Marlo Lewis

In today’s ClimateWire (subscription required), reporter Jessica Leber describes a biofuel industry still totally dependent on government handouts and still pleading for more special favors.

First a bit of background.

In December 2007, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA). Among other things, EISA boosted the existing (2005 Energy Policy Act) Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) from 7.5 billion gallons a year by 2012 to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022. Of those 36 billion gallons, 21 billion gallons must come from “advanced biofuels.”

The RFS is essentially a Soviet-style production quota. Congress, prodded by campaign contributions from the corn lobby, and by presidential candidates jockeying for support in the Iowa Caucuses, decided that central planning of the nation’s motor fuel markets was an idea whose time had come.

To qualify as “advanced” under EISA, a biofuel must (1) be made from plant matter other than corn kernels and (2) achieve a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to gasoline, based on a “life-cycle” (wells-to-wheels) analysis. EISA also allows 15 billion gallons a year by 2022 to come from plain old corn ethanol, although to qualify as a “renewable fuel,” corn ethanol from newer plants must achieve a 20% reduction in GHG emissions relative to gasoline — again, based on life-cycle analysis.

EISA mandates the sale of 100 million gallons of advanced biofuel in 2009 and 200 million gallons in 2010 (see p. 6 of this presentation). For years, biofuel lobbyists have been telling us that advanced biofuels are “just around the corner.” But, Matt Carr of the Biotechnology Industry Organization estimated last month that in 2010 volumes will, optimistically, reach only 12 million gallons, Leber reports.

In a sop to the corn lobby, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would suspend for five years the EISA requirement for life-cycle analysis to determine whether biofuels qualify as “advanced” or even as “renewable.” Several life-cycle analyses indicate that corn ethanol produces more greenhouse gases than the gasoline it replaces, once emissions from land use changes are taken into account (for a summary, see pp. 4-6 of this report).

The Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill does not contain the five-year hold on life-cycle analysis, and the uncertainty as to which biofuels will qualify under future EPA implementing rules ”chills the investment community,” Carr complains. I’d put the point differently: Strong evidence that corn ethanol is not “climate friendly” jeopardizes the political rents that corn growers and ethanol distillers hoped to extract from climate hysteria.

Leber also notes that, “the industry is also concerned about ambiguous language in both the Senate and House versions of the bill that does not clearly exempt the biofuels component of blended petroleum fuels, such as E10 and E85, from an economy-wide carbon cap.”

Did you get that? The corn-ethanol lobby invoked climate doom to sell biofuel mandates to Congress and the public. But now they say the centerpiece of regulatory climate policy — the cap in “cap and trade” — should not apply to biofuels, even though biofuels emit CO2, and even though several life-cycle analyses indicate that corn-ethanol is more carbon-intensive than gasoline. One law for me, another for thee!

Producers of “advanced” ethanol also complain that they must compete for climate-tech loan guarantees against companies developing solar, wind, and compressed natural gas technologies. The outrage! Why should ethanol producers have to share the greenhouse gravy train with anybody else?

This just in: Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) today released Biofuels: Potential Effects and Challenges of Required Increases in Production and Use, an August 2009 study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). One of GAO’s conclusions is that the 45-cent/gallon tax credit that refiners receive for blending ethanol into motor gasoline “may no longer be needed to stimulate conventional corn-ethanol production because the domestic industry has matured, its processing is well understood, and its use capacity is already near the effective RFS limit of 15 billion gallons a year of conventional ethanol.”

The Renewable Fuels Association “panned” the GAO study, Leber reports. Well, what else did you expect? Without the blenders’ credit, a national market for ethanol would not exist. In their PR (if not in their own minds), corn ethanol will always be an infant industry in need of special tax breaks to compete with the big bad oil companies.

What happens if, as seems likely, the industry falls farther and farther behind the EISA ”advanced” biofuel requirements? Here’s my prediction: The Renewable Fuels Association will not lobby to scale back the overall 36-billion RFS; rather, they’ll lobby to raise up the 15 billion gallon ceiling on corn ethanol.

Updated at 10/1/09 4:47 PM

I’ve just begun reading EPA’s proposed Tailoring Rule to establish a new 25,000 tons per year (TPY) ”major stationary source” applicability threshold for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program. I’ll blog about this again later on, but for now I just want to say, “We told ya so!”

Attorney Peter Glaser, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, CEI and a host of other free market groups warned repeatedly that regulating GHG emissions from new motor vehicles — the immediate policy objective of plaintiffs in the Supreme Court global warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA – would have the following consequences:

1. CO2 would automatically become an air pollutant “subject to regulation” under the PSD and Title V programs.
2. Millions of previously unregulated entities — big box stores, enclosed malls, hotels, apartment complexes, mid-sized office buildings, even commercial kitchens — would be vulnerable to new controls, paperwork, penalties, and litigation.
3. The volume of permit applications would create an administrative quagmire for EPA and state environmental permitting agencies.
4. The new costs, uncertainties, and delays would create an unprecedented roadblock to new construction and economic development, turning the Clean Air Act into a gigantic Anti-Stimulus program.

Predictably, global warming activists, such as Sierra Club climate council David Bookbinder, a plaintiff in Massachusetts v. EPA, derided these concerns as a “bugaboo,” a “red herring,” and a “pure scare tactic” by industry foes of regulatory climate policy. (See segments 1:47 – 1:48 and 2:03 – 2:05 of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Archived Webcast).

EPA’s July 30, 2008 Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act (ANPR) acknowledged that applying PSD to CO2 might increase the volume of permit applications by an “order of magnitude” (p. 44499), might “overwhelm” the administrative resources of permitting authorities (p. 44507), and might subject sources to new costs, uncertainties, and delays (p. 44502). However, the ANPR considerably understated the risks, Glaser, the Chamber, and CEI argued.

