With Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) citing Hurricane Sandy as a reason to have another go at climate legislation, to say nothing of the media spin depicting Sandy as punishment for our fuelish ways, it’s useful to look at some actual science.

In a study published in the journal Climatic Change, scientists Michael Chenoweth and Dmitry Divine analyze the history of tropical cyclone activity in the Lesser Antilles from 1638 to 2009. The Lesser Antilles are the string of islands lying along the eastern Caribbean Sea.

The Lesser Antilles intersect the “main development region” for Atlantic hurricane formation, making storm data there “our best source for historical variability of tropical cyclones in the tropical Atlantic in the past three centuries,” the researchers explain.

Using instrumental data on wind speeds going back to 1900 plus wind-force and wind-induced damage reports for earlier periods, Chenoweth and Divine estimate the Lesser Antilles Accumulated Cyclone Energy (LACE) for each year along the 61.5°W meridian from 18 to 25° N latitude.

Storms forming in this area include most that do or could make landfall in the U.S. In the researchers’ words: “About 60% of all tropical cyclones moving from waters off of Africa pass through 61.5°W south of 25.0°N, the remaining 40% either moving north of 25.0°N, dying out or re-curving to the east of 61.5°W.” Chenoweth and Divine note that LACE is “highly correlated” with Carribbean basin-wide Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) since 1899.

So what did they find? In their words: “Our record of tropical cyclone activity reveals no trends in LACE in the best-sampled regions for the past 320 years. Likewise, even in the incompletely sampled region north of the Lesser Antilles there is no trend in either numbers or LACE.”

Chenoweth and Divine do find a “~50–70 year variability in ACE across the 18–25°N transect.” This wave-like pattern ”is possibly associated with the low-frequency variations in the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO), a mode of SST [sea surface temperature] variability that is global in extent but strongest in the Atlantic.” The scientists consider their data “sufficiently complete to be a reliable record back to 1785 and extends the evidence of this pattern further back in time.”

An obvious implication of the study, although not spelled out by the authors, is that natural variability dominates tropical storm activity in the Atlantic to the point that any global warming influence, if it exists, is still undetectable.

For a more detailed review of the study, visit the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. Also informative is World Climate Report’s review of Chenoweth and Divine’s 2008 study on tropical cyclones in the Lesser Antilles.

California Superior Court judge Ernest Goldsmith ruled on Friday that the state’s Air Resources Board (ARB) must halt “any futher rulemaking and implementation of cap-and-trade” until the agency examines alternatives policies to meet the greenhouse gas-reduction targets established by Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. ARB must also, pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), complete a review of the environmental impacts of its preferred regulatory strategy before adopting it.

Note: The ruling does not challenge AB 32 itself, and petitioners in the case are greenies who think ARB’s plan to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions doesn’t go far enough. Nonetheless, this is a setback to California politicians and cap-and-taxers throughout the land. ARB has 15 months to provide the requisite analyses. ARB says it will appeal the decision. Rots of ruck!

AB 32 requires ARB to establish a statewide GHG emissions tonnage limit for 2020 equivalent to the state’s emission levels in 1990, and to develop a regulatory path, known as a Scoping Plan, to achieve ”maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from sources or categories of sources of greenhouse gases by 2020.” Judge Goldsmith ruled that ARB “committed a prejudicial abuse of discretion when it failed to proceed in a manner required by law by inadequately describing and analyzing Project alternatives [other ways of reducing GHG emissions] sufficient for informed decisionmaking and public participation.”

Judge Goldsmith more extensively discussed the issues in his Jan. 24, 2011 Tentative Statement of Decision. Petitioners, led by the Association of Irritated Residents (AIR), asserted that  ARB “failed to meet the mandatory statutory requirements of AB 32 and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by essentially treating the Scoping Plan as a post hoc rationalization for ARB’s already chosen policy approaches.” Specifically, petitioners argued that ARB violated AB 32 by:

(1) excluding whole sectors of the economy from GHG emission controls and including a cap-and-trade program without determining whether potential reduction measures achieved maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective reductions; (2) failing to adequately evaluate the total cost and benefits to the environment, the economy, and public health before adopting the Scoping Plan; and (3) failing to consider all relevant information regarding GHG emission reduction programs throughout the United States and the world, as required by AB 32, prior to recomending a cap-and-trade regulatory approach.

The significance for national politics? This is another nail in cap-and-trade’s coffin. AB 32 was a point of pride for both former Gov. Schwarzengger and California Democratic legislators. Indeed, one purpose of the statute was to place California “at the forefront of national and international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.” AB 32 became the much-vaunted “California model” that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) invoked during their multi-year campaign to sell cap-and-trade on Capitol Hill.

