “On the Rise”
BBC News, 7 February 2010

More IPCC Errors
Richard Gray & Ben Leach, Telegraph, 6 February 2010

News You Can Use

Snow in All 50 States

According to Patrick March, a University of Oklahoma student who is working to document this uncharacteristically snowy winter, Florida is the only state in America (including Hawaii!) without snow on the ground, but two to four inches of snow is forecasted today for some parts of the Sunshine State.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Ad Attacks Launched against Murkowski’s Endangerment Resolution

The struggle is heating up on several fronts over Senator Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) resolution to disapprove the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated using the Clean Air Act.  MoveOn.org is running television and radio ads against the three Democratic co-sponsors of Murkowski’s resolution in Arkansas, Nebraska, and Louisiana.  They are the most dishonest ads I can remember.  My CEI colleague Marlo Lewis analyzes them here.

A number of other groups are starting to run ads opposing what they are calling the Dirty Air Act.  Friends of the Earth and the National Wildlife Federation have already run broadcast ads in Alaska attacking Murkowski. A coalition of environmental and faith-based environmental pressure groups have announced radio ads targeting eight Senators.  Friends of the Earth and CREDO Action are putting up a billboard in Arkansas that accuses Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) of trying to gut the Clean Air Act.   Repower America-Al Gore’s group-is running ads in Maine, Indiana, Missouri, and Arkansas that call on Senators to stay committed to green jobs and energy-rationing legislation.

Senator Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, launched a broad attack on the Obama Administration’s energy and global warming budget requests in a speech Thursday on the Senate floor.  She noted that President Obama’s expressed desire to compromise on these issues was not reflected his the FY 2011 budget submitted this week.  For example, President Obama mentioned his support for new nuclear reactors and for more domestic offshore oil and gas production in his State of the Union address.  Yet, his budget cancels the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility and withdraws from mineral entry one million acres of public land in Arizona with high uranium ore potential.  On global warming policy, Murkowski said that it was inconsistent for the President to continue to support cap-and-trade legislation, while taking the issue away from Congress by asking for $56 million to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act.

Endangerment Deadline

February 16 is the deadline for filing legal responses to the EPA’s endangerment finding.  I’ll try to have a review of the various petitions for administrative reconsideration or judicial review next week.

Inhofe’s Igloo
Senator James Inhofe’s (R-Okla.) daughter and her family couldn’t fly home as scheduled this week because the airports were closed by Washington’s big blizzard.  So they spent some of their time building an igloo big enough for four people on a street near the U. S. Capitol.  Then they put up a sign on it that says, “Al Gore’s new home,” and another sign across the street that says, “Honk if you love global warming.”  Senator Inhofe was amused and posted a blog about it. The nasty and moronic teevee personality Keith Olbermann was not amused and named Senator Inhofe’s four grandchildren and his daughter and son-in-law to his list of the “worst people in the world.” Senator Inhofe responded in his unfailingly good-humored and gentlemanly manner on Fox News.

But it wasn’t all fun and games for Senator Inhofe during this week’s blizzard.  He also gave a powerful speech on the Senate floor Thursday on the failings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Across the States

Arizona

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) last week issued an executive order that terminates the State’s participation in the Western Climate Initiative, a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme being planned by 6 (formerly 7) western states and 4 Canadian provinces. According to the text of the executive order, Arizona will pull out of the WCI in order to avoid economic harm.

Utah

By a 56-17 vote, the Utah House passed H.J.R. 12, the Climate Change Joint Resolution, which questions the science behind global warming alarmism and demands that the Environmental Protection Agency abandon plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The vote was galvanized by the growing Climategate scandal, as well as the EPA’s expected decision this March to impose costly carbon controls under the Clean Air Act. CEI’s Marlo Lewis explains the EPA’s power grab here.

Also this week in the Utah House, the Committee on Public Utilities and Technology approved H.J.R. 21, a resolution calling on Governor Gary Herbert to remove Utah from the Western Climate Initiative. The resolution next will be considered by the full House.

California

There are conflicting accounts of a California ballot initiative that would suspend implementation of the State’s global warming law, AB 32, until unemployment decreases to 5.5% (it currently hovers at about 12%). Last Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the leading proponent of the ballot initiative, Assemblyman Dan Logue (R) had $600,000 in the bank for gathering the requisite number of signatures needed to get the initiative before the voters. That report was quickly contradicted by a story from ClimateWire, which questioned the existence of the $600,000, and also claimed that the anti-AB 32 ballot initiative was foundering.

Around the World

Pachauri Watch

The Daily Telegraph reported this week that Rajendra K. Pachauri, head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, flew almost 500,000 miles between January 2007 and July 2008. The greenhouse gas emissions engendered by Pachauri’s jet-setting ways are equivalent to those produced by all activities of14 average Britons in the same time span.

UN Forms Finance Panel

The Guardian reported today that the United Nations has formed an Advisory Group on Climate Change Finance to design a mechanism for raising $100 billion annually by 2020, in order to pay for greenhouse gas emissions reductions in developing countries. The panel will be chaired by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and will include “heads of state, high-ranking government ministers, central bank administrators, and public finance and development experts,” although a list is not yet available.