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Post image for Sierra Club President’s Testimony Reveals It’s Worse Than We Thought. Climate Change? No. Group Think About Climate Change.

 

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight heard testimony on “Opportunity Denied: How Overregulation Harms Minorities.” Today’s WattsUpWithThat posts a video clip featuring an exchange between Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sierra Club President Aaron Mair.

Even I underestimated how much the bogus 97% consensus has closed the minds of those who invoke it. Under questioning by Sen. Cruz about the 18-plus year warming ‘pause’ in the satellite records, Mair quickly came to sound like a broken record, repeatedly appealing to the alleged 97% “consensus.”

Even after three times consulting with staff, Mair opined that “the pause” refers to a slowdown in warming in the 1940s! Apparently, the President of the Sierra Club assumes that once armed with the “97% consensus,” you no longer need to study the science and can just get on with the business of  making climate policy.

Cruz’s exchange with Mair runs from 0:00 to 8:43 in the video. My unofficial transcript follows.

Sen. Cruz: Thank you, Senator Coons, and I’d like to go back briefly to Mr. Mair. In your written testimony, you said that the science behind climate change and its effect on minority communities, quote: “Should not be up for debate.” I’m curious. Is the Sierra Club . . . is this a frequent practice of the Sierra Club to declare areas of science not up for debate, not up for consideration of what the evidence and data show?

Mair: If you are relying on the evidence and data, the science, the preponderance of the evidence, are there.

Cruz: But that’s a different thing than saying we should not debate a question, that the Sierra Club has declared this scientific issue resolved, and there should be no debate.

Mair: Based upon the preponderance of the evidence the science is settled. But the thing is that anything is up for debate, Senator. We can debate anything.

Cruz: Well, I would note that even the phrase preponderance of the evidence,” having been a practicing lawyer for many years, means 51%, that means 49 . . . at least 51% is what the preponderance means. You know, I would ask, for example, if you want to end debate, if you don’t want to address the facts, how do you address the fact that the last 18 years the satellite data show no demonstrable warming whatsoever?

Mair: Sir, I would rely upon the Union of Concerned Scientists, and I would rely on the evidence, again, of our own NOAA officials, the data are there.

Cruz: Is it correct that the satellite data over the last 18 years demonstrate no significant warming?

Mair: No.

Cruz: How is it incorrect?

Mair: [Confers with staff.] Based upon our experts, it’s been refuted long ago, and there is no longer, it’s not up for scientific debate. [click to continue…]

To reserve its seat in the Paris 2015 climate-con kumbaya chorus, India recently vowed to cut its carbon intensity by 33-35 percent by 2030.  It shouldn’t be a tough promise to keep.

On the surface, the pledge would appear to undercut the skeptics’ argument that U.S. carbon policies will have little impact on world temperatures given the huge growth expected in the developing world, and that the developing world will not cut economic growth to meet first-world carbon targets. You can almost hear the response already, “but India agreed to CO2 cuts…”

Let’s look at those cuts.  The promised cuts are not for CO2 emissions, but, instead, for cuts in the ratio of CO2 emissions to GDP (emissions intensity).  This ratio will go down so long as CO2 emissions rise less rapidly than GDP.  For example, the carbon intensity of the U.S. economy dropped by more than 45 percent between 1981 and 2011 even as CO2 emissions rose 18 percent.

The important question, here, is what would happen to India’s emissions intensity without the pledge?  Of course, projections on GDP and emissions are uncertain, but then so is the commitment to meeting targets. [click to continue…]

Post image for Free Market Groups Submit Joint Comment Letter on Obama Administration’s Heavy Truck Greenhouse Gas/Fuel Economy Standards

Yesterday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, Institute for Energy Research, and Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council submitted a joint comment letter on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) proposed rule, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Fuel Efficiency standards for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Engines and Vehicles – Phase 2.”

The agencies’ Phase 1 rulemaking in 2011 established first-ever greenhouse gas (GHG) and fuel-economy standards for model years (MYs) 2014-2018 semi-trucks, large pickups and vans, and assorted vocational trucks. Phase 2 will set more stringent medium- and heavy-truck GHG and fuel economy standards for MYs 2021-2027.

