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New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman could severely depress Exxon Mobil stock values while piously claiming to protect shareholders from fraud. Welcome to the Orwellian world of climate-policy sanctimony.

Schneiderman “has begun an investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how such risks might hurt the oil business,” the New York Times reported last week. According to the Times, Schneiderman is investigating the company under the State’s 1921 Martin Act, the envy of regulatory bullies throughout the land. The statute gives New York’s AG “extraordinary powers and discretion” that “exceed those given any regulatory in any other U.S. State” (Wiki). As one commentator describes it:

The purpose of the Martin Act is to arm the New York attorney general to combat financial fraud. It empowers him to subpoena any document he wants from anyone doing business in the state; to keep an investigation totally secret or to make it totally public; and to choose between filing civil or criminal charges whenever he wants. People called in for questioning during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. Combined, the act’s powers exceed those given any regulator in any other state.

Now for the scary part: To win a case, the AG doesn’t have to prove that the defendant intended to defraud anyone, that a transaction took place, or that anyone actually was defrauded. Plus, when the prosecution is over, trial lawyers can gain access to the hoards of documents that the act has churned up and use them as the basis for civil suits. “It’s the legal equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction,” said a lawyer at a major New York firm who represents defendants in Martin Act cases (and who didn’t want his name used because he feared retribution by [former AG Eliot] Spitzer). “The damage that can be done under the statute is unlimited.”

According to Deschert LLP, the Martin Act sets a low bar for establishing guilt. To convict a company of fraud, the AG does not have to show evidence of scienter — an intent to mislead. All he has to show is that the company misrepresented a “material fact” about its securities, and the Act defines “misrepresentation” broadly to include omissions of material facts as well as affirmations of false facts. By that logic, if Exxon Mobil’s public statements on climate-change or oil-market projections omit worst-case scenarios the company does not regard as credible, then it is guilty of defrauding shareholders.

Apparently, Schneiderman wants to build a case that Exxon Mobil misrepresented the seriousness of climate change risks, hiding from investors the financial risks the company will face when science triumphs over denial and governments act to curb the production and use of fossil fuels. It’s a preposterous green fairy tale. [click to continue…]

William Pentland has a very interesting post over at Forbes Energy in which he notes that average nationwide retail electricity prices increased from 2013-2015, and also that the Energy Information Administration expects rates to continue to rise in 2016. If the EIA is correct, then electric rates in 2016 would have increased about 4.5 percent over the 2013 average. As Pentland explains, this trend doesn’t make much sense at first impression, in light of historically low natural gas prices and plummeting oil prices.

According to Pentland, increasing demand is unlikely to be the cause of rising electricity rates, due to the simple fact that “many if not most utilities are selling less—not more—electricity than they used to sell.” And he also rightly suggests that wholesale electricity rates are unlikely to blame, because these wholesale markets are largely dictated by the price of natural gas, which, again, has been stuck at historical lows. While Pentland identifies recent regional price spikes (due primarily to logistical clogs) as one possible culprit, he expresses uncertainty whether such localized impacts could explain a nationwide trend.

In this fashion, Pentland does not posit a definite explanation for the phenomenon he demonstrates. Rather, he ends his post with a question: What is causing electricity rates to increase, despite unusually low fuel costs and generally declining energy costs?

My guess is that the cause is EPA’s war on coal. [click to continue…]

In a new study, Bjorn Lomborg estimates the impact on global temperatures of the emission-reduction pledges (“intended nationally determined contributions,” or INDCs) that the governments of the United States, European Union, China, and other countries hope to finalize at the upcoming COP 21 climate treaty conference in Paris. Lomborg finds that all INDCs combined “will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades.”

Here’s the abstract:

This article investigates the temperature reduction impact of major climate policy proposals implemented by 2030, using the standard MAGICC climate model. Even optimistically assuming that promised emission cuts are maintained throughout the century, the impacts are generally small. The impact of the US Clean Power Plan (USCPP) is a reduction in temperature rise by 0.013°C by 2100. The full US promise for the COP21 climate conference in Paris, its so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) will reduce temperature rise by 0.031°C. The EU 20-20 policy has an impact of 0.026°C, the EU INDC 0.053°C, and China INDC 0.048°C. All climate policies by the US, China, the EU and the rest of the world, implemented from the early 2000s to 2030 and sustained through the century will likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17°C in 2100. These impact estimates are robust to different calibrations of climate sensitivity, carbon cycling and different climate scenarios. Current climate policy promises will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades.