Well, you can now get the lowdown straight from the horse’s mouth.  Here’s what EPA’s Tailoring Rule says:

If PSD and Title V requirements apply at the applicability levels provided under the CAA, state permitting authorities would be paralyzed by permit applications in numbers that are orders of magnitude [not a mere “order of magnitude,” as in the ANPR] greater than their current administrative resources could accomodate [p. 1].

* * *

If PSD and Title V requirements apply at the applicability levels provided under the CAA, many small sources would be burdened by the costs of individualized PSD control technology requirements and permit applications. In addition, state permitting authorities would be paralyzed by enormous numbers of these permit applications; the numbers are orders of magnitude greater than the current inventory of permits and would vastly exceed the current administrative resources of the permitting authorities [pp. 15-16]

* * *

In short, without this tailoring rule, the administrative burdens would be immense, and they would immediately and completely overwhelm the permitting authorities. Without this tailoring rule, permitting authorities would receive approximately 40,000 PSD permit applications each year — currently, they receive approximately 300 — and they would be required to issue Title V permits for approximately some six million sources — currently, their Title V inventory is some 15,000 sources [p. 19].

* * *

Based on our GHG threshold data analyis, we estimate that almost 41,000 new and modified facilities per year would be subject to PSD review, based on the current rate of modifications at major sources, if a GHG major sourcee threshold of 250 TPY CO2e [carbon dioxide equivalent] were applied. Compared to the 280 PSD permits currently issued last year, this would be an increase in permits of more than 140-fold [p. 50].

* * *

Based on these assumptions [permitting agency costs in time and money to process a PSD permit for a commercial or residential GHG source would be only 20% of the time and money required to process a permit for an industrial GHG source], the additional annual permitting burden for permitting authorities, on a national basis, is estimated to be 3.3 million hours at a cost of $257 million to include all GHG emitters above the 250-TPY threshold [pp. 51-52].

* * *

Most significant [of new Title V obligations triggered by GHG regulation of new motor vehicles] are the more than six million sources of GHGs that would become newly subject to Title V requirements because they exceed the 100-TPY threshold for GHG but did not for previously regulated pollutants. Although there are generally not applicable requirements for GHGs that apply to such sources [a gross understatement — although there are generally no Clean Air Act requirements, period, that apply to such sources], these six million sources would be required to submit a Title V permit application within 1 year [pp. 56-57].

* * *

Obviously, this massive influx of permit applications would overwhelm permitting authorities’ administrative resources. Indeed, permitting authorities report that they currently are having difficulty keeping up with their existing permit workloads. The Tite V Operating Permits System database, which tracks permit issuance, confirms that issuance of many permits is already delayed. By increasing the volume of permits by over 400 times, the administrative burden would be unmanageable [p. 58].

* * *

We estimate that for permitting authorities, the average new commercial or residential [Title V] permit would require 43 hours to process, which is 10 percent of the time needed for the average industrial permit . . . We estimate that the total nationwide additional burden for permitting authorities for Title V permits from adding GHG emissions at the 100-TPY threshold would be 340 imllion hours, which would cost over $15 billion [p. 59].

These burdens are “absurd,” EPA argues, because they are “inconsistent” with “congressional intent,” indeed would “undermine congressional purposes” (p. 19). Hence, EPA concludes, it is justified in effectively amending the statute, upping the PSD and Title V applicability thresholds for major sources from 100/250 TPY to 25,000 TPY.

Well, somebody needs to point out the obvious. The looming threat of an economy-chilling administrative quagmire didn’t just happen. The absurdity of agencies spending 340 million hours and $15 billion to process hollow operating permits didn’t suddenly spring forth from the text of Title V. Nothing in the Clean Air Act has changed since it was amended in 1977 and 1990 to turn it into an economic wrecking ball. Congress is still debating cap-and-trade, and never signed off on EPA using the Clean Air Act to control CO2 emissions from stationary sources. No, the absurd results are entirely a product of Mass. v. EPA. So is the necessity for EPA now to amend clear and unambiguous statutory language, violating the separation of powers.

When a court decision leads to absurd results, there are only two possibilities. (1) The absurdity was lurking in the statute all along and the court simply brought it to light; or (2) the court messed up, manufacturing absurdity in an otherwise sane and reasonably coherent law. My comment on EPA’s proposed endangerment finding (especially pp. 28-33) argues the blame lies with the Court, not those who drafted and enacted the Clean Air Act.

Today’s Greenwire (subscription required) reports that Nike, the sports shoe king, is resigning its position on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors. Nike supports cap-and-trade legislation, a national renewable portfolio standard, a moratorium on new coal power plants lacking carbon capture and storage, and EPA regulation of CO2 under the Clean Air Act. The Chamber opposes all of the foregoing.

Although the Greenwire story is not slanted, neither is it particularly informative. The reporter makes no effort to ascertain what bottom line interest might account for Nike’s decision to quit the Chamber, or for the company’s decision to join the Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP) coalition, a project of Ceres, the Gorethodox investor network.

The vast majority of Nike’s production facilities are in China and other Asian developing countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. (I can’t find exact numbers — Nike appears to be coy about the details.) Nike factories in developing Asia would not be subject to CO2 controls from either Waxman-Markey or EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act.

What’s more, if the G-77 Plus China hang tough at the Copenhagen climate conference, and the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol continues to exempt developing countries from legally binding emission limits, then the comparative advantage (lower energy costs) those countries already enjoy under Kyoto will increase, making Nike factories even more profitable to invest in.

