September 2013

Post image for Risk vs. Risk: California Farmers Worry More about Climate Policy than Climate Change

For years the carbon-suppression lobby has been trying to focus public controversy on the issue of whether anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is “real” or whether there is a scientific “consensus” that most warming of the past 50 years is man-made.

In their preferred framing of the debate, accepting the reality of AGW or the supposed “consensus” logically and morally demands acceptance of their policy agenda of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, EPA emission standards for power plants, Soviet-style production quota for renewable energy, Stimulus loans for Solyndra, blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, and the like.

Hogwash. As my organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has argued for the past 16 years or longer, the core issue for policy makers and the public is whether the risks of climate change outweigh those of climate change policy. Which should we fear more: climate change or the taxes, regulations, mandates, treaties, and other schemes supposedly needed to “solve” the “crisis”?

An interest group that seems to grasp the real issue is farmers. “Farmers believe they can dodge climate risks, but they’re wary of government rules,” states the headline of an article in today’s Climate Wire. Reporter Tiffany Stecker begins the article as follows:

Farmers and farm groups have usually been opposed to government climate policies. A new study finds they are not so much skeptics of climate change as they are about the rules that may come with [it] and how they might harm their business.

The new study, funded by the California Energy Commission, conducted by researchers at UC Davis and the Agricultural Sustainability Institute, and published in Science Direct, surveyed 162 farmers in Yolo, California.

Climate policies may affect the adaptive capacity of agricultural systems to respond to climate change if they require resources and costs that exacerbate vulnerabilities. In the words of one farmer in Yolo County, California, ‘‘We can adapt to the environmental aspects of climate change. I’m not sure we can adapt to the legislature.’’

Farmers Climate Risk vs. Regulatory Risk

Figure explanation: Average level of concern for local climate change impacts. Farmers’ responses to the question, ‘‘How concerned are you about the following climate-related risks and the future impact they may have on your farming operations during your career?’’ Responses are ranked on a four point scale ranging from very concerned to not concerned. [click to continue…]

Post image for EPA Carbon ‘Pollution’ Rule to Require Carbon Capture and Storage for New Coal Power Plants

Next week the EPA is expected to issue its revised greenhouse gas (GHG) performance standards for new coal- and gas-fired power plants, also known as the Carbon ‘Pollution’ Rule. In addition, in 2014 the EPA is expected to adopt “guidelines” for controlling GHG emissions from existing power plants.

This morning in my in-box, I received an unattributed analysis of the revised Carbon ‘Pollution’ Rule. The analysis is in my opinion completely sound and leaves no doubt the EPA is still aggressively waging regulatory warfare on coal electric generation and, thus, on affordable energy. Here’s the text:

EPA Greenhouse Gas Performance Standards for New Units

1. Next week, EPA will issue greenhouse gas (GHG) performance standards for new coal and natural gas-fired electric generating units (EGUs). EPA’s proposed performance standards for coal-fired EGUs are expected to require carbon capture and storage (CCS). EPA’s justification for these highly aggressive standards is expected to rely heavily on the Kemper County IGCC facility in Mississippi, which is still under construction and not expected to begin operation until next spring.

2. These proposed standards are not appropriate under the Clean Air Act (CAA), which provides that performance standards must reflect “the best system of emission reduction which (taking into account the cost of achieving such reduction and any non-air quality health and environmental impact and energy requirements) the Administrator determines has been adequately demonstrated.”

A CCS-based standard is not the “best system of emission reduction,” or “BSER,” under this language because: (a) Kemper is not even running yet, and so its performance level has not been demonstrated; (b) Kemper could not have been built without significant government support; and (c) Kemper has access to enhanced oil recovery (EOR) sites where the captured CO2 can be injected, whereas coal-fired EGUs built in many areas of the country will not be located near EOR sites and will not be able to store CO2 unless significant new storage sites and pipelines are developed and a permitting and legal liability system are put in place. [click to continue…]

Post image for Rep. Trey Gowdy Grills Lisa Jackson about ‘Contact me at home’ Email to Lobbyist

Yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on “Preventing Violations of Federal Transparency Laws.” This is a huge problem.

When agencies flout transparency laws — as for example the White House, the EPA, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) did when negotiating motor vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards under a “put nothing in writing, ever” vow of silence — they obstruct congressional oversight, facilitate corruption, and undermine the government’s accountability to the public.

The highpoint of yesterday’s hearing was an exchange between Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson (a.k.a. “Richard Windsor”). Gowdy pressed Jackson about an email she sent to Siemens lobbyist Alison Taylor on Dec. 8, 2009. In it Jackson writes: “P.S. Can you use my home email rather than this one when you need to contact me directly? Tx Lisa.”

