Myron Ebell

Climategate: the Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth Has Begun

by Myron Ebell on December 14, 2009

in Blog

My colleague at CEI, Iain Murray, just sent around a column by the well-known environmental and science writer Fred Pearce.  It appeared yesterday at Yale Environment 360 and is titled “Climategate: Anatomy of a Public Relations Disaster.”  The whole article is worth reading, but the last two paragraphs say it all.  Any comment by me would be superfluous:

“I have been speaking to a PR operator for one of the world’s leading environmental organizations. Most unusually, he didn’t want to be quoted. But his message is clear. The facts of the e-mails barely matter any more. It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved.

“But he says all that ended on Nov. 20. ‘The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the CRU leak is nothing less than catastrophic.’”

Climategate: Holdren Confirms (Inadvertently) that It’s a Huge Scandal

by Myron Ebell on December 5, 2009

in Blog, Politics, Science

Originally posted on Pajamas Media

When the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing [1] on the state of climate science on December 2, the Republicans were ready to focus it on the Climategate fraud scandal [2]. And the first witness, President Obama’s science adviser, Dr. John P. Holdren, was ready to respond.

Instead of summarizing his written testimony in his oral remarks, Holdren read a prepared statement on Climategate. He said that the controversy involved a “small group of scientists” and was primarily about one temperature dataset. He said that such controversies were not unusual in all branches of science and that they got sorted out through the peer review process and continuing scrutiny. Holdren also said that openness and sharing of data was important, which is why the Obama administration is strongly committed to openness. In the case of the disputed dataset (the “hockey stick” graph [3]), the National Academies of Science (NAS) undertook a thorough review of it and all other similar datasets and concluded that the preponderance of evidence supported the principal conclusion of the research. Holdren concluded by predicting that when the dust settles on this controversy, a very strong scientific consensus on global warming will remain.

Well, that sounds pretty plausible, but anyone who has followed Dr. Holdren’s amazing career knows that he is a master of plausible buncombe that disguises his “outlandish scientific assertions, consistently wrong predictions, and dangerous public policy choices,” as my CEI colleague William Yeatman has put it [4]. Everything that Holdren said in his opening statement is incomplete and misleading. But explaining that is a job for another day. The point is that the alarmist establishment and environmental pressure groups have settled on these talking points in order to try to contain and sanitize the scandal.

When Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) and other Republicans on the committee challenged Holdren’s analysis of Climategate, the president’s science adviser responded by repeating that it was just a small group of scientists engaged in some narrow research. Any mistakes or misdeeds on their part couldn’t possibly compromise the scientific consensus, which is as strong as it is vast.

But when asked about some of his own extreme statements and predictions, Holdren replied that scientific research had moved on from the latest UN assessment report in 2007. The most up-to-date scientific research was contained in a report written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists and released last summer. Holdren mentioned and referred to this report, Copenhagen Diagnosis [5], several times during the course of the hearing.

I remember when Copenhagen Diagnosis came out because nearly every major paper ran a story on it. Global warming is happening even faster than predicted, the impacts are even worse than feared, and that sort of thing. I also remembered that the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis included many of the usual conmen who are at the center of the alarmist scare. So I asked my CEI colleague Julie Walsh to compare the list of authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis with the scientists involved in Climategate.

I’m sure it will come as a shock that the two groups largely overlap. The “small group of scientists” up to their necks in Climategate include 12 of the 26 esteemed scientists who wrote the Copenhagen Diagnosis. Who would have ever guessed that forty-six percent of the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis [6] belong to the Climategate gang?  Small world, isn’t it?

Here’s the list of tippity-top scientists who both wrote the authoritative report that Holdren relied on to support his statements and belong to the “small group of scientists” who are now suspected of scientific fraud:

Nathan Bindoff, also a lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (hereafter LA-IPCC FAR)

Peter Cox, also LA-IPCC FAR

David Karoly, also LA-IPCC FAR and the Third Assessment Report (TAR)

Georg Kaser, also LA-IPCC FAR

Michael E. Mann, also LA-IPCC TAR (the hockey stick scandal made him too radioactive to participate in writing FAR)

Stefan Rahmstorf, also LA-IPCC FAR

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, merely “a longstanding member of the IPCC.”

