William Yeatman

In the News

The Coming Anti-Carbon Clampdown
Chris Horner, Energy Tribune, 23 April 2010

Alcoa Loves Green, But Not the Environment
Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, 23 April 2010

A Reality Check on the Neo-Malthusian World
Indur Goklany, MasterResource.org, 23 April 2010

Climate Scientist Sues Paper for Libel on Climategate Coverage
Dave Adam, Guardian, 22 April 2010

Cap-and-Trade = VAT
Chris Horner, Daily Caller, 22 April 2010

Climate Science in Denial
Richard S. Lindzen, Wall Street Journal, 22 April 2010

Two Energy Giants, a Difference in Approach
Institute for Energy Research, 22 April 2010

Why I Am Enlarging My Carbon Footprint
Robin of Berkley, American Thinker, 22 April 2010

A Happy Earth Day
G. Tracey Mehan, American Spectator, 22 April 2010

The Solar Power Scandal in Spain
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 21 April 2010

Buying Carbon Offsets May Ease Eco-Guilt, But Not Global Warming
Doug Struck, Christian Science Monitor, 20 April 2010

Fannie Mae Owns Patent on Residential “Cap-and-Trade”
Barbara Hollingsworth, Washington Examiner, 20 April 2010

Failure Would Have Many Benefits
Marlo Lewis, National Journal, 19 April 2010

News You Can Use

Tea Partiers Oppose Cap-and-Trade

More than 365,000 respondents voted online to determine the top three planks of the tea-party movement’s political platform. The second most popular of the 21 issues that were up for a vote: “Reject cap and trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.”

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Kerry-Graham-Lieberman: Payoffs for Everyone, Taxes for You-Know-Who

It appears that Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) are finally going to release a draft outline of their compromise, middle-of-the-road, some-payoff-for-everyone energy-rationing bill on Monday.  Both Kate Sheppard on the Mother Jones web site and Juliet Eilperin on the Washington Post web site report that Senator Kerry shared details of the bill in a Thursday conference call held by the We Can Lead coalition of business leaders who hope to make a buck from energy rationing.

Sheppard and Eilperin both report that the draft bill will pre-empt the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act and also pre-empt States from setting lower emissions targets.  Instead of a gas tax or a “linked fee,” the draft will require oil companies to buy ration coupons to cover the emissions of their products.  Call it whatever you want, it’s still a tax.

It appears that the cap-and-trade scheme for electric utilities is still in the draft, but according to both blogs, it now includes a price collar setting a floor and a ceiling on the cost of ration coupons.  In addition, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman have adopted the cap-and-dividend idea from the energy-rationing bill introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.), S. 2877.  Thus some of the additional costs of electricity will be rebated to consumers.  I’m not sure how this squares with a story by Darren Samuelsohn in Environment and Energy Daily  (and reprinted on the New York Times’s web site here) earlier in the week that the draft would give more free ration coupons to the electric utilities.  Perhaps the free coupons will be distributed in the early years of the scheme and consumers will get their rebates in the later years.

Kerry claimed on the conference call that three major oil companies would support the bill in addition to the Edison Electric Institute.  The three most likely are Shell, BP, and Conoco Phillips.  He also said that they were still working on provisions to allow more offshore oil production.

Among the goodies will be an exemption for agriculture from emissions limits, loan guarantees for twelve new nuclear plants, $10 billion for research and development of carbon capture and storage for coal-fired power plants, “financial incentives” for natural gas and electric vehicles, and a four-year exemption for manufacturing industries.  The bill will also include the anti-energy provisions marked up by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year.  These include a renewable electricity requirement and new building energy efficiency standards.

As I mentioned last week, the three Senators do not plan to introduce a bill with actual legislative language, but instead will turn their draft over to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).  Reid will try to put together a package that he can bring to the floor and get sixty votes.

Voinovich Enters the Pre-Emption Fight

Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) this week circulated a proposal to remove all authority from the executive branch and the States to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under any existing legal authority.  This would include the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Water Act, as well as the Clean Air Act.  As Robin Bravender reported in Climate Wire (which was reprinted by the New York Times here), the proposal would also end all public nuisance lawsuits.

Voinovich could offer it as an amendment to the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman energy-rationing bill or to some other bill on the Senate floor.  If enacted, it would mean that it would be up to Congress (the people’s representatives) to decide whether and how to deal with global warming.

