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Announcements

The deadline for the public comment period on the EPA’s proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare is June 23rd. You may submit comments here.

In the News

The Big Chill
Pete Du Pont, Wall Street Journal, 19 June 2009

Scared Silly by Global Warming Alarmism
Bjorn Lomborg, The Korea Times, 19 June 2009

Commandeered by Climate Alarmists
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 19 June 2009

California Unions Muscle in on Green Jobs
Todd Woody, New York Times, 18 June 2009

Map: How Much Will Waxman-Markey Cost Your State?
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 18 June 2009

Reasons To Distrust Your Government
Alan Caruba, Warning Signs, 18 June 2009

Utilities Could Cash in on Climate Bill
Andy Stone & Jonathan Fahey, Forbes, 17 June 2009

Global Warming Bill Is a Job Killer
Investor’s Business Daily editorial, 17 June 2009

Waxman-Markey: A Dog That Won’t Hunt
Robert Murphy, MasterResource.org, 17 June 2009

Obama Ressurrects Illinois Green Energy Boondoggle
Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, 17 June 2009

Ethanol vs. Enviros
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, American Spectator, 17 June 2009

Global Cooling
Colorado Springs Gazette editorial, 16 June 2009

Breaking Down the Cost of Waxman-Markey Energy Rationing Bill
Nick Loris, The Foundry, 15 June 2009

News You Can Use

Rasmussen Poll: Voters Want More Energy

According to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, voters believe that finding new sources of energy is more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans now consume by a 60% to 32% margin.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Update on Waxman-Markey Energy Rationing Bill

The Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill may come to the House floor next week. Or it may not.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Representative Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, are still negotiating with a farm-state faction led by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, to gain enough votes to pass the bill. Press reports suggest that they are further from making a deal today than a couple days ago.  That may be true, but at this point comments from Waxman, Pelosi, and Peterson may not accurately reflect the state of their negotiations. It’s a poker game now. As I write, Roll Call and E and E News PM both report that floor action is unlikely next week because the deal isn’t done yet.  But maybe it will be over the weekend or on Monday.

The National Rural Electric Co-operative Association is also raising a fuss since they discovered that they weren’t close enough to the trough when the free ration coupons were handed out. It has been reported that NRECA may drop their potential opposition to the bill if the co-operatives are given 1% of the coupons. It’s not much, but it may be enough for the president of NRECA, Glenn English, to quiet down his members. English is a former Democratic Congressman from Oklahoma. Former Members promote themselves on the basis of the access they have to their former colleagues. However, it is my experience that access is often a liability. It seems to me that English is so eager to agree to a deal with Waxman and Pelosi because if he doesn’t their doors will be closed the next time he stops by.

Focus Groups: Public Is Not Buying “Green Jobs” Nonsense

As Waxman-Markey inches closer to passage by the House, a memo has surfaced in the press that reports that the public isn’t buying global warming or cap-and-trade legislation.  According to the results of “a set of 12 focus groups with swing voters in six states,” Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Third Way (a “progressive” public policy group) advise that the public are eager for dramatic change in energy policy, but that they “are not yet engaged on the issue and are susceptible to the argument that the progressive policy proposal [that is, cap-and-trade] amounts to a big energy tax.”  Well, yes, people are susceptible to that argument because cap-and-trade does amount to a big energy tax on them.

So how to sell this big energy tax?  The memo advises less emphasis on global warming and green jobs and more on clean energy.  They suggest the slogan, Get America running on clean energy.  That’s what worked with the focus groups.  My slogan is, It’s a tax!  We’ll see which one is more effective.

The Government’s Winners and Losers

Julie Walsh

Government subsidies, tariffs, and special treatment for certain industries make an uneven playing field for competing energy options for consumers. This creates winners and losers based on the government’s favors. The government’s track record picking winners and losers hasn’t been good.

Winners: Wind and Solar

Wind and solar energy have been receiving government subsidies since the ’70s, currently now at the rate of $23 per megawatt hour. Coal-fired power only costs around $25 per megawatt hour and receives a 44 cent per megawatt hour subsidy.

Loser:  Thorium energy

Proponents of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors believe they can provide energy cheaper than from coal. And there are enough thorium reserves to power the world for centuries. A thorium reactor produces less than 1% of the radioactive waste of today’s nuclear power plants and can even consume the existing nuclear waste. In the 1990s the Megatons to Megawatts program spent millions of dollars to develop this design under a federal grant to a private company that did most of its research in Russia in order to keep former Soviet scientists busy so that they wouldn’t be forced to sell their expertise to terrorists.