Stephen Schneider, also LA-IPCC FAR, TAR, and the First and Second Assessment Reports (SAR) plus two of the IPCC’s synthesis reports

Steven Sherwood, only a contributing author to IPCC-FAR

Richard C. J. Somerville, co-ordinating LA-PCC FAR

Eric J. Steig, no connection to IPCC listed

Andrew Weaver, also LA-IPCC FAR, TAR, and SAR

In the interests of space, I’ve left out all of their distinguished positions as professors, editors of academic journals, and heads of institutes. You can search for their Climategate emails here [7].

Then there are those Climategate figures who didn’t help write Climate Diagnosis, but who have been involved in the IPCC assessment reports. Here are three that come to mind:

Phil Jones, contributing author IPCC TAR

Kevin Trenberth, co-ordinating LA-IPCC FAR and SAR, LA-IPCC TAR, and an author of the summaries for policymakers for FAR, TAR, and SAR

Ben Santer, convening LA-IPCC First Assessment Report

Now, I wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions here, but it kind of looks to me like the “small group of scientists” caught out by Climategate are pretty much the same people who make up the vast and strong scientific consensus on global warming and write the official reports that the U.S. and other governments rely on to inform their policy decisions. I’m sure Dr. John P. Holdren, President Obama’s science adviser, has a plausible alternative explanation. He always does.

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-obamas-science-adviser-confirms-the-scandal-%e2%80%94-unintentionally/

URLs in this post:

[1] hearing: http://globalwarming.house.gov/pubs?id=0014#main_content

[2] scandal: http://republicans.globalwarming.house.gov/Press/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=2740

[3] the “hockey stick” graph: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3099

[4] put it: http://cei.org/webmemo/2009/01/13/dr-john-p-holdren

[5] Copenhagen Diagnosis: http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/

[6] Copenhagen Diagnosis: http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/authors.html

[7] here: http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=browse-events&event-type-id=10&event-id=1913&event-context-theme-id=1&c=10&s=coverage&r=true&p=1&t=overview

Australian Senate Defeats Cap-and-Trade Bill

by Myron Ebell on December 1, 2009

in Blog

(This just in from our good friend, Ray Evans, in Australia.  Ray is an officer of the Lavoisier Group, a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition.  Their web site address is: http://www.lavoisier.com.au/index.php.  Ray and the Lavoisier Group have waged a brilliant and determined fight against cap-and-trade in Australia.  They deserve much of the credit for today’s stunning vote.)

Ray Evans reports:

1130 hrs AEST

The Australian Senate voted this morning to defeat, for the second time, the Rudd Government’s CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill thus creating a second trigger for a double dissolution election. A DD election means that every senate position is declared vacant, and that after such an election a joint meeting of both houses could pass the contested Bill by a simple majority.

In reaching this position the former Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull was deposed (he had declared his full support for the CPRS Bill) and by one vote his successor, Tony Abbott, a long-time if mostly silent sceptic, was elected as leader. The party room then declared overwhelming support (54 – 29) for deferring or voting down  the Bill.

The Liberal Party is now ready to fight an election on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) (an Australian version of cap-n-trade) which is at the heart of the CPRS Bill. Whether Prime Minister Rudd will call a DD election is open to doubt. But for the first time in Australian politics we have a situation where the electorate now gets to have a say. It has been a bad week for the chattering classes.

Climategate Claims Its First Casualty: CRU Pushes Phil Jones Out

by Myron Ebell on December 1, 2009

in Blog, Politics, Science

The Associated Press is reporting  from London that Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia is temporarily stepping down as director of the Climatic Research Unit, which is at the center of the Climategate scandal.