Cap-and-trade has been on the skids since its day in the Sun back in June 2009, when the House narrowly passed the Waxman-Markey bill. After passage, the bill became politically radioactive and never came to a vote in the Senate. The December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference ended in failure, producing no agreement on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

In February 2010, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued an executive order stating that Arizona would not implement the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) cap-and-trade plan, scheduled to begin on January 1, 2012. Aside from California, none of the other WCI states (Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Utah) is close to implementing cap-and-trade. Yet in August 2010, ARB Chair Mary Nichols said that California would not go it alone: ”We won’t launch this program without partners to trade with. It doesn’t make sense for an economy even as big as California, to try to do this all by ourselves.”

In November 2010 the Chicago Climate Exchange emissions trading pilot program announced it would shut down “for lack of legislative interest.”

And now, thanks to the Irritated and Judge Goldsmith, ARB may not be able to implement cap-and-trade even if Ms. Nichols wants to fly solo.

Political movements fizzle without momentum. Judge Goldsmith just put the Golden State’s cap-and-trade plan on ice.

“California is experiencing the fastest rate of of companies relocating to out-of-state or out-of-country locations since a specialized tracking system was put into place two years ago,” reports business relocation coach Joseph Vranich. Seventy companies completely or partly moved their operations out of California since Jan. 1, 2011 for reasons other than business expansion. 

Vranich says the 70 “disinvestment events” understate the exodus of capital and jobs from California: ”It’s estimated that only one out of five losses becomes public knowledge, if that.”

Why are companies leaving the Golden State? As you might expect, California’s out-of-control spending, high taxes, and burdensome regulations figure among the top 10 reasons. Vranich, however, recently added high energy costs to the list:

The #10 Reason (New!) – Unprecedented Energy Costs: The California Manufacturers and Technology Association states that commercial electrical rates here already are 50% higher than in the rest of the country. However, a law enacted in April 12, 2011 requires utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable sources (e.g., solar panels, windmills) within nine years. Look for costs to increase by another 19% in many places to a whopping 74% in Los Angeles. Such new burdens along with upcoming regulations stemming from the “California Global Warming Solutions Act” set potentially overwhelming obstacles to companies here as they try to meet competition based in other states and in foreign nations.

 For many years, California Democrats — notably Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Barbara Boxer — have been at the forefront of congressional efforts to enact cap-and-tax and promote EPA’s greenhouse power grab. Waxman and Boxer have worked tirelessly to export California’s energy (or anti-energy) policies to the rest of the nation. They continue to push the “California model” as the path to a “clean energy future.” Vranich’s report is a sobering reminder of how foolish it would be for the nation to take their advice.

If Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the House, or Sens.  Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Harry Reed (D-Nev.) in the Senate, were to introduce legislation authorizing EPA to use the Clean Air Act (CAA) as it sees fit to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs), would the bill have any chance of passing in either chamber of Congress?

No. Aside from a few diehard global warming zealots, hardly any Member of Congress would vote for such a bill. Most lawmakers would run from such legislation even faster than the Senate last year ditched cap-and-trade after its outing as a hidden tax on energy. 

Now consider what that implies. If even today, after nearly two decades of global warming advocacy by the United Nations, eco-pressure groups, ’progressive’ politicians, left-leaning media, corporate rent-seekers, and celebrity activists, Congress would not pass a bill authorizing EPA to regulate GHGs, then isn’t it patently ridiculous for EPA and its apologists to claim that when Congress enacted the CAA in 1970 — years before global warming was a gleam in Al Gore’s eye — it gave EPA that very power?

These simple questions cut through the fog of sophistry emitted by the likes of Waxman, Markey, and Boxer to defend EPA’s hijacking of legislative power. As I have explained elsewhere in detail (here, here, here, and here), EPA, under the aegis of the Supreme Court’s poorly-reasoned, agenda-driven decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, is using the CAA in ways Congress never intended and never subsequently approved. EPA is defying the separation of powers. It should be stopped.

Last Thursday, 50 Senators voted for S. 482, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, a bill to stop EPA from ‘legislating’ climate policy under the guise of implementing the CAA. The bill did not pass because 60 votes were required for passage. The House, on the other hand, passed H.R. 910, an identical measure, by a vote of 255 to 172.  

Every Member of Congress should have voted for both measures, because every Member should resist attempts by other branches to encroach on Congress’s constitutional prerogatives. Article I, Sec. 1 of the Constitution vests “all legislative Powers” in Congress. Not in EPA. Not in the Supreme Court. In Mass. v. EPA, however, a 5-4 majority decided to ‘legislate’ from the bench, positioning EPA to ‘legislate’ from the bureau.