At the hearing, Jackson argued there was no impropriety in instructing Taylor to email her at home, because she and Taylor are friends, and she was trying to move a private conservation to her private account. The text of the email (see bottom of post) contains no hint or suggestion that Taylor emailed Jackson to discuss a personal matter, and none that Jackson was trying to clarify the need to keep discussions of personal matters out of government email. Rather, thanks to Gowdy’s persistent questioning, it’s obvious that Jackson was inviting Taylor to use Jackson’s home email to discuss official EPA business.

Why does that matter?

As Chairman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) pointed out, conducting official business via personal email defeats the intent of transparency laws like the Federal Records Act. The FRA requires agency heads to “make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency.” Communications conducted via government email accounts are automatically captured for record-keeping purposes. In contrast, conducting official business via personal email empowers agency officials to hide or delete conversations with lobbyists and other interested parties rather than preserve those communications for the record.

In the video of the hearing, Gowdy’s examination of Jackson, with Issa’s follow-up, runs roughly from 113:50 to 120:15.

My unofficial transcript of the segment follows.

Gowdy: Ms. Jackson, “Can you use my home email rather than this one when you need to contact me directly.” Why did you say that?

Jackson: Because Alison Taylor, the author in the email chain, was a friend, and I believe a personal friend should use personal email.

Gowdy: Is there an exception for personal friends in the Federal Records Act?

Jackson: Sir, as I have already stated, my intention was to comply with the Federal Records Act.

Gowdy: That wasn’t my question, actually. Is there an exemption or an exception that you’re aware of for personal friends? It’s a simple – it’s not a complicated question. Are you aware of an exception to the Federal Records Act for personal friends? Yes or no? [click to continue…]

Post image for America’s Energy Advantage Calls for Nat Gas Export Restrictions – Again. Why Now?

Today on Real Clear Politics, Jennifer Diggins, Public Affairs director for Nucor Energy and Chair of America’s Energy Advantage (AEA), urges the Department of Energy (DOE) to ‘slow-track’ applications to export domestically-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG). Other AEA members include Eastman, Huntsman, Celanese, Alcoa, and, most prominently, Dow Chemical.

The question is one of timing. Why now? AEA made a big splash back in March when Dow CEO Andrew Liveris decried “unfettered” LNG exports in testimony before the House Energy & Commerce Committee and on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. But during the past few months, Dow and AEA have not said much about curbing gas exports. Indeed, Dow recently posted a column on its blog extolling the benefits of free trade. There’s not a trace of Liveris’s mercantilist fervor in that column.

I suspect Diggins is responding to “This Gas Is Dow’s Gas,” a song and video produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) lampooning Dow’s anti-gas export campaign as corporate welfare, rent seeking, and political plunder. See CEI’s press release for details and commentary by your humble servant.

To watch the video, click on This Gas Is Dow’s Gas.

Consensus Shmensus

by Marlo Lewis on September 5, 2013

in Blog, Features

Post image for Consensus Shmensus

Months ago, indefatigable watchdog Anthony Watts called out Organizing for Action (OFA) for declaring, in a Tweet issued in President Obama’s name, that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: Climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”

OFA was invoking a study in Environmental Research Letters by John Cook and colleagues, who supposedly found that 97% of climate scientists accept the “consensus” position on climate change. Cook manages Skeptical Science, a Web site dedicated to debunking climate “skeptics.”

As Watts and others, such as Andrew Montford of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, point out, Cook et al. did not attempt to estimate the number or percentage of climate scientists who agree or disagree that climate change is “dangerous.”*

But what about Cook et al.’s widely reported finding that 97% of climate scientists believe most of the 0.7°C warming since 1950 is due to the buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gases? Does the Cook team actually demonstrate overwhelming agreement with that core “consensus” position of the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?

Not by a long shot, argue University of Delaware climatologist David Legates and three colleagues in Climate “Consensus” and Misinformation. In fact, less than 1% of the 11,944 science papers (actually, just the abstracts) surveyed by the Cook researchers express agreement with the so-called consensus. [click to continue…]

E-15: Life in the Fast Lane

by Marlo Lewis on September 4, 2013

in Features

Post image for E-15:  Life in the Fast Lane

Guest Post by Dave Juday

There is a debate ongoing about the efficacy of so-called e-15, i.e. motor gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol.  The standard blend has always been 10 percent ethanol.  While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted final approval for e-15 in June 2012 for use in late model cars and light duty trucks, the American Automobile Association has cautioned, “this new fuel entered the market without adequate protections to prevent misfuelings and despite remaining questions about potential vehicle damage, even for EPA-approved 2001 and newer vehicles.”

Such concerns are nonsense says the ethanol trade association Growth Energy.  The testing by EPA was “exhaustive,” there are misfueling labels required for pumps, and “additionally, NASCAR has run on … a fuel blended with 15 percent ethanol for over four million miles.”