At the same time, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) continues to try to figure out how to get 51 votes for her resolution of disapproval of the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.  One major obstacle remains Senator John Rockefeller’s (D-WV) bill to delay EPA regulations for two years, which is meant to give some of his fellow Democrats an alternative to voting for Murkowski.  One solution might be to offer Rockefeller’s bill, S. 3072, as an amendment to some bill on the Senate floor.  If it fails, then these Senators will not have an excuse for voting against Murkowski’s resolution.  If it passes, then Senators who voted for it will have to explain why they are going to flip and vote no on Murkowski’s resolution.

Across the States

Wisconsin

Major climate legislation was shelved in Wisconsin on Earth Day after both the Assembly and the Senate refused to vote on the measure before the legislative calendar ended. The bill would have mandated that 25% of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2025, and it failed because Wisconsin lawmakers feared the political fallout of adding expensive renewable energy to the state’s electricity portfolio-thereby increasing utility bills.

California

In late 2008, the California Air Resources Board was excoriated by a peer-review panel of economists for publishing a politicized economic analysis that exaggerated the benefits and minimized the costs of AB 32, California’s global warming law. As a result, CARB commissioned a new analysis by a supposedly non-partisan team of economists led by Stanford Professor Larry Goulder. The report was released a month ago, and it largely echoed CARB’s original conclusion that AB 32 will create jobs and is good for the economy. CARB claims that the new report vindicates its old report, but new evidence suggests otherwise. ClimateWire this week reported that Larry Goulder is on the board of directors of a non-profit that is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a political campaign to defeat a ballot initiative that would suspend AB 32. This is a clear conflict of interest, and it demonstrates (again) that CARB manipulates the evidence to support its political agenda.

Around the World

Bonn

The first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations since the Copenhagen Climate Conference took place in Bonn, Germany, from April 9^th to April 11^th. Negotiators spent most of the meeting coming to an agreement on how many more meetings to convene before the 16^th Conference of the Parties this September in Cancun, Mexico. After many hours of haggling, they agreed to hold two.

Washington, D.C.

In Washington, D.C. this week, representatives from 17 industrialized countries participated in the Major Economies Meeting, U.S.-led negotiations for a climate treaty that. The meeting served primarily to dampen expectations in Cancun this September for a legally binding successor treaty to the failed Kytoto Protocol. U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern told reporters, “We don’t want to let expectations far outstrip what can be done” in Cancun.

Cochabamba

The stalled negotiations in Bonn and Washington, D.C. angered the 15,000 participants to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which is occurring this week in Cochabamba, Bolivia. According to Reuters, Bolivian President Evo Morales kicked off the Conference by noting that, “We are gathered here because the so-called developed countries didn’t meet their obligation of establishing substantial commitments to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen.” Later, an official from the UN was jeered off the stage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

News You Can Use
Peer Review?

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

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Cap-and-Tax Update

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

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

Obama on Graham’s Gas Tax

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

Obama Meets with Enviros

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

Senate Democrats Push a Trade War

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

Climategate Update

Myron Ebell

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

Across the States

Connecticut

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

California

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

Washington

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

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

In the News

The Looming “Energy Bill” Fight
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 9 April 2010

The EPA’s Giant Power Grab
Iain Murray, Washington Times, 8 April 2010

God Bless the People of Coal Country
Iain Murray, Investor’s Business Daily, 8 April 2010

EPA’s Adventure in Arithmetic
Donald Hertzmark, MasterResource.org, 8 April 2010

What’s the Next Global Warming?
Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 6 April 2010

Ethanol Subsidies Drive up Fuel and Food Prices
Washington Times editorial, 5 April 2010

A Super Storm for Global Warming Research
Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf, & Gerald Traufetter, Der Spiegel, 5 April 2010

Cold Weather as Deadly for Birds as It Is for Humans
Robin Mckie, Observer, 4 April 2010

The Deadly Price of the Auto Mileage Mandate
William Yeatman & Sam Kazman, AOL News, 3 April 2010

News You Can Use

USA Today Poll: Environment Ranks Last among Concerns

A new USA Today/Gallup poll ranks the environment at the bottom of seven topics pollsters asked voters about to gauge their priorities. The economy ranked first.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Major Economies Meeting

The Obama Administration will host a meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) in Washington on April 18 and 19 to continue their ongoing climate discussions.  The seventeen nations that belong to the MEF account for over 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.  The group hasn’t met since COP-15 in Copenhagen in December.