In 25 thrill-packed pages, our comment letter lays out the following argument:

EPA and NHTSA’s proposed Phase 2 greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles endanger the economic viability of small-business truckers. The rule’s putative energy-security and climate benefits are entirely speculative and vanishingly small at best. The agencies fail to demonstrate that, absent regulation, truckers won’t make cost-effective investments in fuel-saving technology. If EPA wants to know why heavy trucks don’t get better mileage than they do today, it should look itself in the mirror. During the 2000s, EPA’s diesel-truck emission standards, both by directly reducing the fuel-efficiency of diesel engines, and by crowding out fuel economy-related R&D and consumer spending, created the problem the agencies purport to solve via additional regulation.

 

Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the nationwide limit for ground level ozone, known officially as a National Ambient Air Quality Standard, from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion.

It will be a painful regulation to implement. Ozone pollution is notoriously expensive to mitigate. These costs, moreover, would be completely incommensurate with the putative benefits. However, as I explain below, the Obama administration had little discretion on the matter, and, within its limited room to maneuver, the EPA chose the least among harms. Moreover, if courts remain consistent (which is by no means a certainty), there’s a good chance this rule will be rejected for being insufficiently stringent. By contrast, there is little chance that the rule would be struck down for being too onerous.

So this is the first absurd environmental regulation issued since January 2009 for which the Obama administration isn’t to blame. Rather, fault for this rule lies with primarily with the legislative and judicial branches of government. The Congress established an inapt regulatory regime for setting the ozone standard. And subsequent court rulings made this ill-suited program even worse. As a result, the ozone NAAQS is a monster, over which the president has little control. [click to continue…]

Here’s the headline from an August 25th article by the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin and Michelle Boorstein:

“For Pope Francis’s D.C. Visit, Environmental Rally of up to 200k Planned”

And here’s the headline from a Think Progress post today by Natasha Geiling:

“Pope’s Visit to D.C. Inspires Hundreds To Rally for Climate Justice”

[click to continue…]

[Editor’s noteThis is the latest in a semi-regular series whose purpose is to correct the record whenever New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait writes a story about climate change politics or policy]

Earlier this month, Jonathan Chait penned a cover story for New York Magazine on climate change, which he has since described thusly:

My story in the magazine describes how political pressure and technological innovation are feeding into each other, producing a virtuous cycle of affordable green energy and stronger willpower to reduce emissions.

As always, Chait’s climate change story is peppered with factual inaccuracies. For example, writes Chait:

[I]n 2010, President Obama, temporarily enjoying swollen Democratic majorities in both houses, tried to pass a cap-and-trade law that would bring the U.S. into compliance with the reductions it had pledged in Copenhagen. A handful of Democrats from fossil-fuel states joined with nearly every Republican to filibuster it.

For starters, President Obama did not “try to pass a cap-and-trade law.” In fact, the “cap-and-trade” in question never made it out of the democrat party caucus in the Senate. More to the point, the President effectively killed the effort by punting on a meeting about the measure with Senate democrat leadership. Also, while it’s true that opposition to the bill was bipartisan, there was never a filibuster. Again, the bill never made it out of the democrat Senate caucus, due to intra-party opposition. Republicans didn’t have to lift a finger. So Chait’s history is totally wrong (again).

Of course, there are more mistakes in the piece, but the two most prominent errors undercut his thesis altogether. Chait’s argument is that we should be optimistic because green energy is taking off, and also because China is fervently doing everything it can to reduce emissions. As fate would have it, both of Chait’s primary talking points were refuted by events in only the 17 days since he published his ill-destined article. [click to continue…]

Post image for ‘Moderate’ Rs Call for ‘Action’ on Climate (Crank Me-Too Amplifiers Up to Eleven)

Climatewire (subscription required) reports that Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) and at least nine other ‘moderate’ Republicans will introduce a Sense of Congress Resolution today on “conservative environmental stewardship.” The resolution includes the usual warnings about climate change adversely affecting extreme weather, public health, agriculture and tourism, federal and state budgets, and international peace and stability. It calls upon the House to work “constructively . . . to create and support economically viable, and broadly supported public and private solutions.”

As if that were not vague enough, the resolution also affirms that efforts to mitigate climate change “should not constrain the economy of the United States, especially in regards to global competitiveness.” Climatewire helpfully notes that two of the nine co-sponsors, Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey and Dave Reichert of Washington, were among the 8 Republicans who voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the 111th Congress.