Here’s what an honest Nike press release might say: 

Nike believes U.S. policymakers should use law, regulation, and the Copenhagen treaty to hobble domestic firms in favor of the Asian economies where our facilities are located. In contrast, the U.S. Chamber opposes policies that would offshore more U.S. jobs and investment to China and developing Asia. A truly carbon-constrained world would destroy jobs and growth in Asia, too. However, that’s years away, and Nike cares only about its short-term bottom line. Therefore, we are pulling out of the Chamber. 

Instead, Nike tut-tutted about the need for “urgent action” on climate change. When will the sanctimony end?

Divide et Impera — divide and conquer — is perhaps the oldest strategic maxim of war, politics, and diplomacy. Businesses succumb to it time and time again. Why?

It is in the general interest of business to preserve an open and competitive marketplace, and to limit tax and regulatory burdens. However, it is often in the special interest of particular firms to expand the size and scope of government in order to collect political “rents” – windfall profits created by market-rigging subsidies, preferences, or mandates. 

When only a few firms engage in rent-seeking, the rent seeker’s concentrated benefits will far outweigh his portion of the diffuse costs imposed on the economy as a whole. But each rent seeker’s success encourages others to get in the game. In time, the costs of government adversely affect millions of bottom lines. Worse, interventionist policies (for example, subsidized lending via Freddie Mac and Fannie May) can create systemic risk and crash entire economies.

V.I. Lenin basically viewed all capitalists as rent seekers. Capitalists are so fixated on short-term gain, he mused, that they will “sell the rope” by which their enemies will hang them. This much is clear — there is no honor among thieves. The more businesses depend on political predation, the easier it is for anti-market interventionists to divide and conquer.

This brings us to the topic of cap-and-trade, a form of energy rationing. There’s money to be made in energy rationing — OPEC proves it! The emission permits in a cap-and-trade program are like the oil production quota in OPEC, the only difference being that they’re tradable. The cap makes the permits a valuable commodity, and Waxman-Markey in the early years would distribute about 85% of all permits free of charge to various industries and interest groups.

So it should come as no surprise that some corporations love Waxman-Markey. Indeed, the corporate coalition known as the United States Climate Action Partnership (US CAP) outlined the main features of the Waxman-Markey bill months before it was introduced in a January 2009 report titled A Blueprint for Legislative Action. US CAP members don’t worry that Waxman-Markey might destroy millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in cumulative GDP. They expect to get a bigger piece of a smaller pie.

US CAP member PG&E pulled out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week citing “irreconcilable differences” over climate change policy. Today’s Bloomberg.Com reports that US CAP member Exelon has announced it will not renew its membership in the Chamber, and that US CAP member Duke Energy will not renew its membership in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). 

PG&E, Exelon, and Duke preen themselves as progressive companies who put principle (planetary rescue) ahead of profit. In reality, they seek political rents at the expense of the public interest in limited government, economic growth, and affordable energy. Waxman-Markey sets aside the biggest chunk of free emission permits — 35% — for electric utilities. And their industry representative, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), is lobbying the Senate to increase the booty to 40%.

How much boodle can a rent seeker make these days? A recently leaked non-public report reveals that Exelon expects Waxman-Markey to generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the company.

On June 9, 2009, four days after Waxman-Markey was marked up in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Hugh Wynne, a senior analyst with BernsteinResearch, led a group of investors to meet with Exelon’s senior management at the company’s headquarters in Chicago. Wynne summarized Exelon’s thinking in a non-public report prepared for Bernstein’s clients:

If passed, [Exelon Chairman] John Rowe calculates the Waxman-Markey bill will add $700 to $750 million to Exelon’s annual revenues for every $10 per metric ton (Mt) increase in the price of CO2 allowances. Such a revenue increase would contribute $0.67-0.72 to earnings per share. Exelon estimates that the price of CO2 allowances, when the law takes effect in 2012, will range from $15 to $18/Mt, implying a positive earnings impact of $1.00 to $1.30 per share.

The Chamber and NAM oppose Waxman-Markey because they promote the general interest of business in a free and healthy economy. Green groups are putting pressure on other companies to leave Chamber and NAM, my colleague Christopher Horner notes. Divide and conquer is, alas, a pathetically easy game to play in an era of big government and climate hysteria. 

The real story is that so many Chamber and NAM members are standing firm, and that most observers do not expect the Senate to pass a cap-and-trade bill this year.

In today’s New York Times, Lauren Morello of ClimateWire asks, “Is 350 [parts per million] the New 450 [ppm] When It Comes to Capping Carbon Emissions?”

The answer is yes, suggests Morello, a reporter with a keen eye for the shifting fashions of climate chic.

The older viewpoint was that if the world cuts back its CO2 emissions at least 50% by 2050, with industrial countries cutting their emissions by 80% or more, we could stabilize CO2 concentrations at 450 ppm, and that, in turn, would limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

But a 45o ppm stabilization target is increasingly regarded as too weak and unacceptably risky.  Twenty scientists, in an open letter to the President and Congress, contend that the Waxman-Markey legislation, with its emission reduction target of 83% by 2050, should be considered “only a first step.”

Then there’s the 350 or Bust campaign led by the Center for Biological Diversity. CBD and its comrades demand that U.S. environmental statutes be “fully implemented” to lower CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm. In June, CBD issued a report advising EPA to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for CO2 set at 350 ppm.

Morello quotes Sanford University scientist Stephen Schneider on why 350 ppm is better than 450 ppm: “We’re betting the planet. There’s no such thing as a safe level [of CO2 concentrations]. There’s a level of very risky, versus mildly risky.”