The MEF was originally called the Major Emitters Meeting when it was created by President George W. Bush.  I suppose the Obama Administration renamed it so as to demonstrate that they were pursuing a new course.  But in fact the two are remarkably alike.  This is not the only instance where the Obama Administration seems to be following the path on international climate negotiations laid out by the Bush Administration.  Most notably, the Copenhagen Accord that President Obama personally brokered in December is modeled on what the Bush Administration took to COP-13 in Bali in 2007.  That plan was attacked as too little too late by the delegates in Bali, which caused Bush’s negotiators to give a lot of ground and agree to the Bali Action Plan.  That plan was supposed to culminate at COP-15 with a new international treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol that contained binding targets and timetables.  Instead, Obama retreated to the U. S.’s pre-Bali position.  The establishment media have largely reported that the Copenhagen Accord is at least one small step forward and have praised President Obama for achieving this breakthrough.  That’s not how they reported it two years ago.

EPA Moves To Shut Down Coal Mining in Appalachia

The Obama Administration has not yet stopped all proposed new coal-fired power plants from being permitted, but they have taken a giant step toward stopping all new coal mines in Appalachia. The Environmental Protection Agency last week set new water quality standards for streams in central Appalachia.

The new “guidance” document takes effect immediately and sets limits on the conductivity of water.  How well water carries an electrical charge depends on levels of salt, sulfides, and several other substances. New mining projects will be prohibited if they will cause the levels of these substances in streams to exceed five times the “normal” level.  Some watersheds are already more than five times above what are alleged to be normal levels.

According to a story in Greenwire, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said that there are “no or very few valley fills that are going to meet this standard.”  This means that no or very few surface mining projects in Appalachia will be permitted by EPA.  That would be a huge economic blow to West Virginia, Kentucky, and parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, and Tennessee.  But that isn’t all.  Jackson added that the EPA could apply the new standards to block permits for new underground mines as well.  And it seems to me that there would be no reason to stop there.  Any new development that involves significant earth moving could release enough minerals into the water to exceed the standard.

The EPA today announced a comment period on the new standards.  Comments will be accepted until December 10, but the rule goes into effect immediately and will be used to stop all mining projects currently in the permitting process and could be used to cancel Clean Water Act permits that EPA has already issued. The EPA took the unprecedented step last week of ordering the Army Corps of Engineers to cancel a permit for a mine in West Virginia that is already in operation.

CBO Report on Climate Change Spending

The Congressional Budget Office released a study this week of federal funding of climate programs.  From 1998 to 2009, the federal government spent $99 billion.  The stimulus bill-the American Recovery and Re-investment Act of 2009-accounted for $35.7 billion of that.  It seems to me that one of the principal purposes of spending all these billions is to create a scientific-bureaucratic complex to promote the alarmist agenda and thereby secure more funding for itself.

Around the World

U.S. to South Africa: Stay Poor

The United States joined the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy in abstaining from a World Bank vote to grant South Africa a $3.5 billion loan to build a 4,500 megawatt coal fired power plant north of Johannesburg. For years, the South African economy has been crippled by blackouts due to a lack of investment in electricity generation, and coal is the cheapest power available, but these countries (the U.S. et. al) objected to the deal’s carbon footprint. Despite the abstentions, the Bank approved the loan, although the victory might prove Pyrrhic for developing nations. In a statement, the U.S. Treasury Department said that, “We expect that the World Bank will not bring forward similar coal projects.” This statement, coming from the Bank’s largest shareholder, suggests the end of cheap financing for cheap electricity in poor countries.

France Pursues Carbon Tariff

French Foreign Minister Jean-Louise Borloo this week told the French Parliament that he would achieve an international regime for carbon tariffs by dealing directly with U.S. President Barack Obama, thereby circumventing the European Commission, which has expressed opposition to the idea. It remains to be seen if Obama will oblige. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, the climate bill passed by the House of Representatives last June, gives the President the authority to impose taxes on the carbon content of imports.

Across the States

Florida

According to the Miami Herald, the Florida House Of Representatives Energy and Utilities Policy Committee will hold a hearing on a proposed bill that would remove a 2008 legislative finding that greenhouse gas emissions promote global warming and another provision to push utility companies to use renewable energy.

