William Yeatman

In the News

It’s Raining, You’re Snoring
Chris Horner, Washington Times, 16 October 2009

Can a Deal Be Reached at Copenhagen?
Myron Ebell, GlobalWarming.org, 16 October 2009

Big Chill on Global Warming
Washington Examiner, 16 October 2009

Climate Change Dominos Fall
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 16 October 2009

Obama Administration: Seals Can Adapt to Climate Change
Patrick Reis, Green Wire, 16 October 2009

Challenging Al Gore’s “Truth”
Phelim McAleer, Investor’s Business Daily, 15 October 2009

Kerry & Graham Get It Wrong
Marlo Lewis, OpenMarket.org, 15 October 2009

CBO: Cap-and-Trade Kills Jobs
Iain Talley, Wall Street Journal, 15 October 2009

Carbon Offsets Fail in First Trial
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, 15 October 2009

The Global Gas Shale Revolution
Donald Hertzmark, MasterResource.org, 14 October 2009

Soros Invests $1 Billion in Green Tech
Stanford Daily News, 12 October 2009

News You Can Use

Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Level in Satellite History

This week World Climate Report drew attention to a new study by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters showing that the ice melt across the Antarctic last summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest recorded in the satellite history.

BBC Reporter Can Read a Thermometer

The most popular story on the BBC website this week is about the absence of global warming since 1998. According to the Daily Telegraph, “What Happened to Global Warming,” by BBC climate correspondent Paul Hudson, has an altogether different tone than the BBC’s previous climate reporting, which had been characterized by alarmism and advocacy.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Senate Hearings Scheduled for Energy-Rationing Bill

The Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), announced this week that the committee will hold hearings on the Kerry-Boxer energy-rationing bill beginning on Tuesday, 27th October.  That day will be devoted to official witnesses from the Obama Administration.  Then on Wednesday and Thursday, the 28th and 29th, the committee will hear from a variety of supporters as well as a few witnesses opposed to the bill requested by Republicans.  Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) has officially introduced the bill as S. 1733.  However, there is already a “chairman’s mark” that is not available for public inspection.  The chairman’s mark is no doubt being re-drafted as deals are made to win votes.  It is that version rather than S. 1733 that will be marked up in committee in November.

Graham Joins Kerry in Bi-partisan Hooey

The other big news on the Kerry-Boxer bill this week was an incoherent op-ed published in Sunday’s New York Times by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) titled, “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Legislation).”  They announce that they have come together in the spirit of bi-partisanship to support an energy-rationing bill-a bill that has yet to be written and that bears only a family resemblance to the Kerry-Boxer bill.  Critical commentary on their op-ed can be found here, here, and here.  The op-ed was enthusiastically received by the mainstream media as evidence that the Senate logjam has broken and a bi-partisan coalition can now be created to reach the sixty votes necessary to pass energy-rationing legislation.

You Can Ask Gore, But He Doesn’t Have To Answer

Phelim McAleer, the producer of Not Evil Just Wrong, the documentary film premiering on Sunday, 18th October, mixed it up with former Vice President Al Gore at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual meeting in Madison (where it snowed) last Friday.  After Gore’s speech, McAleer had a chance to ask him about the British High Court’s verdict that there were nine substantial scientific errors in “An Inconvenient Truth.”  Why, he asked, hadn’t Gore done anything to correct those errors but instead continued to repeat them?  Gore changed the subject, and when McAleer persisted, the SEJ cut off his microphone.  McAleer’s op-ed in Investor’s Business Daily explains what happened and draws some conclusions about environmental reporting.  I hope lots of people have a chance to watch Not Evil Just Wrong.  The DVD can be purchased here.

Socialist International Unveils Climate Strategy Eerily Similar to Obama’s…

…Not coincidentally, Carol Browner, Obama’s “climate czar,” is a card-carrying member of the Socialist International. To read more about SI’s climate plan, as well as Carol Browner’s history with the group, click here.

Kerry-Boxer puts EPA in charge of building codes

Julie Walsh

The House-passed Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, H.R. 2454, sets specific federal housing standards that would increase the cost of a home from $4,000 to $10,000 and price more than 1,000,000 people out of the market, according to Bill Killmer, a vice president of the National Association of Home Builders. In 2014 for new residential buildings and 2015 for new commercial buildings, a 50 percent increase in energy efficiency is required (relative to the baseline code), increasing each year thereafter. Waxman-Markey also adopts California’s portable lighting fixture standard as the national standard. And it mandates efficiency improvements for many new appliances, including spas, water dispensers, and dishwashers.