This is the familiar rhetoric that we’re ”gambling with the only planet we have.” As should be obvious by now (alas, it isn’t), Schneider and other cap-and-traders propose to gamble with the only economy we have. They talk as if there are no risks of climate policy, only risks of climate change. I would paraphrase Schneider as follows: There’s economically hazardous (stabilization at 450 ppm by 2050) and there’s economically ruinous (stabilization at 350 ppm).

In “We Can’t Get There From Here” (Mar. 14, 2009), Newsweekcolumnist Sharon Begley describes what it would take to stabilize CO2 concentrations at 450 ppm by 2050:

[Cal Tech chemist Nate] Lewis’s numbers show the enormous challenge we face. The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.) Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon. That’s a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially since renewables kicked in a measly 0.2 terawatts in 2006 and nuclear provided 0.9 terawatts. Are you a fan of nuclear? To get 10 terawatts, less than half of what we’ll need in 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d have to build 10,000 reactors, or one every other day starting now. Do you like wind? If you use every single breeze that blows on land, you’ll get 10 or 15 terawatts. Since it’s impossible to capture all the wind, a more realistic number is 3 terawatts, or 1 million state-of-the art turbines, and even that requires storing the energy—something we don’t know how to do—for when the wind doesn’t blow. Solar? To get 10 terawatts by 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d need to cover 1 million roofs with panels every day from now until then. “It would take an army,” he says. Obama promised green jobs, but still.

The sacrifices required of developing countries would be immense, because 90% of the growth in global CO2 emissions is expected to occur in developing countries. Here’s a graph former CEQ Chairman Jim Connaughton prepared for the December 2007 major emitters conference:

Stephen Eule of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows that to lower global emissions 50% below today’s levels by 2050 (the minimum reduction required to stabilize CO2 at 450 ppm), developing countries would have to reduce their emissions 62% below the baseline projection even if developed countries magically reduce their emissions to zero. They’d have cut emissions 71% below baseline if developed countries cut their emissions “only” 84% below current levels (essentially the Waxman-Markey reduction target).

Absent technological miracles (which in their nature can’t be planned or predicted), lowering CO2 to 350 ppm by 2050 would probably require a global depression sustained over several decades.

Along with the push to make 350 the new 450, I detect a shift in climate alarmist rhetoric.

 If I’m not mistaken, there is a new and greater emphasis on the so-called precautionary principle. We don’t really know that limiting CO2 concentrations to 450 ppm would keep a safe lid on global warming, so we should err on the side of caution; 350 ppm is a more protective goal, argue NASA’s James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt. Again, this completely ignores the perils of the political interventions and fossil-energy restrictions required to achieve either of those targets. 

Another rhetorical shift is a subtle revision in the concept of climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity used to mean how much global warming you get from a given increase in CO2 concentrations. However, since 2001, although CO2 concentrations have increased at an accelerating rate, global temperatures have been stagnant or even declined slightly. To my knowledge, no scientist in the late 1990s predicted a roughly 10-year period of no warming at the start of the 21st Century. This suggests that the climate is less sensitive (less reactive to CO2 emissions) than the alleged “scientific consensus” has been telling us.

That’s inconvenient if the only way to sell energy rationing to a reluctant populace is to claim, over and over again, that climate change is “even worse than scientists previously predicted.”

So the new rhetoric emphasizes the alleged damages of global warming — melting Arctic sea ice, drought in Australia, species migration. And we’re told that these impacts are occurring faster than climate models have predicted.  Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists argued along those lines at a Ways and Means Committee hearing earlier this year on “Scientific Objectives in Climate Change Legislation.” 

Climate sensitivity is thus redefined to mean climate impacts per a given increment of warming rather temperature change per a given increment of CO2. In short, we’re supposed to believe that less warming than the IPCC predicts leads to worse impacts than the IPCC predicts. Hence the need to make 350 ppm the new 450 ppm.

All of which is obviously question-begging, because if the world isn’t warming, how do we know that, say, drought in Southern California is due to CO2 emissions rather than to ocean cycles or some other factor not related to the greenhouse effect? Indeed, if a change in weather or climatic conditions occurs faster than greenhouse climate models project, that is prima facie evidence that the change is not due to greenhouse gas emissions. 

The older view of climate sensitivity – that X amount of CO2 produces Y amount of warming — is the correct one, because it alone allows scientists to frame testable hypotheses. Scientists can measure CO2 concentrations, and they can measure global temperatures, and they can test whether a given increment in CO2 concentrations does or does not yield a hypothetical increase in global temperature.  

As discussed in a previous post, a recent observational study by Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi of MIT indicates that the actual climate is about six times less sensitive to CO2 emissions than the IPCC’s “best estimate.”

In today’s New York Times, John Broder strains to belittle Alan Carlin, the “whistle blower” whose skeptical comments on EPA’s proposed endangerment finding the Agency tried to suppress. Most of the piece is larded with innuendo and spin.

Below is the text of Broder’s article and my running commentary in bold italics.

Behind the Furor Over a Climate Change Skeptic
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon administration.

Slant from the get-go. Why not be factual and say Carlin has worked at EPA since 1971, or since shortly after the Agency opened its doors? Why instead associate him with the tainted Nixon Administration? Also, what’s this bit about Carlin “laboring in obscurity”? That raises suspicion that Carlin is a disgruntled employee.

In June, however, he became a sudden celebrity with the surfacing of a few e-mail messages that seemed to show that his contrarian views on global warming had been suppressed by his superiors because they were inconvenient to the Obama administration’s climate change policy.

Broder hints that Carlin may be a ”celebrity” seeker trying to break out of the “obscurity” in which he “labored.” Such cynical innuendo ignores an obvious fact: Carlin would never have come to anyone’s attention outside of EPA had the Agency not traduced its own professed commitment to “overwhelming transparency” in science-based policymaking.     

