William Yeatman

Announcements

Don Blankenship, Chairman and CEO of Massey Energy Company, gave a great talk at the National Press Club this week on energy realities versus global warming fantasy as well as some other topics.  It was broadcast on C-Span and can be viewed online.

Americans for Prosperity’s New Jersey chapter is building support for legislation to withdraw New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a regional cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme. Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll and Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose introduced A3147, a bill to repeal the Global Warming Response Act of 2007. To learn more, including how you can help, click here.

In the News

Reasons To Worry
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 23 July 2010

Gathering No Moss, Just Loss
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 23 July 2010

Offsets Are Crucial in Cap-and-Trade
Iain Murray, Wall Street Journal, 22 July 2010

Son of Cap-and-Tax
Wall Street Journal editorial, 22 July 2010

Will the Party of No Foil the Half-Baked Machiavellis?
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 21 July 2010

One Person’s Oil Addict Is Another’s Intelligent Consumer
Michael Lynch, MasterResource.org, 21 July 2010

Global Warming’s Unscientific Attitude
Washington Times editorial, 21 July 2010

Climategate Inquiry Glosses over the Facts
Iain Murray, Washington Examiner, 20 July 2010

Climategate Fallout May Impact Legislation
David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle, 19 July 2010

End Boulder’s Unnatural Monopoly
Brian Schwartz, Daily Camera, 18 July 2010

Duke Professor’s “Consensus” Threatens To Shutter Coal Industry
Neal Thomas, NCCO2, 12 July 2010

News You Can Use

China Surpasses U.S. in Energy Use

The International Energy Agency this week announced that China has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s number one energy consumer.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Senate Abandons Cap-and-Trade

Senate Democrats met twice this week before Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that he was pulling the plug on cap-and-trade.  He will instead bring to the Senate floor next week a more modest package of anti-energy provisions.

It’s not quite over for cap-and-trade, but it’s close.  Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) vowed that he would keep working to find the sixty votes necessary to pass some down-sized version.  Reid nodded and said that he would be happy to bring it up in September if Kerry has the votes.  That’s not going to happen.  Cap-and-trade is a sure political loser in November’s congressional elections.  Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a press statement that he looked forward to a debate just before the election on raising energy prices and destroying jobs.

The only remaining chance is to try to pass cap-and-trade during a lame-duck session of the Congress after the November 2 elections.  The idea is that enough defeated Democrats (and a Republican or two, such as Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina) will be bitter enough and also eager enough to line up their next job in the Obama Administration or lobbying for rent-seeking corporations that they will vote for cap-and-trade.  The idea is that defeated Members will then not have to worry about representing the interests of their constituents and can instead stick it to them and follow their leadership and reward big business and environmental special interests.  Anything can happen in a lame-duck session, but this is a long shot.  I will discuss why it’s a long shot in future issues of the Digest.

Passing the blame for the demise of cap-and-trade has already begun.  The White House suggested that environmental pressure groups didn’t do enough.  Environmental pressure groups suggested that President Obama and his Administration hadn’t done enough.  Reid and Kerry blamed the Republicans.  And so on.  My own view is that reality got in the way.  Cap-and-trade has been dead in the Senate since the House passed the Waxman-Markey bill July 26, 2009.  Several Democratic and Republican Senators decided they couldn’t vote for it after they saw the overwhelmingly negative public response.  The Senate turned to healthcare reform last July instead of taking up Waxman-Markey because healthcare reform had much more public support.

Reid’s Anti-Energy Package

With this week’s abandonment of cap-and-trade, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) now plans to bring a package of comparatively modest anti-energy measures to the Senate floor next week.  As has become common in the Senate and the House, what exactly is in the package will not be revealed to Republican Senators or the public until the last minute.  On Thursday, Reid said that there would be four titles: provisions to sock it to BP for the Gulf oil spill and guarantee that it won’t happen again; incentives to consumers to buy more energy efficient products that have gained the EPA HomeStar seal of approval; incentives to buy natural gas vehicles, especially heavy duty trucks, and funding to install natural gas outlets at service stations; and full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.  Other titles could be added before the Senate takes up the package next week.

Besides dropping cap-and-trade, Reid has also dropped a renewable electricity standard for utilities, new building energy efficiency standards, and a low-carbon transportation fuel standard.  The industries that depend on subsidies and mandates and had been counting on Congress to enact cap-and-trade or at least a renewable standard for utilities are going to have to scramble to get something out of a House-Senate conference committee agreement.