Two questions leap to mind. First, what sort of bipartisan “solutions” could Gibson et al. conceivably negotiate with the Obama administration? Are they saying that the Clean Power PlanHeavy Truck Greenhouse Gas rule, Oil & Gas Methane Rule, and the President’s UN Pledge go too far, so now’s the time to work with Democrats to develop “solutions” that split the difference between Obama’s initiatives and the GOP policy of ‘inaction’? Of course not. For the President and the environmentalist base of the Democratic Party, the administration’s climate initiatives are legacy policies and not open for negotiation or compromise.

Second, just how do the co-sponsors propose to do something “meaningful” about climate change without constraining an economy in which carbon-based fuels supply 82% of annual energy consumption? If policymakers knew how to square that circle, climate change would not be the intensely controversial issue it has been for two-plus decades.

It’s hard to imagine House leadership or any committee of jurisdiction scheduling time to debate or mark up this latest Constructive Republican Alternative Proposal. Nonetheless, given the administration’s increasingly shrill anti-carbon campaign, the impending Papal visit to preach climate alarm to congressional skeptics, and the looming pitched battles over the Clean Power Plan and O’s climate treaty agenda, we should not be complacent when a group of GOP lawmakers decides to crank the Me Too amplifiers up to eleven.

tweedlebrothers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leadership should have upstaged and preempted the Tweedle Dums by sponsoring its own sense of Congress resolution on climate and energy policy. To encourage such an effort, CEI published a model Sensible Sense of Congress Resolution on Climate Change back in June. Perhaps the Me Too resolution will languish in obscurity after today’s unveiling. But if co-sponsors start piling on, congressional constitutionalists, free-marketers, and affordable energy advocates will need to pass their own resolution to marginalize that of the Tweedle Dums.

As explained in more detail in CEI’s model resolution, the fundamental points to be stressed are: [click to continue…]

In response to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Congress in 1975 passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which directs the President “to promulgate a rule prohibiting the export of crude oil” produced in the United States. Congress’s oil export restrictions, like virtually all limits on international trade, are bad policy. Nonetheless, in this instance, the Congress at least was heeding the prevailing political winds (if not reason): the OPEC embargo caused public panic, and banning oil exports was a knee-jerk response to the political mood at hand.

As time passed from this initial panic, legislative prohibitions on oil trade made decreasing sense. And during the past five or so years, a time when American production has boomed thanks to a technological revolution colloquially known as “fracking,” the export ban has become downright stupid. It is, therefore, a welcome development that House of Representatives leadership today in Houston is expected to announce a strategy to advance H.R. 702, legislation that would forbid federal officials from imposing or enforcing restrictions on the export of oil. This *common sense* bill was introduced by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) and enjoys healthy bipartisan support.

During a briefing yesterday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest was asked whether the Obama administration has a position on H.R. 702, and his response says a great deal about the sorry state of energy policy in the age of Obama. I’ve reposted his answer below:

MR. EARNEST:  [W]e’ve got a position on this, which is that this is a policy decision that is made over at the Commerce Department.  And for that reason, we wouldn’t support legislation like the one that’s been put forward by Republicans.  And so this is — so for an update on our position, if one is necessary, you can consult with the Commerce Department.

The one thing that I would note is that this policy announcement is being made by Leader McCarthy in front of an organization in Houston that is largely funded by four or five of the biggest oil companies in the United States.  So it is pretty clear, once again, where Republicans in Congress and their political benefactors stand when it comes to their energy policy priorities.  

[Editor’s note: Here, Earnest is referencing how House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is expected to announce leadership’s support for H.R. 702 today at an oil and gas trade association in Houston.]

The fact is I think Leader McCarthy has an opportunity to demonstrate some true political courage where he could go and stand before that organization and actually offer up something bold but also common-sense, which is to end the billions in subsidies that oil and gas companies in the United States already enjoy, and actually use that money to ensure the long-term success of our economy and the energy sector in this country by making important investments in things like wind energy and solar energy — investments that even some of those oil companies themselves have bragged about making.

Earnest’s extraordinary response has two components that warrant exploration.

First, he states that the administration will oppose H.R. 702, because the purpose of the legislation—ending export restrictions—is “a policy decision that is made over at the Commerce Department.” Let’s unpack this a bit, because it says a lot about this administration’s tendency to accrue power.