No surprise there.  Jones has been a goner for days. What is surprising is the reason that the AP gives for his “temporary” removal from his directorship:

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.
The AP story’s lead sentence is even more surprising:
Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.
One wonders how long this reporter will last in the mainstream media. He’s clearly not with the MSM program to contain and sanitize this mushrooming scandal.
(Originally posted on Pajamas Media here.)

Climategate: The Washington Post in Denial

by Myron Ebell on December 1, 2009

in Blog, Politics, Science

(Note: this is a copy of part of a post on Pajamas Media, which can be found here.)

When I read the Washington Post’s disgraceful editorial the other day on the Climategate scandal, I thought of how far they have fallen since their big moment in the sun, Watergate.  In those heady days, Editor Ben Bradlee  and a team of crack investigative reporters led by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate coverup and brought down President Nixon.  Of course, they were then on the side of the permanent Washington establishment, who loathed Nixon (as he loathed them), just as they are now on the side of the permanent Washington establishment, for whom global warming alarmism is a deeply held commitment.

If it were up to the Washington Post and the New York Times and the three major teevee broadcast networks, the Climategate scandal would be last week’s news.  Their strategy is clearly to contain it and sanitize it.  The “world’s leading climate scientists” and the environmental pressure groups and the mainstream media have all agreed on their talking points.  Their story is: Critics are cherry-picking a few nasty e-mails and taking them out of context, but the vast edifice of scientific consensus is unshaken.  And they’re sticking to it.  But already this coverup isn’t working.  The blogosphere is pushing forward with new revelations and connecting the dots.  This is the work of tens of thousands of people, some of them with more scientific and statistical expertise than the tippity-top climate scientists at the Climatic Research Unit and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies.  And a lot more honest and dedicated to finding the truth, of course.

In the meantime, the Post editorial page editors are in denial.  Today, the Post published three letters in reply to their editorial article.  I’m not surprised that they didn’t print mine, which I sent the day the editorial was published.  I copy it below.  But they did print a letter from Associate Professor Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University, one of the figures at the center of the Climategate scandal.  I am tempted to repeat Mary McCarthy’s remark about Lillian Hellman (“Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the“), but will restrain myself.

Mann’s effrontery knows no limits.  In his letter, he advises readers to go to RealClimate.org to get the straight dope on the scandal.  RealClimate is a a global warming alarmist propaganda effort run by Mann and several of the others implicated in Climategate.  Going to Real Climate is like going to Nixon’s White House Press Office to get clear about Watergate.

Here’s the e-mail of my unpublished letter:

From: Myron Ebell
To: letters@washpost.com
Sent: Wed Nov 25 15:40:28 2009
Subject: Letter in response to editorial article, “Climate of denial,” page A18, 25th November

25th November 2009

The Letters Editor
The Washington Post
Via e-mail

Sir or Madam,

Your editorial article “Climate of denial” is remarkably ill-informed and tendentious. The article begins by claiming that, “A hacker stole and released….” Do you have any evidence it was a computer hacker rather than a public-spirited whistleblower from within the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England who finally grew so disgusted by the ongoing scientific fraud that he made the documents public?

Second, after tsk-tsking at a few of the e-mails and rebuking the scientists involved in the scandal for not responding to the scandal effectively, the article then proceeds to claim that the vast scientific edifice supporting global warming alarmism is unshaken. This is outrageous. The scientists implicated are at the center of producing the U. N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Assessment Reports and are regularly referred to as some of the world’s top climate scientists. Have you looked at some of the three thousand files or just a few of the juicier e-mails? Here is just one comment in one of the files from the scientist working on one of the temperature datasets:

“What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no )’supposed’, I can make it up. So I have :-)…So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option – to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations (er, CLIMAT excepted). In other words, what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad, but I really don’t think people care enough to fix ’em, and it’s the main reason the project is nearly a year late. ” (From the “Harry Read Me” file, which may be found at http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME-30.txt.)