The oil spill provisions that Reid is likely to include are not quite as draconian as a couple of the bills that House committees have passed.  The energy efficiency incentives are small potatoes.  The natural gas title is a payoff or bailout to T. Boone Pickens.  It will be difficult to stop because Pickens has a huge amount of clout with Republicans because of all the campaign donations he has made to them over the decades.  And the Democrats love him for supporting massive federal mandates and subsidies for commercially unviable wind power and natural gas cars.

Perhaps most interesting is the Land and Water Conservation Fund title.  I haven’t seen any details, but it is assumed that it will include full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.  The LWCF was created by Congress in 1964 to use federal offshore oil royalties to buy private land and turn it into federal land and to provide States with matching grants for land acquisition for conservation and recreation.  It is authorized at $900 million per year, but Congress typically only appropriates a couple hundred million.

Nearly thirty percent of the land mass of the United States is owned by the four federal land agencies.  Why we need more federal land instead of a lot less has always been a mystery to me.  Federal land acreage has increased in 46 States since the LWCF was enacted.  The result is to take productive land off the property tax rolls and turn it into unproductive land that requires federal taxpayer dollars to manage.   I think full funding for the LWCF is insane.

House Sub Committee Nearly Passes a Check on EPA Regulations

Representative Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) offered an amendment to the FY 2011 Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations bill this week to block funding for implementing the EPA’s Endangerment Finding for two years.  The motion failed in the Appropriations subcommittee on a 7-7 tie vote.  Two Democrats joined the subcommittee’s five Republicans in voting Yes. I expect a similar amendment will be offered when the full Appropriations Committee takes up the Interior spending bill, which includes funding for EPA.  The EPA is starting the process of regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act as a result of finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

Around the World

Dafina Mulaj

Australia

Climate policies are a major issue in Australia’s federal elections, which will take place on August 21st.  New Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard has restated her predecessor Kevin Rudd’s pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but she has been much less committed to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) than was Rudd.  That cap-and-trade program was a centerpiece of the Labor Party’s agenda, but it was defeated twice in Australia’s Senate and Rudd then shelved it.  Gillard has said that if elected her government will not consider setting a price on carbon dioxide emissions until 2012 at the earliest.  She has also vowed tough new pollution limits to clean up dirty coal-fired-power plants.

The opposition Liberal Party led by Tony Abbott has unified behind opposition to cap-and-trade and setting a price on CO2 emissions.  Abbott has attacked Labor’s CPRS as a “great big new tax” on consumers.  The Liberals are offering several alternative policies that will provide incentives to reduce emissions or store carbon in forests and in the soil.  The Liberal Party’s coalition partner, the much smaller National (or Country) Party, remains staunchly opposed to cap-and-trade.

Across the States

Dafina Mulaj

Louisiana

Fifteen thousand people filled the Cajundrome at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on Wednesday to rally against President Barack Obama’s six-month moratorium on offshore oil drilling.  The Rally for Economic Survival featured Governor Bobby Jindal and a long list of other speakers.

Thousands of high-paying jobs are threatened by the Obama Administration’s moratorium.  It has already been announced that three drilling rigs will be pulled from the Gulf and sent to Africa.

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

In the News

Beyond the Oil Spill
Mario Loyola, National Review, 2 August 2010

A Free Market Energy Vision
Robert Bradley, MasterResource.org, 16 July 2010

Another Rig Leaves the Gulf
Greg Pollowitz, Planet Gore, 15 July 2010

In Contempt of Court
William Murchison, American Spectator, 15 July 2010

Killing the Green Wave
Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun, 14 July 2010

Climategate and the Big Green Lie
Clive Crook, The Atlantic, 14 July 2010

For Left, Gore Still Matters
Darren Samuelsohn, Politico, 14 July 2010

Senate Majority Leader Reid: Cap-and-Trade Is Not in My Vocabulary
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 13 July 2010

Virginia AG Defends Climategate Suit
David Sherfinski, Washington Examiner, 13 July 2010

Alarmism Not Working for Environmentalists
David A. Fahrenthold & Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, 12 July 2010

News You Can Use

Sea Ice Growing

The Reference Frame this week noted that the total global sea ice anomaly is positive, that is, current sea ice coverage exceeds the historical average.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Energy Rationing Mired in Senate

