Cooler Heads Digest 16 April 2010

by William Yeatman on April 16, 2010

in Blog

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.

My Commentary on James Hansen’s Huffington Post Column

by Marlo Lewis on April 15, 2010

in Blog

Is tax-and-dividend (aka “carbon fee and green check”) a morally compelling alternative to cap-and-trade?

Is it the path to presidential greatness?

Will it be good for the economy?

Will China adopt it if we do?

Yes to all of the above, climatologist James Hansen argues in the Huffington Post.

No, says your humble servant, today on MasterResource.Org.

ClimateGate: the Official Whitewash Continues

by Myron Ebell on April 14, 2010

in Politics, Science

The University of East Anglia’s carefully selected “International Panel” released their 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.  It appears that they concluded that the only way they could produce a whitewash and protect the interests of the establishment was by making only the most superficial investigation.  Perhaps they realized that doing more than taking the representations of Phil Jones and the others on trust would involve them in the moral difficulty of having to choose between being honest and maintaining their exoneration.

The seven panel members only looked at eleven published articles from CRU selected on the advice of the Royal Society.  And all eight panel members didn’t read all eleven papers.  Instead, “Every paper was read by a minimum of three Panel members at least one of whom was familiar with the general area to which the paper related.  At least one of the other two was a generalist with no special climate science expertise but with experience of some of the general techniques and methods employed in the work.”  Perhaps the third reader was a chimpanzee.  Yes, they have done a thorough and professional whitewash.

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.

Cooler Heads Digest 9 April 2010

by William Yeatman on April 9, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

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.

Chris Horner on Rising Energy Prices

by Richard Morrison on April 6, 2010

in Blog, videos

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGgJZfc0-M 285 234]

Canadian Defense Against Climategate

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on April 5, 2010

in Blog

As Climategate exploded prior to a December U.N. conference in Copenhagen that failed to produce a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, top environmental officials in Canada tried to paint a happy face on the scandal. The country’s Canwest News Service reports this morning that a top-ranking official with Environment Canada produced a memo for Environment Minister Jim Prentice — just before his participation in Copenhagen — that defended the integrity of the UN IPCC science:

The personal e-mails exchanged by climate scientists wound up in the hands of special-interest groups who say they are skeptical about peer-reviewed research that concludes humans are causing global warming….

But in the memorandum obtained by Canwest News Service, Environment Canada’s deputy minister, Ian Shugart, suggested the skeptics had it wrong. He explained the scientific information in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment of climate-change research was still the best reference tool for the negotiations.

“Recent media reports in the aftermath of the hacking incident at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia . . . has raised some concerns about the reliability and robustness of some of the science considered in the (fourth assessment of climate science released in 2007 by the) IPCC,” said the memorandum to Prentice from his deputy minister…

“Despite these developments, the department continues to view the IPCC (fourth assessment) as the most comprehensive and rigorous source of scientific information for climate-change negotiations.”

We’ve seen since then the birth of numerous other “Gates,” which revealed “rigorous” IPCC science sources such as student dissertations, climbing magazines, publications including  Leisure and Events Management, and World Wildlife Fund pamphlets.

Canwest also reported how the Canadian memo cited the evidence from temperature records:

The document also noted that temperature records in the report, which have been challenged by climate skeptics, were based on four different scientific agencies.

“All four data sets provide a very similar picture of the warming over land over the 20th century.”

We’ve now also learned that three of the four datasets that IPCC depended upon for their scientific research were tainted, thanks to evidence revealed from a Freedom of Information Act inquiry by Chris Horner at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. And then there was this BBC report about fudge factors and messy data, just after Climategate was exposed.

The Climate Peer-Review Process: Hopelessly Broken

by Iain Murray on April 1, 2010

in Blog

The Climategate scandal showed how several of the world’s top climate scientists were hell bent on keeping “skeptical” views out of the scientific literature and in particular, the IPCC reports.  If you wanted an illustration of how this actually worked in practice, then economist Ross McKitrick has a doozy for you.

Ross realized that one of the IPCC’s central claims, one that could be regarded as foundational, was fabricated and provably false.  He wrote a paper demonstrating this and proceeded to be given the run-around by every climatic journal he submitted it to, despite mostly positive reviews.  In the end he had to publish it in a statistical journal, where it will likely be ignored by the climate science clique community.

Ross concludes:

In the aftermath of Climategate a lot of scientists working on global warming-related topics are upset that their field has apparently lost credibility with the public. The public seems to believe that climatology is beset with cliquish gatekeeping, wagon-circling, biased peer-review, faulty data and statistical incompetence. In response to these perceptions, some scientists are casting around, in op-eds and weblogs, for ideas on how to hit back at their critics. I would like to suggest that the climate science community consider instead whether the public might actually have a point.

Read the whole thing by downloading Ross’s paper here (PDF link).

Roger Pielke Jr agrees with Ross here, noting:

This is exactly the situation that has occurred in the context of disaster losses that I have documented on numerous occasions. In the case of disaster losses, not only did the IPCC make stuff up, but when challenged, went so far as to issue a press release emphasizing the accuracy of its made up stuff.

no_consensus_scr

Cartoon from Cartoons By Josh.

Coming Soon: The Auto Purchase Mandate

by Iain Murray on April 1, 2010

in Blog

As threatened, the new CAFE standards have arrived, with the EPA muscling in on territory reserved by statute to the Transportation Department. As Marlo Lewis and I have noted repeatedly, this is an unconstitutional
step on a road to economic devastation.

However, in the light of recent events, this quote in particular caught my eye:

Gloria Bergquist, vice president at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said . . . “We have a hill to climb, and it’s steep, so we will need consumers to buy our fuel-efficient technologies in large
numbers to meet this new national standard.”

Even with very high gas prices, Americans have been unwilling to buy fuel-efficient vehicles in the same numbers as Europeans, because they rightly regard them as less safe. When the president talks about how
vehicles have not become more efficient over the past few vehicles, he is being disingenuous, because they have actually become much more efficient at providing more horsepower and more mass for the same amount of fuel. That’s what consumers want and in many cases need, but that’s also what makes this a particularly steep hill for the auto manufacturers to climb.

With the principle that the Federal Government can mandate that individuals purchase something now established with the Obamacare Act (although that too is unconstitutional, as my colleague Hans Bader explains), how long before we see an act of Congress aimed at forcing Americans to buy unsafe but fuel-efficient vehicles?

A chicken in every pot and a fuel-efficient car in every garage . . . or else!

Cross-posted from The Corner.

Cooler Heads Digest 1 April 2010

by William Yeatman on April 1, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

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.

Myron Ebell on Offshore Drilling

by Richard Morrison on March 31, 2010

in Blog, videos

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWvZotUOHE 285 234]

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