Conservative commentators and Congressional Republicans said he had been muzzled because he did not toe the liberal line.

Yup, they said that — because it’s true!

But a closer look at his case and a broader set of internal E.P.A. documents obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act paint a more complicated picture.

Actually, the New York Times set of EPA documents is “broader” by only one document, an email from Dr. Carlin to Dr. Al McGartland dated 03/13/2009 10:17 AM. It does “complicate” the picture somewhat, but in a way that undercuts the contrarian image of Carlin that Broder is trying to paint.

In this email, Carlin says, “I suggest you forward our comments, perhaps removing the name NCEE [National Center for Environmental Economics] from the cover page, to Paul and OAR [Office of Air and Radiation] with a note that at the very least this represents a summary of the principal viewpoints that OAR is likely to encounter to their TSD [Technical Support Document], and therefore would appear to be useful in revising the TSD to try to meet these arguments ahead of time.”

This email raises the distinct possibility that Carlin was attempting to strengthen EPA’s endangerment proceeding. As he goes on to explain: “It is unbelievable that John and I have been able to poke so many holes in the orthodox view in so short a time with so little manpower.”

It is true that Dr. Carlin’s supervisor refused to accept his comments on a proposed E.P.A. finding, since adopted, that greenhouse gases endangered health and the environment, and that he did so in a dismissive way.

Hold on there! Carlin’s superior (Al McGartland) did not merely refuse to “accept his comments,” he forbade Carlin to discuss endangerment with anyone outside their immediate office, refused to transmit Carlin’s comment to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, and forbade Carlin to spend any more time on climate change.

But the newly obtained documents show that Dr. Carlin’s highly skeptical views on global warming, which have been known for more than a decade within the small unit where he works, have been repeatedly challenged by scientists inside and outside the E.P.A.;

There’s a whole lot of misinformation in this sentence fragment.

(1) The newly obtained documents say nothing about Carlin’s views being “repeatedly challenged.”

(2) Even if they did, so what? Most opinions about climate science and climate policy have been “repeatedly challenged” by someone. It is expected that people commenting on proposed agency actions will disagree on many issues big and small. That’s the reason for inviting public comment in the first place!  

(3) Nothing in these documents suggests that Carlin has been a skeptic for “more than a decade.” Carlin’s skepticism appears to be of recent vintage. For example, in a 2007 Penn Law Review article, Carlin argued that the most effective and efficient way to control climate change is with geo-engineering strategies, not emission-control regulations. The article presupposes that anthropogenic global warming is a serious problem.

that he holds a doctorate in economics, not in atmospheric science or climatology;

We needed newly-released “EPA documents” to find out that Carlin’s Ph.D. is in economics, not climate science? Nonsense. The documents say nothing about Carlin’s educational credentials. Besides, Carlin has never pretended to have a Ph.D. in climate science.

Broder overlooks several obvious points here.

(1) Carlin holds a B.S. in physics from Cal Tech. So, even if a science credential were a prerequisite for commenting on endangerment — it manifestly is not, since the vast majority of the 20,000 or so unique comments EPA has received were not submitted by scientists — Carlin meets that standard by virtue of his Cal Tech degree.

(2) Whatever happened to ‘lifelong learning’? Carlin has been analyzing environmental issues at EPA for 38 years. During at least 7 of those years Carlin did research in the physical sciences and supervised the production of reports similar to EPA’s Technical Support Document. Broder has no business suggesting that Carlin is unqualified to offer comment on the endangerment proposal.

(3) Most importantly, Carlin’s job at EPA is to analyze the economics of environmental issues. That means evaluating the costs and benefits of environmental policies. There is no way to evaluate the benefits of an environmental policy without understanding the relevant science.

For example, what are the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by X number of tons over Y number of years? The answer to that question depends on a host of assumptions about various scientific issues (e.g. climate sensitivity). A drone might accept somebody else’s assumptions as “settled science,” but a conscientious analyst with degrees in physics and economics would do exactly what Carlin did — try to provide the Agency with a genuinely independent assessment.

that he has never been assigned to work on climate change;

Actually, Dr. Carlin’s FY2009 performance standards, which were signed by Dr. McGartland, explicitly require work on climate change.

and that his comments on the endangerment finding were a product of rushed and at times shoddy scholarship, as he acknowledged Thursday in an interview.

Yes, of course, the product was rushed, and not ready for publication in an academic journal. Broder makes it sound as if Carlin confessed to an embarrassing fact in the Thursday interview. In fact, Carlin’s comment states that it was written in haste, does not meet normal scholarly standards, and was barely edited. Shame on Broder for suggesting that Carlin kept this hidden until the New York Times dragged it out of him, or that Carlin rather than the ridiculously short deadline (4.5 days) was to blame for the work’s defects.

Dr. Carlin remains on the job and free to talk to the news media, and since the furor his comments on the finding have been posted on the E.P.A.’s Web site. Further, his supervisor, Al McGartland, also a career employee of the agency, received a reprimand in July for the way he had handled Dr. Carlin.

Puh-leaze! Carlin remains free to talk because of the furor over his previous muzzling! EPA posted the comment to appease public and congressional anger at the comment’s being suppressed in the first place. Broder suggests that EPA damage-control efforts mean there was no problem in the first place. Is he a reporter, or a flak-catcher for EPA?

Dr. McGartland, also an economist, declined to comment on the matter. But top officials of the agency said his decision not to forward Dr. Carlin’s comments to the E.P.A. office that would be writing the final report had been his own and not directed by anyone higher up in the agency.

That top officials might be using McGartland as a scapegoat to protect their jobs, avoid a bigger scandal, and keep the endangerment proceeding on track is a possibility Broder never considers. 