As I explain above, Congress in 1975 passed a law (EPCA) whose purpose is to restrict the export of oil produced in the U.S. Today, congressional leadership wants to pass a law that would lift such restrictions. Congress passes a law; Congress rescinds the law. That makes sense to me, but not to the President. According to the Obama administration, it’s not Congress’s place to amend its prior laws. Instead, any such alterations are properly “a policy decision that is made over at the Commerce Department.” That is, these decisions are best left to the Executive Branch. Of course, the administration’s “position” is totally impermissible from a constitutional perspective (separation of powers and all that). Nevertheless, Earnest’s response speaks volumes about Obama’s approach to governance. This administration thinks policy should originate in a second term president, by phone or pen, rather than Congress. [click to continue…]

retrieved by globalwarming.org from Papal dumpster

received by globalwarming.org from our Vatican contacts

Pope Francis will visit Cuba and the United States from 19th through 27th September.  The Vatican’s official schedule for both visits has been published on the Catholic Herald’s web site.

It has since been reported that the Pope will meet with former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, if Fidel is well enough, as well as current dictator Raul Castro while in Cuba.

The White House announced this week that President and Mrs. Obama will meet the Pope on his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base on 22nd September. Pope Francis will address a joint session of Congress on the morning of 24th September.  He is then likely to appear on a balcony of the West Front of the Capitol to speak to a “Moral Action for Climate Justice” mass rally on the Mall. The Pope will address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Summit in New York City on the 25th.

International climate diplomacy is necessarily a joke.

Here’s the cold, hard set-up to the joke: The international system of world states is defined by self-help. This is because there is no global policeman to enforce lofty international goals set by high minded cosmopolitans. Nations of the world may one day by reason bind together and achieve perpetual peace and harmony, but we’re nowhere near there yet. And until then, nation states will conduct their relations with one another based on their selfish interests alone.

UNFCCC: Bigger carbon footprint than even the Pope

UNFCCC: Bigger carbon footprint than even the Pope

With this maxim in mind, now consider the scope of the climate diplomat’s task. According to the International Energy Agency, it would cost $45 trillion to control the world’s thermostat. And this is likely a lowball. Remember, 90% of the world’s energy production is derivative of combusting fossil fuels, the “cause” of supposedly terrifying global warming. Energy, in turn, is a necessary component of all acts of economic production. Therefore, in order to “do something” about climate change, the entire global economy would have to be reordered in accordance with the commands of some centralized entity. Global communism is not an inapt parallel for climate change mitigation policy.

Given the cold, hard truth set forth above, and accounting as well for the hugeness of the undertaking that is seeking to set planet’s temperature, and you are left with an inescapable conclusion: Not Gonna Happen. There is simply no precedent for interstate burden sharing on the order of $45 trillion, short of world war. While wrongway Jon Chait deems AGW to be a threat as big if not bigger than Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, his ridiculous viewpoint is shared by no one save for environmental zealots, and perhaps climate diplomats.

What, for example, does Jon Chait and his ilk think could happen this December in Paris, which is hosting the latest UN-sponsored conference to “save the plant”? The U.S. position is set. President Obama can pledge emissions cuts commensurate with the regulations his administration imposed. Nor does the President have an independent kitty of cash he can put on the table. Similarly, the European Union position is set. They’ve committed to 40% reductions through 2030; that’s not going to change. Japan and Canada blew through their Kyoto Protocol targets, and have since embraced coal use and unconventional oil production, respectively.

So, what’s going to change? What could Paris accomplish? Will the developed countries, with their unmovable goals and priorities, browbeat rapidly developing countries like China and India into submitting to the west’s green demands?

Fat chance!

[As an aside, I’m here reminded of President Obama’s most humiliating moment abroad. In December 2009, at the last UN-climate confab to “save the planet,” President Obama made a dramatic and unexpected visit, the lowlight of which was his banging on the door of a meeting with Chinese and Indian delegations and demanding entrance, having to sneak in, and then being ignored in front of a gaggle of reporters.]

When the world is seen through the realist lens, climate diplomacy is rightfully identified as absurd theatre. There is no possible endpoint, so jet setting climate diplomats must get busy pretending to make progress. And because there’s only a limited number of ways to make believe diplomatic progress, these pretensions soon become hilarious. [click to continue…]