The Science

Dr. Doom Unveils Doomsday Report

On June 17, the U. S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) released a report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.”  The report was prepared by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is headed by Dr. John P. Holdren, a doomsday theorist who once suggested that climate change will kill a billion people by 2020. As such, it’s unsurprising that the report is as alarming as it is flawed.

The first key finding of the report is, “Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.”  Yet global temperatures have not increased statistically since 1995, despite a steady increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (the supposed cause of so-called global warming), so it’s hard to see how global warming is “unequivocal.”

Many projections made by the report depend upon climate models that have no skill in regional forecasting. Many scientists agree that the models currently have no predictive ability on the regional scale, and therefore should not be relied upon for policy decisions.

Across the States

California Renewable Requirement=Expensive Energy

E&E News (subscription required) reported this week on a new study from the California Public Utilities Commission showing that utility bills for California homes will increase by 24% under a requirement that renewable energy sources generate a third of the Golden State’s electricity by 2020. The Waxman-Markey energy rationing bill would require the nation’s electric utilities to use at least 20% renewable power by 2020.

Last month we heard from the New York Times about the poll testing by the firm ecoAmerica that found the term “global warming” is no longer useful or scary enough for alarmists to use:

The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Now comes the Washington Times today with another report from Democratic advisers who confirm ecoAmerica’s findings, and suggest that other terms being used to push a cap-and-trade emissions reduction scheme are hurting their cause also:

House Democrats neared a deal Thursday on a bill to combat global warming, but a top party strategist warned that to sell any plan to voters they’ll need to change the way they pitch it — including curbing the use of the term “green” jobs and even talk of “global warming.”

In a strategy memo, Democratic think tank Third Way and top party strategist Stanley Greenberg warned Democrats that swing voters don’t care about fighting global warming, and said terms like “cap-and-trade” are useless. Instead, the memo suggests that Democrats tap into Americans’ optimism that clean energy can help improve the faltering economy.

“For most voters, global warming is not significant enough on its own to drive support for major energy reform,” the memo says. “So while it can be part of the story that reform advocates are telling, global warming should be used only in addition to the broader economic frame, not in place of it….”

But the strategists, in their memo, said the term “cap-and-trade” is “worse than meaningless” and is unfavorable to voters. Instead, Third Way and Mr. Greenberg’s firm argue for terms like “clean energy” and for branding the push against global warming under a new slogan of “Get America running on clean energy.”

What a farce. These clowns won Oscars and Grammys based on “global warming”; they pushed “cap-and-trade” because they said it promoted a “market-based” reduction plan; and they embraced “green” jobs because it implied the best of both worlds — high employment and a clean energy economy.

Now that they’ve captured all the government power, the terms they used to win their trophies are — as I wrote last month — a giant boat anchor. They can’t lie with the old terms any more so they have to make up new ones. And like the phony language they use, their cap-and-trade plan is also “worse than meaningless” — it’s destructive.

Cross-posted at American Spectator.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a finding that carbon dioxide (the same stuff we exhale) “endangers” public health and welfare by causing so-called global warming (even though global temperatures haven’t increased in a decade, despite steady increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, which, again, supposedly causes global warming).

It may seem like arcane bureaucratese, but an “endangerment” finding is actually a big deal that would hurt virtually every facet of the American economy. Under the Clean Air Act, an endangerment finding serves as a tripwire for a regulatory chain-reaction that would subject small businesses, farms, and any building larger than a mansion to costly red tape and endless paperwork.

In his comments on EPA’s proposed endangerment, available here, CEI’s Marlo Lewis exposes the flawed science behind the EPA’s finding, and he also explains the regulatory ramifications.

The deadline for the public comment period on the EPA’s proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare is June 23^rd. You may submit comments here.

Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a public web page dedicated exclusively to the Waxman-Markey bill.  The page is accessible here.

The purpose of this very basic page is to give visitors the 10 or 15 most relevant documents to Waxman-Markey, so as not to overwhelm them. It’s a great place to learn more about an energy-rationing bill that threatens to torpedo economic growth in America.

The annual meeting of the Western Governors Association closed yesterday, and the Deseret News stuck with the global warming theme of departing (once he’s confirmed ambassador to China) Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (an alarmist) being replaced by Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert (a skeptic). The newspaper put Herbert in the spotlight once again about his intentions on the issue when he takes the top office:

Herbert, who will have to run in 2010 for the remainder of Huntsman’s term, told the Deseret News he had no political agenda. “I’m certainly not going to be the same as Gov. Huntsman,” Herbert said, but was not “calculating to set myself apart.”

He said other governors attending the meeting told him privately they agreed with him (about climate change) but the [WGA] had already decided its position. A resolution urging regional and national policies on global climate change was approved at the meeting.