Missouri

The Missouri House of Representatives gave final approval Thursday to a HJR 88, a proposed constitutional amendment that would assert the state’s sovereignty over all powers not enumerated and delegated to the federal government. HJR 88 would nullify the Congress’s power to impose a cap-and-trade.

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

Coming Soon: The Auto-Purchase Mandate?
Iain Murray, The Corner, 1 April 2010

EPA Announces Economic Assault
William Yeatman, FoxNews.com, 1 April 2010

Computer Cloud Illusions
Paul Chesser, GlobalWarming.org, 31 March 2010

Exploring for New Supplies of Votes
Ben Lieberman, National Review, 31 March 2010

Will Senators Webb, Warner Stop the Green Police?
William Yeatman, Daily News Record, 31 March 2010

U.S. EPA Goes Unconstitutional
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 30 March 2010

Change Is Not New
Thomas Sowell, RealClearPolitics.com, 30 March 2010

Arnold’s Global Warming Ardor Is Cooling
Orange County Register editorial, 29 March 2010

News You Can Use

Poll: German Concern about Global Warming Plummets

According to a new poll, just 42 percent of Germans are worried about global warming, down substantially from 62 percent in 2006. The decline is attributed to the Climategate scandal.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Ten Steps Back, One Step Forward

President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced plans to allow a bit of offshore oil and gas exploration.  Maybe.  The Interior Department’s new five-year plan for offshore leasing actually places most of America’s offshore areas under a new presidential moratorium, delays or cancels lease auctions currently in the regulatory pipeline, and thus takes back the progress made in 2008.  When gas prices reached four dollars a gallon in the summer of 2008, the American people were dismayed to discover that the United States possesses potentially vast offshore reserves of oil and natural gas that were off limits as a result of congressional and presidential moratoria.  President Bush revoked his father’s executive order, and tremendous public pressure forced Congress to drop its long-standing moratorium.

President Obama took it all back and now offers the possibility of a little bit of offshore exploration and calls it a compromise.  His purpose is clearly to draw moderate support in the Congress for global warming legislation that will raise energy prices for consumers and industry.  The Republican staff of the House Natural Resources Committee have provided a useful analysis that includes some very revealing maps.  My comments are here.

EPA Issues Fuel Efficiency Regulation

The Obama Administration announced on Thursday the final rules for new fuel economy standards.  By 2016, passenger cars and light trucks (SUVs and pickups) will have to achieve an average of 35.5 miles per gallon.  At 36 mpg, the two-seater Smart Car is one of the few current models that already surpasses the average required.  These new rules are an amalgam of what Congress mandated in the 2007 anti-energy act and new EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act derived from the Endangerment Finding.  As my CEI colleague Marlo Lewis points out in a comprehensive analysis, the new fuel economy rules will trigger a regulatory cascade under the Clean Air Act.  CEI sent out a press release criticizing the new rules from several angles.  Lawsuits are sure to follow.

New Study: EPA Regulations Hurt Poor the Most

The Affordable Power Alliance held a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to release a report on the potential economic impacts of the EPA’s Endangerment Finding on low income groups and minorities.  The report shows that higher energy prices will disproportionately harm poorer people.  That’s because they already pay a higher percentage of their incomes on energy than better-off people.  Blacks and Hispanics will also suffer major job losses as the result of higher energy prices. As a result of paying more for energy and job losses, the report predicts that poverty rates for African Americans and Hispanics will increase by 20% and 22% respectively.

Climategate Update

Iain Murray, from OpenMarket.org

The UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has issued its report into the so-called Climategate scandal.  As might be expected, it’s pretty much a whitewash.  Only one MP dissented from its conclusions.  There seem to me to be some serious errors and omissions in the reports, but I’m not the only one:

• Stephen McIntyre, who debunked the Hockey Stick temperature reconstruction by Climategate-implicated Michael Mann, disputed the Committee’s judgment with respect to the infamous “trick” to “hide the decline.”
• Fred Pearce of New Scientist and the Guardian said that the Committee “avoided examining more complex charges.”
• Bishop Hill asks, “Does the committee really think it’s fine to hide important information from policymakers so long as you report it in the literature?”
• Professor Frank Furedi nicely sums the real lesson from Climategate, “The CRU’s real failing was to dent the authority of the climate-change morality tale, with its idea that, with the end of the world fast approaching, there is an urgent need to monitor people’s behavior and lower their horizons.
• The Cooler Heads Coalition has posted a remarkable criticism by Professor Ross McKitrick on globalwarming.org.