The comprehensive energy-rationing bill that the Senate was supposed to take up this week could now be ready to go to the floor as early as the week of 26th July.  That was the news that Darren Samuelsohn of Politico reported on Tuesday.  Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) is working on three titles: one containing oil spill provisions; another on measures to promote and require more energy efficiency; and a third with lots of provisions to mandate various types of clean energy and create green jobs.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) is still trying to put together a fourth title on cap-and-trade.  His latest efforts are aimed at putting together a cap-and-trade program for electric utilities only.  The Edison Electric Institute (the trade association representing investor-owned utilities) supports Kerry’s effort, but even here problems have arisen this week.  In negotiations with EEI and environmental pressure groups, EEI said that in return for supporting a cap-and-trade program the bill would need to relax some other Clean Air Act standards.  That would help them lower the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  The environmental pressure groups immediately objected to gutting the Clean Air Act.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will only allow Kerry’s cap-and-trade title into the bill if Kerry can show that he has the 60 votes necessary.  Right now, I don’t think he has 50, so my guess is that the Senate will not consider cap-and-trade in the three weeks remaining before the August  recess starts.  Nor is it likely that the Senate will take it up this fall before the November 2 congressional elections.  That leaves some small chance that Congress will convene in a lame duck session after the election and try to sneak cap-and-trade through in the face of intense and widespread public opposition.

A more immediate question is whether Reid will be able to bring the three other titles of an energy-rationing package to the floor before the August recess.  If he does, it’s not clear that they have the 60 votes required for passage of a bill that doesn’t have cap-and-trade in it.  We shall see.  The Senate calendar is all jammed up with other big items (such as the Kagan nomination), so it may be that the Senate will not be able to get around to it.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, clearly isn’t going to give up without a fight.  Here’s what she said: “It’s so critical to start fighting the global warming threat right now. We can’t afford to wait another year or two and hope for the best.”  Of course, that was in a column in the Huffington Post on June 2, 2008.

House Committee Votes To End Oil Production

The House Energy and Commerce Committee marked up and passed out Chairman Henry Waxman’s (D-Beverly Hills) “Blowout Prevention Act” on Thursday without a single No vote.  Representative John Shadegg (R-Az.) voted Present.  All the Democrats and all the other Republicans voted Yes.  I emphasize this point because it’s incredible that anyone could vote for Waxman’s bill.  They should be deeply ashamed.

H. R. 5626 contains provisions that can be used to stop all new oil production in the United States-onshore as well as offshore; on private land as well as public.  My CEI colleague Marlo Lewis explains why here.  To summarize the details in non-technical language, the bill would put all “high-risk wells” under new federal regulations and allow environmental pressure groups to sue in federal court to prevent licensing such wells if they could lead “to extensive and widespread harm to public health, safety, and the environment.”

Harm is not defined, but could certainly include global warming.  EPA after all has already determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.  The fact that the Republicans went along with this monstrosity should start alarm bells ringing across America.  My understanding is that the House Natural Resources Committee has jurisdiction over this particular provision of the bill, so it will be interesting to see if Chairman Nick Joe Rahall (D-WV) exercises his jurisdiction or takes a pass and allows the bill to come to the House floor as is.

Here is what Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, said to me about H. R. 5626 after the committee vote: “This bill federalizes every oil and gas well in the United States, and forces States to accept the Federal oversight of all permitting, either directly or by the States doing the Fed’s bidding.  It is a huge Washington power grab of both onshore and offshore wells, including on State and private lands.  This is a poor remake of the Beverly Hillbillies, where Jed Clampett would have been in violation of federal law for discovering oil on his own property without a federally-sanctioned permit.  And Jethro would be sitting in congress voting Aye on it.”  Kish was chief of staff of the House Natural Resources Committee and a professional staff member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  He knows as much as anyone about federal regulation of oil production.

Across the States

West Virginia

The Environmental Protection Agency this week postponed the deadline for the Region 3 Administrator’s recommended determination whether or not to veto Arch Coal’s Spruce Fork mountain-top removal coal mining project in Logan County, West Virginia. The delay is further evidence that the EPA is unsure how to proceed on its regulatory crackdown on surface coal mining in Appalachia. Last April, the EPA proposed new conductivity (ie, salinity) effluent standards under the Clean Water Act, designed to protect the Mayfly, and order of insect that isn’t an endangered species. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson conceded that the new regulations would effectively outlaw future mountain-top removal mining, despite the fact that coal mining is the largest industry in West Virginia, and a significant industry in Virginia and Kentucky. Two weeks ago, however, the EPA gave a conditional Clean Water Act permit to Arch Coal’s proposed mountain-top removal mine at the Pine Creek Surface Mine in Logan County, which would seem to violate its earlier assurances that the practice would be banned. So it’s unclear how EPA is proceeding.