Dozens of similar comments have already been noted in the files. How does the Post know that similar corruption is not to be found in other major research supporting the so-called scientific consensus? After all, a number of the scientists implicated are at other institutions, including the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in NYC, and several U. S. universities.

There is certainly a climate of denial, and it includes the Post editorial page. Instead of joining the effort to stonewall this scandal, the Post should be leading the way and demanding that full civil and criminal investigations be undertaken of the scientists implicated. Or have you forgotten your role in Watergate?

Yours faithfully,
Myron Ebell.

Climategate: Finally the New York Times Takes It Seriously

by Myron Ebell on December 1, 2009

in Politics, Science

The nation’s best science reporter, John Tierney, today publishes a great piece on Climategate on the front page of the New York Times’s Science section.  He goes through some of the hilarious comments in one of the juiciest files unearthed in the scandal so far, the “Harry Read Me” file (which I earlier wrote about here). Anyone who thinks that the “world’s leading climate scientists” don’t have anything to hide might want to read Tierney’s article.  Forget about the likely possibility that fraud was being commited.  Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit, must have known that the data was a mess and hopelessly compromised by ad hoc fixes, yet presented the Hadley/CRU historical global temperature dataset as authoritative.  Phil Jones has now been removed as director of CRU. I think the new operating principle for dealing with climate research should be former President Ronald Reagan’s motto for dealing with the Soviet Union (AKA the Evil Empire): “Trust but verify.”   With emphasis on verify.

The Global Warming Alarmist Establishment Bare Naked

by Myron Ebell on November 20, 2009

in Blog, Politics, Science

The public posting on a web site of private e-mails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England is going to cause an uproar.  Just a quick look at a few of the e-mails provides some startling revelations.  My colleague Julie Walsh lists a few of them in today’s issue of the Cooler Heads Digest.  Much more detail is provided at Steve McIntyre’s web site, ClimateAudit.

Here is CEI’s press release, and my colleague Chris Horner’s post is here.

Andrew Revkin’s story in tomorrow’s New York Times has already been posted on the Times’s web site.  Here is one interesting tidbit from Revkin’s story:

In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millennia, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide a decline” in temperatures.

‘Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often use the word “trick” to refer to a good way to solve a problem, “and not something secret.” “It sounds incriminating, but when you look at what you’re talking about, there’s nothing there,” Dr. Mann said.

Yes, that’s right, everyone knows that “trick” is used as a technical term in many professions.  For example, in prostitution “trick” means….

Senators Vitter and Barrasso Warn Big Business Supporters of Energy Rationing: Kerry-Boxer Will Shut Down U. S. Economy

by Myron Ebell on November 10, 2009

in Blog

Senators David Vitter (R-Louisiana) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) today called attention to a remarkably broad delegation of authority to the President in the Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bills that would require shutting down the U. S. economy beginning in 2015. Section 705 of Kerry-Boxer, S. 1733, requires that the EPA Administrator must submit a report to Congress every four years beginning in 2013 including a determination of whether the legislation and other policies in place are sufficient to avoid greenhouse gas concentrations above 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent (ppm CO2-e). Since concentrations are already at 430 ppm CO2-e and rising every year, there is no way that the policies in Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Boxer can keep them below 450. The U. S. economy could shut down completely, and emissions from other countries would soon push atmospheric levels past 450.

That’s where section 707 of Kerry-Boxer is triggered. Section 707 directs the President to use existing authority to keep atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases below 450 ppm CO2-e. Senators Vitter and Barrasso repeatedly asked EPA about this target beginning last summer. A few days ago they finally got answers to their questions from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. PNNL’s modeling shows that 450 ppm CO-e will be reached in 2010. Therefore section 707 will inevitably be triggered on July 1, 2015 if these provisions in Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey are enacted.