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

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Overrated
Myron Ebell, Standpoint, April 2010

Another Classic Colorado Ballot Initiative
Paul Chesser, Globalwarming.org, 26 March 2010

Cap-and-Trade Loses Standing
John Broder, New York Times, 26 March 2010

Green Meanies
Christopher Orlet, American Spectator, 25 March 2010

James Hansen Finds FOIA Request Too Burdensome
Chris Horner, Men’s News Daily, 2010

Scandal, Nature, Economy Undercut Agenda
Marlo Lewis, National Journal, 24 March 2010

We’re Saving Whales, Why Not Jobs?
State Senator Dave Cogdill, Orange County Register, 24 March 2010

There Is No Global Warming Consensus
Senator James Inhofe, U.S. News and World Report, 23 March 2010

WWF Hopes To Find $60 Billion Growing on Trees
Christopher Booker, Telegraph, 20 March 2010

News You Can Use

California Poll: Global Warming Least Important Issue

A Field Poll was released this week that asked California voters to rate the importance of twelve issues. The economy was first. Global warming was last.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

What’s Next?

With healthcare reform triumphantly enacted, several environmental pressure groups have started the “We Got Next” campaign.  That is, the next item on the agenda to turn America into a Peronist regime should be energy-rationing legislation.  Unfortunately for them, I think many Members of Congress are still having nightmares about the public’s reaction against House passage of the Waxman-Markey bill last 26th June by a 219 to 212 vote.  I mention the vote totals because the Senate healthcare bill passed the House on Sunday by the same 219 to 212 margin.  It should be recalled that the Senate planned to take up Waxman-Markey in July, but instead turned to healthcare legislation after seeing how unpopular cap-and-trade was with voters. 

My guess is that the Senate just isn’t going to get around to global warming until after it considers several other major issues, including new financial regulations, the anemic economy, the continuing mortgage foreclosure crisis, immigration reform, and what to do about the heartbreak of psoriasis.  In other words, not this year.

On the other hand, the three Mouseketeers-Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.)-continue to talk a good game.  The latest news is that they hope to have their middle-of-the-road omnibus energy-rationing bill ready to go by Lenin’s birthday (also celebrated as Earth Day), 22nd April.  They may actually have a bill put together by then.  But the chance of getting it to the Senate floor before the November election is slim.  Graham has already acknowledged that any action likely won’t occur until next year.

Murkowski Resolution

The Senate spent most of the week on the House-passed reconciliation bill, which perfects the healthcare reform bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday.  Congress will be in recess for the next two weeks.  This means that Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has approximately six weeks in which to offer her resolution of disapproval of the EPA’s endangerment finding, S. J. Res. 16, after Congress returns on 12th April.  The Congressional Review Act specifies that such resolutions must be offered within sixty legislative days after the regulation is officially transmitted to Congress.          

Across the States

West Virginia

The Environmental Protection Agency today announced its intention to veto a Clean Water Act permit granted three years ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to Arch Coal’s Spruce Mine 1 in West Virginia. It is the first time that the EPA has proposed to veto a permit that had already been issued. The EPA is acting in order to protect an insect species that is not listed as an endangered species. The proposal will be published in the Federal Register, initiating a 60-day public comment period, and the EPA pledged to hold a field hearing in West Virginia.

California

The California Air Resources Board released a study on Wednesday claiming that AB 32, the state’s global warming mitigation law, would increase economic growth and create 10,000 jobs by 2020. Evidently, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) wasn’t convinced. On Thursday, he sent a letter to CARB questioning whether its AB 32 implementation plan is “too abrupt” and thus “posing high short-term costs to capped companies.” This wouldn’t be the first time that CARB released a misleading report-a similarly rosy economic analysis on AB 32 was eviscerated in 2008 by a non-partisan panel of scholars, who concluded that the report was politically motivated.

Around the World

France

Last year President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a carbon tax to fight global warming. But polls indicate that two-thirds of French voters oppose this policy, and this week Sarkozy dropped it. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that the government’s new priorities are now “growth, jobs, competitiveness and fighting deficits.”

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.