New Jersey

Americans for Prosperity’s New Jersey chapter is gearing up to support a legislation to withdraw New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)., a regional cap-and-0trade energy rationing scheme. Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll and Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose introduced A3147, a bill to repeal the Global Warming Response Act of 2007. To learn more, click here.

Around the World

Energy Rationing in Retreat in Pacific

The Democratic Party of Japan came to power promising the most stringent emissions reduction target of any industrialized economy – 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. That pledge is now in doubt after the DPJ last week lost its majority in the upper house. The climate push had proven very contentious and contributed to the DPJ’s setback. This follows developments in Australia in late June, when Prime Minister Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd after campaigning on a vow to review plans for a carbon-trading system.

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

In the News

The Greenhouse Protection Racket
Marlo Lewis, Pajamas Media, 9 July 2010

Climate Change: A Collective Flight from Reality
Roger Helmer, Washington Times, 9 July 2010

Markets, Not Social Values, Should Determine Price of Electricity
William Yeatman & Amy Oliver Cooke, Denver Daily News, 9 July 2010

Climate Clique Looks after Its Own
Gerald Warner, Daily Telegraph, 8 July 2010

Austerity Green: EU Fatigue for Renewables
Matthew Sinclair, Master Resource.org, 7 July 2010

Oil Sands Push Tests U.S.-Canada Ties
Phred Dvorak & Edward Welsch, Wall Street Journal, 7 July 2010

Putting Wind Power into Perspective
Greg Pollowitz, Planet Gore, 7 July 2010

Maryland’s Smart Grid Fiasco
William Yeatman, Baltimore Sun, 5 July 2010

News You Can Use

Hefty Cost of Fuel Switching

Proponents of a carbon tax often claim that natural gas is a ready alternative to coal for the generation of electricity, but according to a new study by the American Public Power Association, the fuel switch would cost $680 billion.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Energy Rationers Still Can’t Get Their Act Together

The majority staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee have spent the week putting together an energy-rationing package to bring to the floor, which Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) planned to do next week.  But it has already been reported that the package won’t be ready by next week.  That is apparently because decisions on some key issues remain to be made.  This is not news.  The Democratic majority have been trying to put something together that can get 60 votes since last fall.

First, it was the Kerry-Boxer bill, which was similar to the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House on 26th June 2009 by a 219-212 vote.  Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) moved that bill out of her Environment and Public Works Committee last November before the UN global warming pow-wow in Copenhagen.  But the public’s overwhelmingly negative reaction to Waxman-Markey meant that it was dead in the Senate.

Then Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) spent months working with Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on an alternative described as less ambitious and capable of attracting bi-partisan support.  Graham eventually dropped out, most likely because of the blowback against him in South Carolina, and Kerry and Lieberman finally introduced their bill in May.  Like Kerry-Boxer, the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act has no chance of gaining the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate.  I doubt that it could get 50 votes.

That leaves it up to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  In the spring of 2009, Bingaman passed several measures out of his committee with the support of ranking Republican Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).  These include a renewable standard for electric utilities, new building energy efficiency standards based on California’s, and a variety of other lesser “clean energy” provisions.  That is reportedly the basis of the package now being put together.  Like most other big bills brought to the Senate (and House) floor these days, the bill is being put together in secret, so it’s hard to find out what might be in it.  However, it has been reported that it does not contain a cap-and-trade scheme or mandatory targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The obstacle remains how to get the 60 votes to invoke cloture and pass the bill.  The other major decision is whether to attach it to a bill addressing BP’s Gulf oil leak disaster or to replace the House version of Waxman-Markey.  If the latter, the Senate would then send H. R. 2454 back to the House in hopes of adding cap-and-trade in a House-Senate conference committee and passing it in a lame duck session after the November elections.

The fact that Senate Democrats have not been able to take the first step toward enacting energy-rationing legislation in the past year and still seem stymied is good news for American consumers, workers, and taxpayers.  With any luck, the Senate will not pass anything this year.  Even if it does, it’s not clear that the House would go along.