But the Senate’s Kerry-Boxer energy-rationing bill, S. 1733, goes much further; it gives an unelected federal official a regulatory blank check:

“The (EPA) Administrator, or such other agency head or heads as may be designated by the President, in consultation with the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, shall promulgate regulations establishing building code energy efficiency targets for the national average percentage improvement of buildings energy performance.” And, “The Administrator, or such other agency head or heads as may be designated by the President, shall promulgate regulations establishing national energy efficiency building codes for residential and commercial buildings.” Pp. 173-174

Federal building codes would be in the hands of the EPA.

Across the States

California

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this week signed into law S.B. 32, which establishes a feed-in tariff that forces utilities to pay for surplus electricity generated by solar roof-top panels. Previously, California ratepayers subsidized the purchase of solar panels; now, they must pay above-market prices for power generated by those panels. The upshot is that the preponderance of ratepayers will pay more for electricity in order to subsidize the green-lifestyle of Californians wealthy enough to afford solar panels.

In the News

Energy Secretary Chu Should Resign
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 9 October 2009

Horsepower Sure Beats Horses!
Robert Bradley, MasterResource.org, 9 October 2009

California Scheming
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 9 October 2009

Capping and Trading for Profit
Jack Duckworth, Washington Times, 9 October 2009

Rationalizing Rationing
Marlo Lewis, Washington Times, 8 October 2009

European Green Schemes Push Industry East
Carl Mortished, The Times, 7 October 2009

Locals Try To Sink Plans To Store Carbon Underground
Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal, 6 October 2009

UN’s Carbon Sequestration Program at Risk from Organized Crime
John Vidal, Guardian, 5 October 2009

Hot Air Hits the Schools
Paul Chesser, Boston Herald, 3 October 2009

Green Jobs Subsidies Destroy More Jobs than They Create
Ben Lieberman, The Monitor, 2 October 2009

News You Can Use

Cities Ignore Kyoto Commitments

Scott Smith, Mayor of Mesa, Arizona, last week became the 1,000^th mayor to agree to meet the goals of the Kyoto Protocol by reducing greenhouse gas emissions 7% below 1990 levels by 2012. However, evidence suggests that these are empty promises. A 2007 study by the Institute for Local Self Reliance reported that the 355 cities committed to the Kyoto target (at the time), “will miss their goals.”

Countries Ignore Kyoto Commitments

Karl Falkenberg, director-general for environment at the European Commission, this week told reporters that, “We look at the Kyoto Protocol, but since it came into force we have seen emissions increase. It has not decreased emissions.”

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

CEI Petitions EPA over Flawed Science

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Sam Kazman this week petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to re-open its rulemaking to declare that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The petition is based on the fact that key scientific data underlying the endangerment finding doesn’t exist. CEI’s press release summarizes the reasons for seeking to re-open the public comment period on the proposed rule: “In mid-August the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space. The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis. CRU’s destruction of data, however, severely undercuts the credibility of those studies.” CRU’s incompetence is explained in an article by Dr. Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute, “The Dog Ate My Climate Homework.”

Energy Rationing Stagnant in Senate

The draft of the Kerry-Boxer energy-rationing bill was released last week, but the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) chairs, has not yet scheduled a hearing.  There have been reports of attempts to gain support by adding nuclear power and offshore drilling titles to the bill.  My guess is that the committee won’t hold a hearing until after the off-year elections on 3rd November and then will mark up and vote out the bill before the Thanksgiving recess.

In last week’s issue I quoted Senator John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) remarkable admission, “I don’t know what cap-and-trade means.”  That’s why he’s calling it “pollution reduction and investment.”  I know what pollution reduction and investment means.  It means rationing, which is an indirect tax.  Here’s another remarkable statement from Kerry: “The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6 percent reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14 percent.”  Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points out that what Kerry is really saying is, “If you enjoyed this year’s recession, just wait for cap-and-trade.” Loris calculates that if emissions declined 6 percent while unemployment increased by 3.5%, we can reach the full twenty percent target by pushing unemployment to 18%.  Given the policies being pursued the Obama Administration and the Congress, that doesn’t sound out of reach.