Of course, McGartland may well have acted without the knowledge of his higher-ups. But that just raises another question: What is it about the political culture of EPA in the age of Gorethodoxy that prompted McGartland to suppress an analysis relevant to an important Agency action and censor a colleague at the NCEE? Broder does not seem at all curious to find out.

Adora Andy, the agency’s chief spokeswoman, called the accusation that Dr. Carlin had been muzzled for political reasons “ridiculous.”

But Carlin was, in fact, muzzled from March 12 through June 23, and although the reasons have never been made clear, the political points stated in McGartland’s email of 03/17/09 08:12 AM could be the reason: “The administrator and the administration has [sic] decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”

“There was no predetermined position on endangerment, and Dr. Carlin’s work was not suppressed,” Ms. Andy said in an e-mail response to questions.

Preposterous. McGartland’s email of 3/12/09 02:40 PM specifically forbade Carlin to discuss endangerment with anyone outside of their office. Since McGartland later declined to submit Carlin’s comment with OAR, he did his best to send it down the memory hole.

“There was no predetermined position on endangerment, and Dr. Carlin’s work was not suppressed,” Ms. Andy said in an e-mail response to questions. “This administration has always welcomed varying scientific points of view, and we received much of it over this process.”

EPA’s proposed endangerment finding is nothing but a “predetermined position on endangerment.” The main point of Carlin’s comment is that EPA’s proposal and associated Technical Support Document do not even acknowledge data and scientific research inconsistent with EPA’s assumptions.  

Dr. Carlin said he was concerned less about how he had been treated than about what he described as the agency’s unwillingness to hear the arguments of climate change skeptics. He said there was an obvious “imbalance” between the billions of dollars the government had spent building a case for dangerous climate change and the lack of attention to a handful of skeptics like him.

Finally, some real reporting. Well, almost. The “handful” of skeptics comment is editorializing, and grossly inaccurate.

The affair began in March as the E.P.A. was rushing to document the scientific justification for its proposed finding that emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases endangered public health and the environment. The finding was largely an updated version of a similar report, prepared last year under the Bush administration, that came to the same conclusion. But the Bush administration never acted on the research or issued an actual finding.

The agency’s officials were acting in March under severe time constraints to prepare the finding for the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, who was planning to issue it in mid-April, fulfilling a presidential campaign pledge by Barack Obama.

Broder neglects to note that these severe time constraints were entirely self-imposed, not ordered by the Supreme Court. Because the Agency was rushing to get its proposal out the door, Carlin had to rush to apprise the Agency of his concerns. So again, why bother mentioning that Carlin’s 93-page comment was in no shape to be published in an academic journal?

The finding set the stage for the government to regulate greenhouse gases for the first time, an initiative that will resonate through the economy for decades.

Dr. Carlin, long known as a skeptic on global warming, was not invited to submit comments on the document. But he was determined that his views be heard.

Two points here. (1) Earlier Broder said Carlin “labored in obscurity.” So how could he be “long known” as a skeptic? Also, as noted above, Carlin’s first published work on climate policy — in 2007 — assumes the seriousness of anthropogenic global warming. (2) According to Dr. Carlin, he attended a meeting where everybody in the room was “invited” to comment on the endangerment proposal.

He rushed out a 93-page report that cited a variety of sources in raising questions about global warming and the usefulness of government action to combat it. In an accompanying e-mail message to superiors, he said the belief in global warming was “more religion than science” and warned that regulating carbon dioxide would be “the worst mistake that E.P.A. has ever made.”

Hear, hear!

Agency officials and outside experts who reviewed his report as a result of the outcry over the episode have said they found it wanting in a number of ways. It included unverified information from blog posts, they found, quoted selectively from journal articles, failed to acknowledge contradictory information and may have borrowed passages verbatim from the blog of a well-known climate change doubter.

This misses the point. EPA shirked its duty, under Sec. 202 of the Clean Air Act, to exercise its “judgment” in deciding endangerment. Instead, the Agency uncritically accepted the judgment of two externally-produced literature reviews — the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and the work of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (see the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s explanation of this problem). Carlin’s comment was designed to summarize data and research that EPA’s endangerment proposal and Technical Support Document did not even address. To call it “selective” is thus to take it entirely out of context. The comment was not meant to be a comprehensive overview of climate science but a corrective to EPA’s one-sided assessment.

In the interview Thursday, Dr. Carlin admitted that his report had been poorly sourced and written. He blamed the tight deadline.

“There are numerous problems with it,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of sending it to a journal in its current form. It is totally unacceptable for that type of thing. But it was either do it in four and a half days or don’t do it. I had to take some shortcuts.”

Does Broder dispute that Carlin had 4.5 days to complete his comment? If not, then why bother comparing the comment to a scientific paper prepared for a refereed journal?  

According to e-mail messages that were among the documents obtained this week under the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. McGartland had earlier tried to discourage Dr. Carlin from filing comments on the proposed finding and told him that whatever he submitted was not likely to affect the final report, implying that the decision had already been made. After receiving Dr. Carlin’s comments, Dr. McGartland told him that he would not forward them to the office preparing the final report.

Two things to notice here.

(1) McGartland’s statement implying that EPA’s decision “had already been made” calls into question top officials’ denials that the outcome of EPA’s endangerment proceeding is ”predetermined.” 

(2) McGartland did not merely imply that endangerment was a done deal, he also implied that people upstairs might be upset with comments that “do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”

“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round,” he wrote on March 17. “The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”

Finally a relevant quotation, but Broder offers no analysis.

A few minutes later, he instructed Dr. Carlin to “move on to other issues and subjects.” He also told Dr. Carlin not to discuss climate change with anyone outside his immediate office.