Climategate Update

Another Week, Another Whitewash

Only days after the Penn State University released its whitewash report on Professor Michael Mann’s involvement in the Climategate (which we reported on last week), a supposedly blue-ribbon panel did the same for University of East Anglia’s Phil Jones, the central figure in the scandal. Incredibly, the Muir Russell panel failed to address climate science, and lead investigators didn’t even bother to attend interviews of Jones. Needless to say, “This is another example of the establishment circling the wagons and defending their position,” as CEI’s Myron Ebell told the New York Times.

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

In the News

The All-American Light Bulb Dims, as Freedom Flickers
Deroy Murdock, National Review, 2 July 2010

A Wellspring of Politics, Not Science
William O’ Keefe, Washington Times, 2 July 2010

Running out of Little Green Countries
Chris Horner, AmSpecBlog, 1 July 2010

Blowout Prevention Act Would Blow Out Domestic Production
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 1 July 2010

The Windsurfer’s Windfall
Max Brindle, American Spectator, 29 June 2010

Everyone Knows…Except the Experts
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 29 June 2010

They Loved BP & Enron
Robert Bradley, MasterResource.org, 28 June 2010

Is Obama Putting Ideology above Science?
Detroit News editorial, 27 June 2010

News You Can Use

Price Tag of Obama’s Moratorium

According to a new analysis by the Heritage Foundation, President Barack Obama’s offshore oil ban, if extended through 2035, would:

• Reduce GDP by $5.5 trillion
• Reduce the average consumption expenditures for a family of four by $2,381 per year (and exceeds $4,000 in 2035)
• Reduce job growth by more than 1 million jobs by 2015 and more than 1.5 million jobs by 2030

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

White House Convenes Climate Meeting

Twenty-three Senators finally met with President Barack Obama Tuesday morning to discuss how to move forward with energy-rationing legislation.  Darren Samuelsohn and Coral Davenport reported in Politico that the President made it clear that he wants the Senate to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, but that he recognizes that it may be necessary to settle for something much more modest than the House Waxman-Markey bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has indicated that he still wants the Senate to take up energy-rationing legislation when Senators return from the Fourth of July recess on 12th July.  Everything else remains to be decided.  First is the question of whether energy-rationing provisions should be attached to a bill to address BP’s Gulf oil leak or whether it should be a stand-alone bill.  If it is a stand-alone bill, then it will probably be brought to the floor as H. R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey bill which the House passed by a 219 to 212 vote on 26th June 2009.  That could keep alive the possibility of calling a conference committee and then trying to pass something in a lame duck session after the election.

What might be included in a Senate anti-energy package is still up in the air.

One Possibility:  Utility-only Energy Rationing

One possibility that has been floated and was reportedly suggested by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) at the meeting with President Obama is a cap-and-trade scheme that covers electric utilities only.  I’m not sure why a utilities-only cap-and-trade scheme would be any easier to pass than an economy-wide one, since everyone understands that it would only be the first step and that for the first ten or fifteen years an economy-wide cap-and-trade really only hits coal.

Another Possibility: Bingaman’s Anti-energy Bill

Another possibility that has been the most likely for a couple months is that the Senate will take up the anti-energy provisions passed out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year.  These include a renewable standard for utilities, new building energy efficiency standards modeled on California’s, and several other “clean energy” provisions.  If that is the way Reid decides to go, then it will put Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the Chairman of the Committee, in charge of the legislation.

That makes sense for several reasons.  First, Bingaman is not Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), a legislative lightweight who is not much more popular with Senate Democrats than he is with Republicans.  Nor is he Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is even more of a lightweight than Kerry.  Second, Bingaman passed these provisions out of his committee with the support of the ranking Republican, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), so he starts with Republican support and has every prospect of gaining more.  And third, Bingaman’s package does not put a price on CO2 emissions.  This makes it much harder to build public opposition to it as an energy tax.

The death of Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) complicates the situation.  Majority Leader Reid is short one vote until a successor is appointed by West Virginia’s Governor, Joe Manchin.  But Reid might be worse off after a new Senator is appointed.  That’s because Manchin is the most ferocious opponent of anti-coal policies among high-ranking elected Democrats.

Across the States

What Is EPA Doing in West Virginia?