Around the World

Climate Diplomacy Regresses

Diplomats met in Bangkok this week for the final round of major negotiations before the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change this December in Copenhagen, where environmentalists hope the world will agree to a climate change mitigation treaty to succeed the failed Kyoto Protocol.

The Guardian headline says it all: “Bangkok Climate Talks End in Recrimination.” The sub-headline also is illuminating: “Bitter delegates say no agreement on money or emissions cuts means a deal at Copenhagen will be weak at best.”

What follows is a quick breakdown of the disparate negotiating positions that resulted in “recrimination” among “bitter delegates.”

• Economically-developed countries won’t commit to a treaty that doesn’t include major emitters such as China and India.

• China, India and other rapidly developing countries won’t accept costly carbon controls unless they receive hundreds of billions of dollars each year to finance green energy technologies.

• Economically-developed countries refuse to pay for a global conversion to green energy (which would cost $45 trillion, according to the International Energy Agency).

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

Rent-Seekers, Inc.
Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal, 2 October 2009

Nike’s Green Lobbying
Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, 2 October 2009

Don’t Ban the Lightbulb
David Henderson, Washington Post, 2 October 2009

Defects in Hockey Stick Exposed (again)
Ross McKitrick, National Post, 2 October 2009

Paul Krugman Can’t Multiply
Robert Murphy, MasterResource.org, 2 October 2009

Cooling Down the Cassandras
George Will, Washington Post, 1 October 2009

EPA Prepares Regulatory Nightmare
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 1 October 2009

Cap-and-Trade: The Economic Suicide Act
John Trudel, Oregonian, 30 September 2009

Cap-and-Fade
Investor’s Business Daily, 30 September 2009

Aristocrats Can Afford Car-Free Days
Sam Kazman, Washington Examiner, 29 September 2009

Green Jobs Aren’t the Answer
John Berlau & William Yeatman, Washington Times, 27 September 2009

News You Can Use

Big Business Loves Cap-and-Trade

This week three major corporations-Exelon, PG&E, and Nike-made high profile exits from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, supposedly in protest over the Chamber’s skeptical take on global warming. Actually, they left in protest over the Chamber’s skeptical take on energy rationing. Here’s why these big businesses love cap-and-trade:

• Nike manufactures its shoes in Vietnam; many of its competitors’ shoes are American made. So a cap-and-trade energy tax would give Nike a competitive advantage.

• Exelon is a leader in nuclear power, which emits no carbon dioxide. According to an internal company memo, cap-and-trade energy rationing would increase Exelon’s revenue by $1.5 billion a year.

• In a 2006 report, PG&E boasts that the “emissions rate” of its electricity generation portfolio is 58% lower than the national average. If Congress enacts carbon caps on power plant emissions, California-based PG&E could expand into the massive Los Angeles market, which now receives almost half its power from out-of-state coal generators.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Energy Rationing Draft Introduced in Senate

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) released a draft of their version of the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill on Wednesday.  The 821-page bill hasn’t been introduced yet, so doesn’t have a number, but it does have a name: “The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.”  The text may be found here and summaries here and here.

The cap-and-trade section has been re-titled “Pollution Reduction and Investment.”  Environment and Energy Daily reported Kerry’s thinking: “I don’t know what ‘cap and trade’ means.  I don’t think the average American does,” Kerry told reporters.  “This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it’s a pollution reduction bill.”

Kerry also stressed that the bill is about security.  I’m not sure from what we will be more secure.  A recent study concluded that Waxman-Markey would double our reliance on imported refined petroleum products.

It is notable that Kerry rather than Boxer is the lead sponsor.  Kerry is not a member of the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, which Boxer chairs and which has primary jurisdiction over the bill.  I assume it’s because Senate Democratic leaders don’t want to repeat the mess Boxer made of managing the Lieberman-Warner bill on the Senate floor in June 2008.  It’s not clear to me that Kerry will be a big improvement as floor manager, but then it’s not clear to me that this bill will ever make it to the Senate floor.

Kerry-Boxer does not detail how the ration coupons will be divvied up among the big business special interests lining up at the trough, but the Washington Post reports what Boxer said in a taped interview with C-SPAN.  The interview is scheduled to be broadcast on Sunday, but C-SPAN has posted it on their web site. According to Juliet Eilperin’s story, Boxer says that “The vast majority of allowances will go to consumers to keep them whole.”