What does that mean? Well, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was not willing to speculate when asked by the Senators. But it’s easy to see that the complex mechanisms of the cap-and-trade program in Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey will have to be scrapped as of 2015. All those free ration coupons that big companies like Duke Energy and Exelon and P G and E are hoping to get won’t be worth anything because the President will be obligated to use whatever statutory authority exists to reduce emissions and get greenhouse gases back down to below 450 ppm CO2-e. All the command-and-control tools of the Clean Air Act will have to be used to require emissions reductions.

The kicker is that Senator Vitter also sent letters today to the heads of the big corporations that support Kerry-Boxer warning them that: “beginning July 1, 2015, the President would be mandated to deny discretionary permit requests for any activity that results in greenhouse gas emissions if the global greenhouse gas concentration of 450 ppm has been reached. Under this mandate, environmental groups will seek to block all new economic activities that require discretionary permits. Any allocated carbon credits (that is, ration coupons) …would be useless if discretionary permits are required.”

Then Senator Vitter’s letter plays the Sarbanes-Oxley card: “I wanted to ensure that you were aware of the impact sections 705 and 707 would have on your company’s operations and investments. Given your fiduciary duties, I know that you will advise your shareholders and others of the impairment of your financial condition and the value of any credit allocation that these sections’ enormous mandates and restrictions would create.” I hope James Rogers, CEO and Chairman of Duke Energy and the biggest corporate promoter of cap-and-trade legislation, has a hard time sleeping tonight. Ditto Peter Darbee of P G and E, John Rowe of Exelon, Jeff Sterba of PNM Resources, Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical, Jeff Immelt of General Electric, and all the other members of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership.

Can a Deal Be Reached at Copenhagen?

by Myron Ebell on October 16, 2009

in Blog

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace held a useful discussion on “Can a Deal Be Reached at Copenhagen?” in Washington on Wednesday. Carnegie’s President, Jessica Mathews, moderated the panel, and the discussants were: Margot Wallstrom, Vice President of the European Commission and former Commissioner for the Environment; Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and former Assistant Secretary of State in charge of negotiating the Kyoto Protocol; and Mohamed El-Ashry, Senior Fellow of the United Nations Foundation and former Chairman of the Global Environment Facility.

Mathews began by saying that since it now seemed highly unlikely that the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (to be held in Copenhagen in December) would reach a deal on a new agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the question that they should discuss was what can we still hope to get out of Copenhagen. Margot Wallstrom disagreed. She said that she still believes Copenhagen will succeed because we cannot afford to fail. The new treaty must include broad mandatory cuts in emissions and a financing mechanism by which rich countries would pay poor countries to cut their emissions. Wallstrom later said that President Obama must go to Copenhagen and that many world leaders needed to go and “must tie themselves to the mast”. By attending, heads of state would not be able to accept failure as the outcome.

Eileen Claussen was astute, candid, and realistic. She said that there were three main obstacles to a new treaty going into the recent negotiations in Bangkok and that a fourth major obstacle had arisen at Bangkok. First, President Obama cannot say what the U. S. is committed to until, at a minimum, the Senate passes a bill. Claussen thinks that Waxman-Markey is a good bill even though flawed, but that what the Senate might produce was still in doubt. The Environment and Public Works Committee would undoubtedly pass out the Kerry-Boxer bill, but the committee membership’s was not representative of the Senate as a whole. She later added that by her count, there were forty definite Democratic votes for Kerry-Boxer, three and three-quarters Republican votes as a result of Senator Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) op-ed with Senator John Kerry (which remark drew a laugh, but which she didn’t explain). Although support from a number of additional Democrats was likely, Claussen said that legislation could not pass without more Republican votes. And she added that no energy-rationing bill would get the sixty votes required without a significant nuclear component.