Table 1 below summarizes the global warming reductions plausibly projected for the main separate and total combined INDCs. For purposes of analysis, Lomborg makes the rosy assumptions that all nations do what they promise, and there is no carbon leakage (i.e. capital does not flee from carbon-constrained Western nations to China and other less-regulated developing countries). Estimates in the “Pessimistic” column assume nations achieve their promised reductions but then allow emissions to trend upward towards original baselines. Estimates in the “Optimistic” column assume nations hold their emissions constant after 2030.

Figure 11 below shows the stunning climatological insignificance of the Paris climate treaty.

Lomborg does not discuss the implications of his analysis. The main takeaways, though, are clear enough: [click to continue…]

Below, I’ve posted three planks of a presidential platform for EPA policy. I’ve even taken the time to formulate catchy slogans that capture the essence of my positive policy proposals.

Slogan #1: DO YOUR JOB!

In creating the EPA, Congress subjected the agency to thousands of deadlines, across virtually every regulatory regime it administers. As I explained in this 2013 article, statutory date-certain deadlines were a novel legislative feature in the early 1970s, when Congress endowed EPA with virtually of all of its current authority by passing various enabling statutes. These deadlines represent the Congress’s express directive for the agency to perform certain jobs.

The agency, however, has done a pitiful job achieving these congressional commands. Consider the Clean Air Act, which is undoubtedly the most important of the agency’s sources of power. From 1994 to 2013, the agency was subject to 200 deadlines for three core Clean Air Act programs (NAAQS, NSPS, and HAP Residual Risk Review). The agency missed 98% of these date certain duties, by an average of 5.5 years.

There are consequences to the agency’s failure to do its job. For starters, it creates the phenomenon known as “sue and settle,” whereby unelected environmental special interests seize the agency’s priority-making process.

[click to continue…]

With the COP 21 climate treaty conference in Paris only weeks away, federal agencies are trying harder than ever to spook the public about the so-called climate crisis.

This can be tricky when an agency-funded study indicates the state of the climate is better, rather than worse, than they thought.

A recent case in point is a NASA study by Jay Zwally and colleagues, published in the Journal of Glaciology (JOG). Their satellite data indicates that Antarctica is gaining more ice from snowfall than it is losing from coastal discharges and ice melt. In other words, currently and over the 1992-2008 study period, Antarctica is contributing to a net reduction in sea level rise. From NASA’s press release:

A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

This good news conflicts not only with the IPCC’s conclusion but also with a study published in June 2014 widely hailed at the time as additional proof of the climate crisis (even though it estimated that Antarctica’s rate of ice mass loss translated into only about 1.7 inches of sea-level rise per century).

So how does Zwally assess the significance of his team’s finding that Antarctica is currently gaining ice mass and reducing sea-level rise by 0.23 mm/year, or about 0.9 inches per century?

He says the “good news” is also “bad news.” How so? “If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.” OMG! The IPCC does not know where one-hundredth of an inch (0.27 mm) of annual sea-level rise is coming from.

Two questions leap to mind:

(1) Can anyone reliably measure global sea-level rise to one-hundredth of an inch? Answer: No. According to the University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group, the margin of error in satellite measurements of global sea level is 0.4 mm/year. That is larger than the alleged increment of sea-level rise for which the mighty IPCC cannot account.

(2) So is it possible the IPCC simply overestimated global-level rise by one-hundredth of an inch and there’s no missing increment to be accounted for? Answer: Yes. [click to continue…]

Summary: Recent motions to stay filed by industry groups with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals clearly explain the unlawfulness of the EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan. The rule impermissibly treats an entire economic sector as a single “source.” It would establish EPA as the nation’s electricity czar armed with market-restructuring power Congress denied even to the federal energy agency, FERC. ‘Produce less’ is not a Clean Air Act performance standard, yet the rule’s so-called performance standards would force coal power plants to generate less power or simply shut down.

EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” (CPP), the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate policy agenda, is unlawful in numerous ways, as this blog has explained in many posts. The point needs to be made again and again, however, due to the damage the CPP will do if not immediately put on hold and eventually overturned, the shamelessness of Obama administration officials and their allies in reimagining the Clean Air Act to mandate cap-and-trade and renewable-electricity quota wealth-transfer schemes Congress has rejected, and the superficial plausibility of EPA’s claim that it just wants to clean up “pollution” and protect kids from asthma.

When the CPP went final last Friday, industry groups filed two separate motions with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to put a stay on the rule (suspend its legal force and effect until all litigation challenges are resolved). Yesterday’s blog post briefly summarized a key argument of the motion filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 15 other trade associations. Today’s post discusses the motion filed by National Mining Association, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and Murray Energy Corporation. Both briefs are excellent and recommended reading.