It will be interesting to hear Boxer explain how protecting consumers from energy cost increases will reduce emissions.  As Dr. Peter Orszag, now director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, explained in congressional testimony on 24th April 2008 when he was head of the Congressional Budget Office: “Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away. Indeed, the price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program because they would be the most important mechanism through which businesses and households would be encouraged to make investments and behavioral changes that reduced CO2 emissions.”

Boxer also acknowledges in the interview that they don’t yet have the 60 votes necessary for Senate passage.  Initial reactions from other Senators were not encouraging.  Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking Republican on the EPW Committee, blasted the bill, but several other Senators who are considered to be undecided swing votes were critical as well. For instance, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Chairman of the Commerce Committee, said that Kerry-Boxer was, “a disappointing step in the wrong direction.”

The pro-labor union Economic Policy Institute warned in a report that four million jobs could be lost to foreign competition if cap-and-trade legislation does not include carbon tariffs on imported goods produced in countries without carbon reduction regimes.  The report also noted that total global greenhouse gas emissions would likely increase as production shifted to countries that have less energy-efficient industries.

EPA Issues Illegal Climate Rule

The Environmental Protection Agency this week released a proposed rule to regulate major emitters of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.  The proposed rule will be open for public comment for sixty days.

The most interesting aspect is that EPA is not proposing to regulate stationary sources that emit more than 250 tons per year, but rather only sources that emit more than 25,000 tons per year.  The Clean Air Act is explicit.  Once a substance is listed as a criteria pollutant (which EPA is in the process of doing for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases), all sources over 250 tons must be regulated.  As my colleague Marlo Lewis points out, EPA recognizes that this would cause regulatory and economic havoc and so has decided simply to ignore the law.

Is Treasury Hiding True Cost of Energy-Rationing?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute on Tuesday notified the Treasury Department of their intent to file suit in federal court to compel release of all the documents related to Treasury’s cap-and-trade plan.  Treasury in September responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by CEI’s Chris Horner by releasing only redacted parts of five documents.  The notice of intent to sue was contained in a FOIA appeal to Treasury.

CEI had learned that Bush Administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had created a team of fifteen professional economists to devise a cap-and-trade program.  The documents released by Treasury revealed cost estimates ranging from $100 to $200 billion per year to the U. S. economy.  After a week of negative publicity, Treasury released the redacted portions of the parts of the five documents, which contained cost estimates of $300 to $400 billion per year.

Around the World

Bangkok Blues

Diplomats met in Bangkok this week for the final round of major negotiations before the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change this December in Copenhagen, where environmentalists hope the world will agree to a climate change mitigation treaty.

Negotiators in Bangkok made no progress on the key issue of burden sharing. Economically developed countries still won’t commit to a treaty that doesn’t include China and India, and these rapidly developing countries still won’t accept costly carbon controls that hurt their economies. Developing counties will only agree to a treaty if they get hundreds of billions of dollars each year to finance a conversion to green energy, but developed countries won’t pay. It’s the same gridlock that has doomed climate treaty talks for years.

There are only three months until Copenhagen, and global warming alarmists are getting worried. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon bemoaned the “glacial pace” of the talks. And UNFCCC chair Yvo de Boer complained that “we’re not seeing any real advances.”

India: Senate Climate Bill Is “Measly”

India isn’t impressed with the new Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade legislation. According to ClimateWire. Indian environmental minister Jairem Ramesh yesterday told a Yale forum that the Senate bill only called for a “measly” 5% reduction of U.S. emissions below 1990 levels.

In the News

Have Increases in Population, Affluence and Technology Worsened Human Well-Being?
Indur Goklany, Journal of Sustainable Development, September 2009

Can Paul Krugman Read?
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 25 September 2009

The Military-Industrial-Environmental Complex
Iain Murray & Roger Abbott, Washington Examiner, 25 September 2009

Gore-Backed Car Company Gets Big U.S. Loan
Josh Mitchell & Stephen Power, Wall Street Journal, 25 September 2009

Behind the Furor over a Climate Skeptic
John Broder, New York Times, 24 September 2009

The Dog Ate My Global Warming Data
Patrick J. Michaels, National Review Online, 23 September 2009

Obama’s Climate Fantasies
Myron Ebell, National Post, 23 September 2009

Cap-and-Trade Depresses Home Prices
Ryan Young, Politico, 23 September

Peer Review or Old Boy Network?
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 23 September 2009