The e-mail messages most embarrassing to the E.P.A. came to light in late June, when someone sympathetic to Dr. Carlin leaked them to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative group that regularly produces studies critical of research that advances a case for climate change and government actions to address it.

For the record, CEI is a free-market or libertarian public policy group. We also do not publish studies critical of climate change but of climate change alarmism.

The institute distributed the material widely, and a number of conservative commentators and Republican lawmakers seized on it as an example of what they called Democratic suppression of science.

Dr. McGartland was “counseled” by his superior “to assure that professional differences are expressed in appropriate and considered ways,” according to one of the newly released documents.

I do not find this statement in the documents linked to Broder’s column.

Dr. Carlin said he and Dr. McGartland had not spoken to each other since June.

The new documents linked to Broder’s column are not newsworthy. They do not advance public understanding of the issues one iota. I can only conclude that Broder published them in order to have a hook to engage in pro-EPA apologetics at the expense of a courageous and learned civil servant.

In “The Dog Ate Global Warming,” published yesterday in National Review Online, Cato Institute scholar and climatologist Patrick J. Michaels delivers a body blow to the “science is settled” dogma.

There are three core issues in climate change science: detection (Is it warming, and if so by how much); attribution (What’s causing the warming we observe?); and, sensitivity (How much warming will a given increase in greenhouse gas concentrations produce?). As I argue in a previous post, all of these issues remain unsettled, and more so today than at any time in the past decade.  

Although climate sensitivity is the most important issue (because if climate sensitivity is low, then there is no “planetary emergency,” hence no need for “urgent action”), detection is in a sense primary, because without reliable temperature data it is impossible to resolve the other two issues.

The claim that the latter half of the 20th century was warmer than any comparable period during the past 1300 years is largely based on surface temperature records subject to several well-known warming biases. Urbanization generates artificial “heat islands.” Agriculture and irrigation in places like California’s Central Valley also produce local warming effects. Retired meteorologist Anthony Watts has documented that nearly nine out of every 10 U.S. weather stations fail to meet the U.S. Weather Service’s minimum requirement that temperature sensing equipment be placed at least 30 meters (about 100 feet) away from artificial heat sources such as air conditioner exhaust vents, waste water treatment plants, and parking lot pavements.

Michaels now exposes the shocking fact that the data allegedly underpinning the most influential surface temperature record are missing and apparently have been destroyed. The record is known as Jones-Wigley for its authors, Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) and Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The IPCC relied exclusively on this record until its 2001 report.

For years, Jones and Wigley declined to share the raw data from which they constructed their record. Recently, however, Jones told University of Colorado Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. that they could not share their data with him, because the data no longer exist:

Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality-controlled and homogenized) data.

 Michaels says the “data storage availability” excuse is “balderdash,” since “All the original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s.”

The bigger point, of course, is that if other scientists cannot examine the raw data, they cannot assess the accuracy and objectivity of the “value-adding” adjustments Jones and Wigley made to produce their global temperature record.

In addition to providing another reason to reject the “science is settled” dogma, disappearance of the Jones-Wigley data is of direct relevance to EPA’s pending endangerment finding. The Jones-Wigley temperature record is part of the evidence on which EPA bases its judgment that “air pollution” from greenhouse gas emissions “endangers public health and welfare.”

Use of the Jones-Wigley temperature record in a rulemaking clearly flouts federal data quality standards. Under OMB guidelines implementing the Federal Data Quality Act, data quality consists of four elements: objectivity, utility to users, integrity of information, and reproducibility in the case of “influential scientific or statistical information.”

Now, if the original Jones-Wigely data have been destroyed, then it is impossible to assure “integrity of information.” For all we know, Jones and Wigley goofed in their calculations or choice of methodologies, or even manipulated the data to produce a pre-determined result. By the same token, it is impossible to “reproduce” the Jones-Wigley temperature record, because there are no data to reproduce it from. Yet, as a factual basis of both the IPCC reports and the EPA endangerment finding, Jones-Wigley indisputably qualifies as “influential scientific or statistical information.”

Michaels’s terse conclusion speaks volumes: “No data, no science.” For decades, Jones-Wigley has been a mainstay of the alleged ”scientific consensus” supporting Kyoto-style energy rationing. Warmists have a lot of explaining to do.

On February 25, 2009, Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville testified on “Scientific Objectives for Climate Change Legislation,” before the House Ways and Means Committee.

Dr. Hansen is probably the world’s most influential scientist in the climate alarmist camp. His 1988 congressional testimony, which projected significant increases in global temperatures over the next two decades, gave birth to the warming movement.

At the Ways and Means hearing, Christy testified that datasets he and his colleagues have developed contradict the climate model hypotheses and surface temperature records on which alarmism rests. His leading example was the discrepancy between Hansen’s 1988 model forecasts and actual temperatures as measured by two independent satellite monitoring systems.

“GISS” A, B, and C are Hansen’s 1988 global warming model projections. “A” and “B” are model projections assuming business-as-usual emission levels similar to what happened (actually a bit lower than what occurred). ”C” is a model projection assuming drastic CO2 cuts. ”UAH” and “RSS” are, respectively, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and Remote Sensing Systems satellite records.

Christy comments:

All model projections show a high sensitivity to CO2 while the actual atmosphere does not. It is noteworthy that the model projection for drastic CO2 cuts still overshot the observations. This would be considered a failed hypothesis test for the models from 1988.

 Ancient history, you say? Maybe, but Christy also compared the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report’s (AR4) climate model warming projections with actual temperature data.

The red and orange lines mark the upper and lower bounds of 95% of the global warming projections calculated by 21 IPCC AR4 models for multi-year segments ending in 2020. The blue and green lines show temperature trends calculated from the UAH satellite record and the U.K. Hadley Center surface temperature record, respectively.