Herbert said he hopes to organize his own conference in Utah so scientists on both sides of the issue can make their arguments.

“When it gets right down to it, I’m not too radical. I’m just a simple guy,” he said. “If I don’t understand it, there are probably a lot of other people who don’t, either.”

Meanwhile Democratic Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (a somewhat reformed alarmist) reiterated his views that the debate about global warming is not settled:

[Schweitzer] said, “while I believe and I think many people agree with me that human activity has contributed to greenhouse gases and those greenhouse gases are changing our climate and it is something we need to address, others don’t believe it.”

Schweitzer said most people fall between the extremes of dismissing climate change altogether and believing that “unless we move immediately into a cave and live around a campfire that the world is going to be destroyed.”

It’d be nice if President Obama paid attention to that message.

Hat tip to Sutherland Institute President Paul Mero.

Cheney Coal Plan Gets $1 Billion Boost…From Obama
Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, 17 June 2009

Leading coal and electricity companies on Friday won a billion-dollar chunk of stimulus money from the Obama administration, highlighting once again how President Barack Obama’s anti-lobbyist and anti-big business rhetoric is divorced from his actions.

Farmer Brown Fights Back
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, American Spectator, 17 June 2009

To all appearances, green special interests are on a roll.

Global Cooling
Colorado Gazette Editorial, 16 June 2009

More and more, progressives who want American citizens to fork over their money in an effort to control the climate are trying to market the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming,” in an urgent about face they hope nobody will notice. That’s because they’re faced with an inconvenient truth: all the hystrionics about icebergs melting and drowning coastal cities in coming years may not be true. To continue the fear, and therefore generate support for spending billions to solve the crisis, fear-mongers need terminology that will work no matter what the climate does.

Newsbusters noticed that INN (the Immelt News Network, more commonly known as NBC) — corporate child of General Electric, the big maker of and subsidy sucker for its wind turbines — downplayed the recent cool weather. NB’s Jeff Poor reports:

According to NBC chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson, the phenomena are caused by the a jet stream dropping deeper into the United States than is usual for this time of year.

“Though summer doesn’t officially start for another week, the run up has been most unseasonable,” Thompson said.

But Anne assured viewers, and anchor Brian Williams, that those wind turbines are still needed! More from Poor:

“This less-than-beach-like weather may have you wondering about global warming,” Thompson said. “This cold spell is a snapshot, just a couple of weeks. Global warming is something that happens over decades and centuries. So hang in there, summer and its warmth is on the horizon.”

That news of warm weather and theory of global warming was reassuring for Williams. “Glad to hear that. I was beginning to worry,” he said.

Lest Immelt put heat on the news department like a solar panel on a desert turtle!

North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat, is disputing a National Academy of Sciences study of claims that health problems were caused by water contamination at Camp Lejeune between the 1950s and 1985. The News & Observer of Raleigh reports:

In a statement today, the Democrat said the study, released over the weekend, neglects key historical document and “severely downplays the established links between adverse health effects and exposure to [volatile organic compounds] that were present in the water at Camp Lejeune.”

Hagan called for a hearing to explore the topic. “Former personnel and residents of Camp Lejeune need closure on this issue and one way to help facilitate that is through a hearing in the Armed Services Committee,” her statement said.

She continued, “The time has come for Congress, the Department of the Navy, and the Marine Corps to work together to develop a plan to resolve the longstanding issue of water contamination at Camp Lejeune.”

More from Hagan’s press release:

“The NAS study released Saturday is simply a review of previous scientific literature on hydrocarbon solvents, reports on Camp Lejeune water contamination, and published epidemiologic and toxicological studies,” said Hagan. “However, it failed to take into account the conclusions of previous epidemiological studies that found an association between volatile organic compounds (VOCs) exposures and childhood leukemia, and presents some direct contradictions to the EPA’s maximum containment levels of VOCs in drinking water. Moreover, the NAS study barely mentioned benzene and vinyl chloride…. For these reasons, I cannot stand behind the validity of the NAS study.”

Are you saying, Senator, that the NAS is capable of…bad science?! That perhaps the most “prestigious” association of scientists is capable of ignoring vital research and facts?

In that case, Senator Hagen, can we revisit some of the other crapola science that NAS has produced recently, like with global warming (“is happening even faster than previously estimated”)? That statement, issued Thursday, is a proven lie.

The Heartland Institute has created some terrific print ads countering the prevailing political and media wisdom in Washington on the issue of global warming. The three ads will run in the Washington Post today, tomorrow and Thursday, and will “call for an open debate over the science of global warming.”

One, two, three…they’re all good but the second, illustrating the alarmists’ “unscientific method,” I think is best.