Obama’s Anti-Energy Policy
Dan Kish, Washington Examiner, 23 September 2009

Rep. Sensenbrenner Scoffs at China’s UN Climate Speech
Stephen Power, Wall Street Journal, 23 September 2009

Redact and Withhold
Washington Times, 21 September 2009

Green Groups Open War Room
Mike Allen & Jim Vandehei, Politico, 21 September 2009

The United States Is the World’s True Energy Superpower
Donald Hertzmark, MasterResource.org, 18 September, 2009

News You Can Use

Antarctic Ice Expanding

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research this week noted the South Pole had shown “significant cooling in recent decades,” according to the Australian. The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate ice is expanding in much of Antarctica.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Boxer & Kerry To Introduce Climate Bill Next Week

It was reported this week that Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) will release a draft of their energy-rationing/cap-and-trade bill on September 30th and that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing or hearings on the bill during the week of October 5th.  The starting point of their draft is the Waxman-Markey bill, which was passed by the House on June 25th by a vote of 219 to 212.  It will be interesting to see what changes Boxer and Kerry make.

EPW Chairman Boxer has the votes to pass any version of cap-and-trade in her committee, so I expect she will move quickly to mark up the bill and send it to the floor.  After that, my guess is that there will be no more action on the bill this year.  The public have reacted so strongly against passage of Waxman-Markey by the House that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is nowhere near having the sixty votes necessary to pass it on the Senate floor.  But the Obama Administration will be able to take the House vote and the Senate committee vote to Copenhagen as evidence that energy-rationing is moving forward in the Congress.

Climate Diplomacy Fizzles

It was a big week for global warming showmanship on the international stage.  On Tuesday, United Nations held a climate summit.  About 100 heads of state attended and a half dozen or so gave speeches.  I didn’t think much of President Barack Obama’s speech.  My initial reaction was posted here.  Then on Thursday the President addressed the UN General Assembly and again mentioned the urgent need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Thursday afternoon, Obama and the other G-20 leaders went to Pittsburgh for the G-20 summit meeting.  Again, energy-rationing and global warming are on the agenda.  It has been reported that a deal has been struck to end subsidies of fossil fuels.  That sounds promising.  Let’s hope that they will next agree to end subsidies of renewable fuels.

Court Rules that Affordable Energy Is a Public Nuisance

Two lawsuits in federal court against electric utilities for the damage done by their greenhouse gas emissions have been re-instated by a ruling of the Second U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  The plaintiffs include Connecticut, New York, California, Iowa, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York City, and three land trust organizations.

Their suit claims that greenhouse gas emissions constitute a public nuisance and can therefore be controlled under common law.  The utilities named as defendants are American Electric Power, Southern Company, Xcel Energy, Cinergy (now merged into Duke Energy), and the Tennessee valley Authority.  The appeals court ruling found that the plaintiffs had alleged credible claims of current and future injuries due to global warming and had tied the cause adequately to the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the utilities.

Across the States

A Platform We Can Support

Former E-bay CEO and Republican candidate for Governor of California Megan Whitman this week slammed the Global Warming Solutions Act, a 2006 California law that calls for 25% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.  Whitman called the legislation a “job killing regulation,” and she even promised to “immediately issue an executive order calling for a one-year moratorium on most of AB32’s rules,” if she becomes Governor.

Around the World

Cap-and-Trade Falters in Europe

The European Union’s marquee climate change policy-an international cap-and-trade energy-rationing scheme-suffered a major set back this week after the EU’s second highest court ruled that the European Commission “exceeded its powers” by establishing energy-rationing quotas far below what sovereign nations had requested.

Under the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, individual nations submit emissions reductions targets for domestic industry to the European Commission for review. The Commission rejected proposals for 2008-2012 by Estonia and Poland, and issued lower targets in their stead. Estonia and Poland sued and the European Court of First Instance ruled that the Commission overstepped its jurisdiction.

The decision likely will affect pending cases brought against the ETS by other Central and Eastern European States, including Slovenia and the Czech Republic. These countries are largely dependent on coal, and they are more worried about the prospect of switching to natural gas from Russia (their former Soviet masters) than they are about rising temperatures.

The ruling threatens to destabilize the EU’s cap-and-trade. If the supply of energy ration coupons is constantly subject to litigation, then they will have little value, and the ETS will fail.

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.