Christy comments:

The two main points here are (1) the observations are much cooler than the mid-range of the model spread and are at the minimum of the model simulations and (2) the satellite adjustment for surface comparisons is exceptionally good. The implication of (1) is that the best estimates of the IPCC models are too warm, or that they are too sensitive to CO2 emissions.

By now you may be wondering what any of this has to do with peer review at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Patience, grasshopper.

At the hearing, Hansen declined to address Christy’s critique of model sensitivity assumptions on the merits. Rather, he asserted that climate sensitivity is “crystal clear,” and advised the Committee to ask the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to produce a report and accept its verdict as “authoritative.”

Now, if you’re like me, you probably assume that the National Academy insists on the most rigorous standards of peer review for PNAS, the organization’s flagship publication. But an article in the current (19 September 2009) issue of Science magazine (subscription required) suggests otherwise.

The article, “PNAS Nixes Special Privileges for (Most) Papers,” reports that:

National Academy members, as elite scientists, could shepherd their own work through peer review with less vetting than at other publications by “contributing” a paper. They could also “communicate” a paper on behalf of colleagues who had not been elected to the academy’s august ranks.

The article goes on to explain that:

In practice, “communicating” a colleague’s paper meant that a member lined up referees to review it before PNAS ever saw it. This increased the chance of a favorable reception — and looked suspiciously like cronyism to outsiders.

Because of that perception, PNAS announced last week that it will end the “communicated” option for submitting papers by July 2010. However, Science reports, “The move will not affect the privileges of academy members to line up reviews before they submit their own papers to PNAS …”

I don’t know about you, but my college GPA would have been higher had I been allowed to ”line up” friends to grade my term papers and tests. And wouldn’t it be nice if, during job performance reviews at work, we could “line up” allies to decide whether we deserve a raise and a bonus?

Science further reports that the “rejection rate for communicated or contributed papers that reach the PNAS is a few percent, whereas the rejection rate for standard submissions is 80%.” Membership doth seem to have its privileges at the National Academy.

Having spent a few years in institutions of higher learning, both as a student and a teacher, I have seen how our alleged bastions of academic freedom breed conformity and group-think. 

First, there’s the quest for tenure. A young professor serious about his career dare not challenge the methodological or ideological pieties of his colleagues, lest they deny him the coveted job security he seeks. And if the acolyte makes it into the ranks of the tenured, he will think twice about offending colleagues with whom he may be stuck for decades, and he’ll take care not to jeopardize his department’s research contracts and grants by offending the political pieties of grantmakers in Washington, D.C.

Most people admitted into the august ranks of the National Academy will have been shaped by the conformity mills that our institutions of higher learning have become. Moreover, once ensconced in the club, they will be loathe to offend other members, many of whom may have voted to admit them in the first place.

So it should come as no surprise that “the rejection rate for communicated or contributed papers that reach the PNAS is a few percent, whereas the rejection rate for standard submissions is 80%.” 

Even apart from these considerations, cronyism seems to be a significant problem in climate-related research. The IPCC reports are collections of literature reviews in which the lead authors often review their own work. Statistician Edward Wegman noted in his assessment of the infamous “hockey stick“ reconstruction of global temperatures (which allegedly proved that 1998 was the warmest year of the past 1,000 years) that “authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they seem on the surface.” 

So when National Academy member James Hansen declines to debate John Christy on the merits, and instead advises Congress to let the NAS decide the scientific basis of climate legislation, he is actually asking Congress to let the old-boy network to which he belongs call the shots.

That Hansen would proffer such self-serving advice rather than debate the core issue on the merits is reason enough to be skeptical of the science he espouses.

Today’s ClimateWire (subscription required) carries an analysis by reporter Lauren Morello that begins:

Say goodbye to “greenhouse gases.” Say hello to “carbon pollution” and ”heat-trapping gases.”  

Morello observes a shift in the vocabulary U.S. government officials are using to talk about global warming — a change much in evidence in President Obama’s climate speech yesterday at the U.N.

Obama officials increasingly avoid the non-pejorative (although somewhat metaphorical) term “greenhouse gas” to describe carbon dioxide and instead refer to “carbon pollution” and “heat-trapping gases.”

Morello quotes NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco’s explanation that these terms are emphasized to “make what’s happening more understandable and more accessible to non-technical audiences.”

Fortunately, she also quotes CEI’s Myron Ebell, who cuts to the chase: “The cleverest thing that the global warming alarmists have done is to categorize carbon dioxide emissions as pollution, because it’s not true.”

The Obama administration’s shift to this terminology is actually way behind the green bamboozle curve. Al Gore repeatedly called carbon dioxide “global warming pollution” in his 2006 film and book, An Inconvenient Truth. Major environmental groups have been denouncing “greenhouse pollution” and “global warming pollution” for years.

The Supreme Court takes the cake, however, deciding in Massachusetts v. EPA (April 2007) that carbon dioxide is an “air pollutant” merely by virtue of the fact that it is “emitted into” the air. By that logic, even zero-pollution, completely clean air is an “air pollutant,” provided it is “emitted.”

This sort of terminological confusion is not harmless. By defining CO2 as an “air pollutant” merely because it is “emitted,” the Court set the stage for a gigantic regulatory chain reaction under the Clean Air Act that could easily dwarf Waxman-Markey and the Kyoto Protocol in cost and scope, as I explain here.

If Lubchenco really wants to demystify the climate debate, she might start by describing CO2 more accurately. Here’s my pick: ”a plant-fertilizing, biosphere-greening, colorless, odorless, non-polluting, trace gas.”