The second obstacle according to Claussen is that the developing countries won’t commit to anything until they know what commitments the U. S. will make. Third, the question of the financing mechanism by which rich countries would pay for emissions reductions in poor countries was entirely unresolved. The fourth obstacle that had arisen in Bangkok was procedural, but very serious, according to Claussen. The problem is whether the new treaty continues the Kyoto Protocol or dumps Kyoto and starts afresh. Given all these issues to be resolved, Claussen concluded that the best that could be hoped for in Copenhagen was a strong statement that they would conclude a new treaty in the near future—say by next summer.

Mohamed El-Ashry said that the negotiators in Copenhagen needed to go back to the Bali Action Plan and achieve step one in that plan. This would mean agreeing on the immediate steps that were necessary to meet the 2020 target for emissions reductions. These would include energy efficiency measures, more renewable energy, and forest sequestration. According to a report by McKinsey and Company, these measures combined could achieve 75% of the reductions necessary by 2020 at a net economic benefit of $14 billion. Achieving step one would build confidence, which would help negotiators in future years to achieve step two—binding emissions targets.

There were a number of interesting questions from the audience and several quite revealing answers from the panelists. Quite a bit of discussion swirled around the topic of who would be to blame if Copenhagen failed. Claussen replied to one question that she was trying hard to think of some way that the COP can end up not blaming the U. S. for everything. Wallstrom observed that expectations were running high in the European Union that a deal would be reached and added that she couldn’t guarantee that the European Union wouldn’t blame the U. S. if Copenhagen failed. (This is odd given the fact that George W. Bush is no longer President.)

In reply to a question about what lessons for the future could be learned from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol in the Senate, Claussen said that she feared that not much had been learned, but what the Obama Administration took away from it was that the Senate must go first before the U. S. makes definite international commitments. Wallstrom replied to a question about whether policies already in place would be dropped if Copenhagen failed by saying that the European Union would not abandon any of its climate policies because they gave the EU a competitive advantage. They make the EU less dependent on Russia, create lots of green jobs, and save money through greater energy efficiency. That of course is the EU’s line, but I think the scary thing is that Wallstrom actually believes it.

Senators Lindsey Graham and John Kerry: Yes We Can (Raise Your Energy Prices and Send Jobs Abroad)

by Myron Ebell on October 13, 2009

in Blog, Politics

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) published a curious op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times titled, “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Legislation).” The bill that they claim to support and that can pass the Senate is not the 821-page draft bill that Senators Kerry and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) released two weeks ago. It is a fantasy designed to get the support of Senator Graham and other fuzzy-minded Senators with visions of lots of new nuclear plants, billions for technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, less dependence on imported oil, and tariffs to protect American manufacturing jobs in energy-intensive industries. We can have it all with a few waves of the federal government’s magic wand.

But even a glance at their article shows how little substance there is to any of these promises. No new nuclear power plants will be built unless there is somewhere to store the waste. Here’s what Kerry and Graham say about that: “We must also do more to encourage serious investment in research and development to find solutions to our nuclear waste problem.” In other words, not finish the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada that the federal government has already spent billions on, but which Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and President Obama oppose. Carbon capture and storage technology is more than a decade away from being commercially available. Even if it works and is affordable, environmental pressure groups will sue to block permits for the pipelines and underground storage sites necessary to transport and store the pressurized carbon dioxide. Here’s what Kerry and Graham say: “…we need to provide new financial incentives for companies to develop carbon capture and sequestration technology. ” Not a word about limiting lawsuits that would block projects.

Kerry and Graham support a border tax to protect American jobs from products produced in countries that don’t commit to reducing their emissions. That is an admission that energy prices are going to go up and so are the prices of goods and services that are produced with or use energy. Consumers will be poorer as a result and hence will be able to afford fewer goods and services. Bye-bye manufacturing jobs. They also claim that their as-yet-to-be-written bill will reduce our imports of foreign oil. That’s plausible, but not exactly correct. As our economy declines, we will need less oil. But it will reduce U. S. and Canadian production first because the production costs are much higher here than in Saudi Arabia.


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