Cooler Heads Digest 16 April 2010

by William Yeatman on April 16, 2010

in Blog

In the News

Krugman Wrong on Climate Economics
Jim Manzi, National Review Online, 16 April 2010

Krugman Wrong on Climate Science
Robert Murphy, MasterResource.org, 16 April 2010

Climate Change: Always Room for Doubt
Telegraph editorial, 15 April 2010

AB 32 Is a Losing Bet
Margo Thorning, San Jose Mercury News, 14 April 2010

What It Takes To Be a Coal Miner
Iain Murray, In Character, 13 April 2010

Lyin’ for Climate Indoctrination
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 13 April 2010

EPA Is Choking Freedom
Mark Landsbaum, Orange County Register, 9 April 2010

News You Can Use

Peer Review?

A new report from NoConsensus.org calculates that 21 of 44 chapters in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Nobel-Prize winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cite peer-reviewed sources less than 60% of the time

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Cap-and-Tax Update

It was first reported this week that Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Lieberman (I- Conn.) planned to release a draft of their energy-rationing bill next Tuesday. But today Environment and Energy Daily reports (subscription required) that they will now release it on 26th April.  Why?  Here’s what Darren Samuelsohn reports: “The trio originally hoped to unveil their proposal during the week surrounding the 40th anniversary of Earth Day next Thursday. But Kerry said that was not the message he wanted to get across. ‘This is not Earth Day-related,’ he said. ‘This is a jobs bill. This is an energy independence, national security bill. It’s not wrapped to one week or another.’

I’m not creative enough to make stuff like this up.  What’s more, the Terrific Trio are not going to introduce their draft as a bill and have it referred to a committee.  Instead, they’re going to hand it over to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to see if he can come up with the sixty votes needed to pass some version of it on the Senate floor.

Obama on Graham’s Gas Tax

The Hill reported that the White House claims that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill does not contain an increase in the gas tax and that it is not being discussed.  That doesn’t quite close the door, however, since Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are calling the gas tax in their bill a “linked fee.”  Apparently, neither the White House nor the three Senators consider it a gas tax.  But it seems highly unlikely that they can’t get away with it even if they call it a linked fee.  Gas prices have gone up by more than a dollar a gallon since Barack Obama was sworn in as President. His administration is pulling the plug on plans put together by the Bush Administration in 2008 to increase oil and gas production in federal offshore waters and on federal lands.  If gas prices continue to climb, this could be a potent campaign issue in the fall.

Obama Meets with Enviros

President Obama is continuing to push for a comprehensive energy-rationing bill. This week, the White House held a meeting with heads of a number environmental pressure groups in order to urge them to get behind Kerry-Graham-Lieberman.  Some of the environmental pressure groups that aren’t fronts for big business are not going to go along no matter how much Obama pleads.  That’s because they see that Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Graham-Lieberman have very little to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  They are mostly about transferring vast amounts of wealth from consumers to politically-favored big businesses.

Senate Democrats Push a Trade War

Eight Democratic Senators from States that still have some manufacturing wrote a letter to Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman, stating that a condition of their supporting energy-rationing legislation such as Kerry-Graham-Lieberman is that it include carbon tariffs or something equivalent to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competitors that can use less expensive energy from fossil fuels to produce their goods.

Climategate Update

Myron Ebell

The University of East Anglia “international panel” released its report on the ClimateGate scientific fraud scandal today.  At eight pages, it’s not even a thorough whitewash.  They don’t even make a minimal effort to rebut the obvious appearance of widespread data manipulation, suppression of dissenting research through improper means, and intentional avoidance of complying with Freedom of Information requests.  However, the report makes one concession, which is quite damning: “We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.”  In fact, the handling of the historical temperature data and production of the Hadley/CRU temperature record by Jones et al. and the handling of the paleoclimatological data and fabrication of the hockey stick by Michael Mann et al. was only possible because they hid their data and methods from professional statisticians.  When professional statisticians were able to look at Mann’s methods and data, the result was the Wegman report, which was devastating.

Across the States

Connecticut

The Connecticut General Assembly’s Energy and Technology Committee has passed R.B. 463, which would lower the State’s renewable portfolio standard (a requirement for minimum electricity generation from renewable energy) from 20% by 2020 to 11.5% by 2020. Proponents of the bill argue that renewable energy is too expensive.

California

Los Angeles is teetering on bankruptcy because no one wants to pay for expensive renewable energy, according to the Wall Street Journal. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed electricity rate hikes of 9% to 28% to finance LA’s renewable energy agenda, but the City Council refused. As a result, the Department of Water and Power, which needs the rate hikes to buy expensive renewable energy, withheld $74 million of the $221 million surplus revenue it was expected to transfer to the city. But without the $74 million, city controller Wendy Greuel warns that LA won’t be able to pay its bills within a month.

Washington

Washington Governor Christine Gregoire (D) boasts of having created more than 99,000 “green jobs,” but a new study from the Washington Policy Center puts the lie to the Governor’s claim. In fact, there was little or no difference in the work done by green employees and the non-green employees for 71,000 of the reported green jobs. So taxpayers are paying around $2,400 per trainee to acquire green job skills no different than skills needed for existing non-green jobs.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

Elizabeth Taylor May 11, 2010 at 10:30 am

Gas prices these days are just getting higher, i think the government should focus more on alternative energy.;*`

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