This last point should give pause.  Are the engines used in the professional stock car racing circuit a fair proxy for the family auto?  For driving conditions?  Is it even really the same e-15 fuel?

The fuel is different.  NASCAR switched to e-15 in 2011 and uses a version that has a 98 octane rating.  Retail e-15 has an octane rating of 90.  Regular grade gasoline available commercially has an octane rating of 87; premium grade is 93.

Driving conditions, of course, are different.  NASCAR winners so far in the 2013 season have logged average speeds of 153 miles per hour at the Brickyard in Indianapolis, 144 miles per hour at Michigan International Speedway, and 129 miles per hour at Pocono Speedway.  Is that a model for the average morning stop-and-go, engine idling commute?

The engines are different.  Consider, the top selling model in the US for 2011 and 2012 was the Ford F-Series pick-up truck which come with V-6 or V-8 engines that range from 302 to 360 horsepower respectively.  For passenger cars, the top seller in 2012 was the Toyota Camry.  The Camry has two engine choices – a 2.5 liter four-cylinder which produces 178 horsepower, or a 3.5 liter that has 268 horsepower.  The average NASCAR engine makes about 750 horsepower. [click to continue…]

Post image for Study: Warming Will Shift Tracks of Future Sandy-Like Tropical Storms Away from U.S. Northeast

“The weather patterns that steered deadly Superstorm Sandy into the East Coast last year may be on the decrease, thanks to rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” states the press release for a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The release continues:

While the atmospheric conditions that pushed Sandy into the New Jersey coast in October 2012 will still occur in the North Atlantic, a team of researchers led by Elizabeth Barnes, assistant professor in the Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science, has found that those conditions will occur less often, making it less likely that any future superstorms that form will be steered into the United States.

“Using state-of-the-art climate models, we project that there will be a decrease in the frequency and persistence of the westward flow that led to Sandy’s unprecedented track,” Barnes said. “That implies that future atmospheric conditions are less likely than at present to propel tropical storms westward into the coast.”

Two anomalous weather patterns slammed Sandy into the Northeast, according to Barnes. First, the jet stream shifted toward the south. Second, a “wave breaking” and blocking event in the upper atmosphere blocked the normal west-to-east wind, “causing the wind to blow back towards North America rather than out to sea.” When Sandy “met the block and the westward wind flow, it accelerated toward the New Jersey Coast with winds in excess of 80 miles per hour.” In the PNAS study, “the models show a lessening of the frequency of the breaking-and-blocking pattern with a poleward shift of the jet-stream in the future, and that this is found for the Southern Hemisphere as well.”

There may be no greater heresy in this enlightened age than the notion that global warming will avert weather disasters. But there’s evidence it has already begun.

In June, Cato Institute climatologist Chip Knappenberger, in a column on MasterResource.Org, described several “Billion Dollar Weather Events Averted by Global Warming.” Not unlike the Barnes PNAS study, Knappenberger found that wind patterns “consistent with” global warming prevented two tropical storms from developing into full-blown hurricanes and prevented two others from hitting the U.S. East Coast. Here’s an excerpt: [click to continue…]

Post image for RSS Satellite Record Shows 200 Month Warming Pause

In case you missed it, I want to call your attention to an important essay by Werner Brozek posted last week on Anthony Watts’s blog, Watts Up with That (WAWT).

NASA supports two main satellite-based global temperature monitoring systems: the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) program headed by John Christy and Roy Spencer, and the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) program headed by Frank Wentz.

Climate activists have generally been boosterish about RSS and negative about UAH. The RSS found a mid-troposphere warming trend from the start of its satellite record in July 1987 whereas the UAH found a cooling trend from 1979 through 1995.

In 1998, Wentz published a study in Nature arguing that uncorrected instrument error associated with satellite orbital decay injected a spurious cooling bias into the UAH dataset. Spencer and Christy accepted the criticism, made the adjustment, and since 1998 their dataset has shown a long-term warming trend. However, at least through 2004, the UAH record showed less warming (0.09°C/decade) than the RSS record (0.12°C). So activists continued to take potshots at Spencer and Christy, implying (or asserting) that their political biases accounted for the discrepancy.

Ah, but how quickly the wheel turns! During the 2000s, the divergence began to go the other way as the RSS record showed less warming than the UAH record.

Which brings us back to Brozek and his post in WUWT.  Brozek shows there has been no warming in the RSS data from Dec. 1996 through July 2013 — a 200 month warming pause.

RSS temperature Dec 1996 through July 2013

Figure explanation:The graphic above shows 3 lines. The long line shows that RSS has been flat from December 1996 to July 2013, which is a period of 16 years and 8 months or 200 months. The other slightly higher flat line in the middle is the latest complete decade of 120 months from January 2001 to December 2010. The other slightly downward sloping line is the latest 120 months prior from present. It very clearly shows it has been cooling lately, however this cooling is not statistically significant.[click to continue…]