On the core issue of the unlawfulness of the CPP, the coal industry motion develops three main arguments, which may be summarized as follows:

(1) An economic sector is not a “source.” Section 111 of the Clean Air Act (CAA), the purported statutory basis for the CPP, provides authority for EPA to set emission performance standards for stationary sources, a class of entities defined to include “any building, structure, facility, or installation which emits or may emit any air pollutant.” Lawful §111 rules regulate such sources, which are individual physical objects. In stark contrast, the CPP primarily regulates the investments and transactions of owners and operators outside the source. That is unprecedented and flouts clear statutory language. EPA came up with emission-rate standards for existing coal and natural gas power plants not by examining the economic feasibility of control technologies or practices individual sources might adopt but by reasoning backward from the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reductions the agency thinks the power sector can achieve by producing less electricity from coal and more from renewables. EPA impermissibly treats the entire electric grid as if it were a single source. [click to continue…]

The Obama administration’s climate agenda is a greenhouse of cards. The jerry-built structure has three stories, floors, or levels. It is unlawful from top to bottom.

The top floor is the Kyoto Protocol-successor treaty that President Obama wants 190-plus nations to adopt at the upcoming COP 21 climate conference in Paris. The final form of the pact is anybody’s guess, but the European Union advocates a treaty reducing global greenhouse gas emissions 60% below 2010 levels by 2050. As explained previously on this blog, actual implementation of the EU’s 60-by-50 target would be a humanitarian disaster for the world’s poor countries.

The floor beneath the climate treaty is EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP), which aims to “aggressively transform” and “decarbonize” the U.S. electric power sector. The CPP underpins the treaty because it is the core of Obama’s emission-reduction pledge (the U.S. Independently Determined National Contribution, or INDC) in the COP 21 negotiations. Even with the CPP, Obama’s current and planned climate policies fall far short of his pledge to reduce U.S. emissions 26%-28% below the 2005 level by 2025. Without the CPP, the U.S. negotiating position becomes a farce.

The bottom floor is EPA’s so-called Carbon Pollution Standards (CPS) for new coal and natural gas power plants. The CPS rule is a prerequisite for the CPP, because EPA may not lawfully impose emission performance standards on “existing” stationary sources under §111(d) of the Clean Air Act unless it first (or concurrently) imposes performance standards on “new” sources under §111(b).

Let’s briefly examine why Obama’s three-tiered climate action plan is doomed to collapse–unless, as in the Obamacare cases, courts decide presidential legacy policies are too big to fail.  [click to continue…]

Have We Finally Reached Peak Lie on the Clean Power Plan?

EPA has marketed its Clean Power Plan on a number of untruths, including (but not limited to):

• The rule is “flexible” (It isn’t)

• The rule saves lives. (It doesn’t)

• The rule would be a boon to the economy. (Are you kidding me?)

However, on October 7th, EPA told its biggest 111(d) whopper to date. On that day, during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, EPA Office of Air and Radiation chief Janet McCabe said, “The Clean Power Plan does not set in place a cap-and-trade program.” This is a bald face lie. In fact, the administration has proposed to impose a cap-and-trade on any state that refuses to comply with the rule. Moreover, top EPA officials, including Administrator Gina McCarthy, have urged States to comply by participating in a cap-and-trade. For my part, I can understand why McCabe was reduced to such naked duplicity. The Congress has considered and ultimately demurred on a number of cap-and-trade schemes. Now, EPA is trying to impose one, without a legislative mandate. McCabe was before Congress, the institution that has been screwed thusly. So she lied. Heckuva Job, Janet!

Dem Climate Debate Demonstrates Emptiness of Dem Climate Debate

Last Tuesday’s debate featured extensive discussions about climate change policy, a first for a presidential candidate debate of any stripe. The resulting interaction among candidates was heavy on empty exaggeration and obvious fibs. [click to continue…]

While acknowledging in his landmark climate policy speech that “no single weather event is caused solely by climate change,” President Obama quickly added: “But we also know that in a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by a warming planet.”

That’s a clever way to have one’s cake and eat it. Don’t claim “carbon pollution” is “solely” responsible for any “single” weather event, just link it to bad weather in general. Political implication: Blame the Koch Brothers!

What happens, though, when a nation experiences record-breaking good weather? How would Obama explain it? To what (or whom) would he impute responsibility?

Hall and Hereid (2015), a study published in Geophysical Research Letters and reviewed this week on CO2Science.Org, reports that “not since Hurricane Wilma in 2005 has a major [category 3 and larger] hurricane made U.S. landfall,” and that this nine-year major hurricane “drought” from 2006 to the end of the 2014 hurricane season is “unprecedented in the historical record,” which extends back to 1851. The current “drought” beats the previous record-holder, an eight-year period (1861-1868) with no major U.S. hurricane strikes.

We’re now more than four months into the 2015 hurricane season. If the drought persists through December, the nine-year record will become a 10-year record. [click to continue…]