On April 1^st, the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated new Clean Water Act regulations for the discharge of conductivity (i.e., salinity) from surface coal mining operations in West Virginia. The regulations were established in order to protect the Mayfly, a short-lived insect that isn’t even an endangered species. At the press conference to unveil the new standards, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson conceded that the new regulations were stringent enough to outlaw mountain top removal mining. Last week, however, the EPA notified Arch Coal Inc.’s Coal-Mac subsidiary that its MTR project at the Pine Creek Surface Mine in Logan County, West Virginia, would receive a Clean Water Act permit. EPA’s coal crackdown engendered a bipartisan rebuke from almost every state and federal politician in West Virginia, so perhaps the EPA is signaling that it intends to be flexible. Tellingly, the EPA did not make the permit approval public.

ClimateGate Update

Mann Exonerated by Penn State Panel Designed To Exonerate Mann

To the surprise of no one, Professor Michael Mann, (creator of the debunked Hockey Stick global temperature reconstruction), was cleared by a Penn State University investigation prompted by Mann’s involvement in the ClimateGate scandal. PSU initiated the investigation in November, 2009, at the behest of alumni. It appointed a panel and tasked it with answering these questions:

I. Did Mann engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly: any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?;
2. any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4,as suggested by Phil Jones?;
3. any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?;
4. any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities?

In January, the panel exonerated Mann on the first three charges. After learning of PSU’s decision, Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told PSU investigators, “It’s thoroughly amazing. I mean these are issues that he explicitly stated in the emails. I’m wondering what’s going on?” Hear, hear!

That January ruling left little doubt that the “investigation” was a showcase to clear Mann, even though the panel decided that the fourth charge necessitated further inquiry, the results of which were released yesterday. As CEI’s Myron Ebell told the New York Times, “It’s no surprise that it’s a whitewash of Dr. Mann’s misconduct, because it was designed to be a whitewash.”

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

In the News

EU Countries Slashing Green Budgets
Patrice Hill, Washington Times, 25 June 2010

Markets Should Drive Colorado Energy Industry
William Yeatman & Amy Oliver Cooke, Denver Business Journal, 25 June 2010

Can a Carbon Cap Pass?
Myron Ebell, Politico, 25 June 2010

Climate Policy Not as Simple as Gore Thinks
Jim Manzi, The New Republic, 24 June 2010

Paul McCartney Compares Climate Skeptics to Holocaust Deniers
Josh Miller, FoxNews.com, 24 June 2010

A New Low for Science-the Black List
Fran Smith, GlobalWarming.org, 23 June 2010

Obama’s BP Time
Michael Lynch, MasterResource.org, 23 June 2010

Anti-Climate Law Initiative Qualifies for November Ballot
Dennis Theriault, San Jose Mercury News, 23 June 2010

Crude Stereotypes
Matt Purple, Spectator, 21 June 2010

News You Can Use

EPA Exposes Energy Independence Myth

Senator John Kerry claims that his cap-and-trade bill, the American Power Act, would make the U.S. “energy independent,” but according to the EPA’s economic analysis, the bill would raise gasoline prices to $5.00 a gallon in 2050 yet would leave U.S. petroleum consumption about where it is today.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

President Cancels Climate Meeting with Senators

President Barack Obama had to cancel his Wednesday morning meeting with a bipartisan group of Senators to discuss the need to pass energy-rationing legislation because he had to talk with General Stanley McChrystal before firing him as head of our Afghan campaign.  The meeting has not yet been rescheduled.

Despite Cancellation, Democratic Senators “Inspired”

Senate Democrats did go ahead on Thursday with their third meeting in three weeks to discuss how to proceed to the floor in July with an energy-rationing package.  Reporters talking to Senators as they came out of the meeting were greeted with uniformly glowing accounts of what happened at the meeting.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) told The Hill: “This was without doubt one of the most motivating, energized, and even inspirational caucuses that I’ve been part of since I’ve been here in the Senate in 26 years.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) chimed in that the meeting had been “absolutely thrilling.”  Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was also over the moon: “A number of senators said this was the best caucus they’ve ever attended.  It was really very, very powerful. It was inspirational, quite frankly.”

So what did Senate Democrats decide to do?  They decided to include energy-rationing provisions in a bill to punish BP and the oil industry for BP’s Gulf oil leak.  This would force Republicans opposed to energy rationing to take a very difficult vote against the BP spill bill.

This strategy was first reported by Politico three weeks ago (which I discussed in the Digest here), so I’m not sure what made the meeting so exciting.  Perhaps they finally agreed on what provisions to include in the package?  No, they reported no progress on deciding the actual contents of the legislation.

My suspicion is that Senate Democrats, with no substantive progress to show for their three meetings, decided that they had to make a public show of progress.  Describing the meeting as exciting, inspiring, and thrilling was the best they could come up with.  They can try to hide it, but the fact is that the Good Bus Cap-n-Tax has run out of gas and is slowing to a stop.

The question is whether the Democrats’ huge Senate majority (plus a few Republicans) will be able to pass some modest package of regulations and mandates that will raise energy prices and cripple the economy.

Across the States

Marlo Lewis, from GlobalWarming.org

Louisiana Judge Overturns Obama’s Drilling Ban

On Wednesday, Judge Martin Feldman of the Eastern Louisiana District Court lifted the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on all oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in waters over 500 feet in depth. Feldman held  that the moratorium was “arbitrary and capricious” and would do “irreparable harm” to businesses that own, operate, and service vessels used to support offshore drilling – an industry critical to the region’s economy. Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar imposed the moratorium on May 28 in response to the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill.

Around the World

Chris Horner, from Pajamas Media

Spanish Green Jobs Critic Receives Bomb Threat

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada-the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure-was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic. The bomb threat is just the latest intimidation Dr. Calzada has faced since releasing his report and following up with articles in Expansion. A minister from Spain’s Socialist government called the rector of King Juan Carlos University-Dr. Calzada’s employer-seeking Calzada’s ouster. Calzada was not fired, but he was stripped of half of his classes at the university. My book, Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America,  details the Spanish “green jobs” disaster uncovered by Dr. Calzada, plus similar “green” economic calamities occurring in Germany and Denmark-also programs Obama has praised-as well as in Italy and elsewhere.

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

In the News

He Blinded Me with Science
Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, 18 June 2010

Obama’s Energy Push Is Divorced from Reality
Charles Krauthammer, Investor’s Business Daily, 18 June 2010

The Primary Problems with Wind Power
Jerry Graf, MasterResource.org, 17 June 2010

Senate Liberals Threaten Opposition to an Anti-Energy Bill
Alexander Bolton, The Hill, 17 June 2010

The Oilers vs. The Stealer
George Neumayr, American Spectator, 17 June 2010

Sen. Kerry’s Keen Sense of Euro Green Scene
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 16 June 2010

Brava, Sen. Murkowski
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 14 June 2010

The Senate’s Global Warming Circus
Iain Murray, Washington Times, 14 June 2010

Movie Star Misses Mark on Mining
William Yeatman, Human Events, 14 June 2010

Climate Change: What the Polls Really Show
Andrew Kohut, New York Times, 11 June 2010

News You Can Use

IPCC Exposed

From Climate Change: What Do We Know about the IPCC?, in press for Progress in Physical Geography, by the University of East Anglia’s Mike Hulme:

“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous. That particular consensus judgment, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies.”

Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, performed a cross examination of the IPCC’s evidence for anthropogenic climate change, and concluded:

“on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Democrats Can’t Find the Votes

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) held the second meeting of his Democratic caucus on Thursday to try to hammer out a deal on an anti-energy and/or energy rationing bill to bring to the Senate floor in July.  Little progress was made beyond the fact that everyone seems to agree that they cannot round up the sixty votes needed to pass a cap-and-trade bill such as Senator John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) American Power Act.  One idea being considered is to replace the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed by the House on June 26, 2009 with some place-holder provisions, pass that on the Senate floor, and then hold it until after the election when a conference committee could then put an energy-rationing bill together during a lame-duck session.  Perhaps enough defeated Democrats (who no longer need to worry about the interests of their States but are now interested in their next job in the administration or as lobbyists) would then be willing to vote for it to reach sixty votes.  This is possible-in fact, we have learned that anything is possible in a lame-duck session-but not easy to achieve.

Obama Fails To Convince

President Barack Obama gave a nationally-televised speech from the Oval Office on Tuesday on the BP oil leak in the Gulf and the need to create a new clean-energy economy that will get us off oil.  Like most of Obama’s speeches, it was articulate without being intellectually coherent or persuasive.  Media commentators were uniformly negative in their reviews.  The most perceptive was a video compilation by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show of eight presidents beginning with Nixon vowing to get the U. S. off oil.

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