Sen. Boxer summed up the attitude of EPA’s apologists during last year’s debate on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval (S.Res.26) to overturn EPA’s Endangerment Rule, the trigger and precedent for EPA’s ever-growing ensemble of GHG regulations. Boxer complained that if the public has to wait for Congress to enact controls on GHG emissions, “that might not happen, in a year or two, or five or six or eight or 10.” Yes, but how in the world does that authorize EPA to substitute its will for that of the people’s representatives? The fact that Congress remains deadlocked on climate policy is a compelling reason for EPA not to act, not a license for EPA to elevate itself into Super Legislature.

The legislative process is often slow and frustrating. It is so by constitutional design! The slow process of legislative deliberation moderates out politics, fosters continuity in law and policy, and, more importantly, forces elected officials to take responsibility for policy decisions so that ordinary citizens can hold them accountable at the ballot box.

Every Member of Congress should know from Civics 101 that the legislative process is more valuable than any policy outcome an administrative agency might achieve by circumventing and undermining it. Regrettably, the 50 Senators who voted ‘no’ on S. 482 seem to think that EPA’s climate agenda is more valuable than any constitutional scruple that might interfere with it.

Defending the separation of powers becomes all the more urgent as America slouches towards insolvency. If the next economic crisis is worse than the present one, Congress will be hard put to resist the clamor for an Imperial Executive to make the trains run on time. Now is no time to turn a blind eye to — or cheerlead for — an executive agency’s court-abetted seizure of legislative power.

The Senate may get another chance to vote on S. 482. Nonetheless, the sad fact remains that 50 Senators just voted to trash the separation of powers. They fiddle while the Republic burns.

Is the public clamoring for more EPA regulation?

That’s what Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) claimed yesterday in a speech on the Senate floor (Congressional Record, pp. 1955-57) denouncing S. 493, the McConnell amendment/Inhofe-Upton Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would stop EPA from ‘legislating’ climate policy.

Boxer cited a poll finding that 69% of Americans believe “EPA should update Clean Air Act standards with stricter pollution limits.” Of course, most people want cleaner air in the abstract. That tells us nothing about how much those same people are willing to pay for cleaner air, or what other public priorities (e.g. affordable energy, job creation) they are willing to sacrifice or put at risk. In the abstract, most people also support a balanced budget.  But that does not necessarily mean they want Congress to cut their favorite programs or raise taxes. Without meaning to, people can easily “lie” to a pollster (see the accompanying cartoon).

In an earlier post today, I note that in the November 2010 elections, voters punished lawmakers pushing the EPA-Obama-Boxer stealth energy tax agenda formerly known as cap-and-trade. Elections are the most relevant “poll” for guiding legislative deliberations.

Maybe Boxer thinks she has more up-to-date information about public attitudes. But a very recent opinion survey conducted by the Tarrance Group directly contradicts the poll Boxer cites. Here are the results, as summarized in the Tarrance Group’s March 30, 2011 press release:

The Tarrance Group is pleased to present Public Notice with the key findings from a survey of N=800 registered “likely” voters across the country. Interviews were conducted March 27-29, 2011. In 95 out of 100 cases, the margin of error on a sample of this type is +/- 3.5%.
KEY FINDINGS
- Support is low for more environmental regulations on businesses. Only 40% says there should be more, while a majority (53%) says the level of regulations should remain where it is now (28%) or there should be less (25%).
- Americans believe small businesses will feel the impact of new regulations, with 73% agreeing that “government regulations hit small businesses much harder than big corporations.”
- The American worker is also seen as receiving a hit from more regulation, with 59% agreeing that “additional federal regulation on businesses put the average American worker at risk of job loss.” Also, a majority (56%) agree that “additional environmental regulation has a negative impact on local communities through tax increases and job loss.”
- There is a perceived impact on jobs from increased regulation, as three quarters (75%) agree that “if regulations make it too expensive to keep jobs in America, businesses will continue to move overseas where there are much lower labor and environmental standards.” Also, a majority (53%) agree that “additional environmental regulation makes American companies less competitive than foreign companies.”
- Americans also believe regulations have an impact on their pocketbook. Nearly three quarters (72%) agree that “additional environmental regulation increases the price of energy for things like gasoline and electricity.” Another 68% agree that “more environmental regulation increases the price of everyday items like food and clothing.”
- Voters prefer new regulation be enacted through Congress, as 64% agree that “no new expensive regulation of business should be allowed without first getting approval from Congress.”
- Voters throughout the country remain focused on jobs and the economy, with 34% saying this is the issue Congress should be focused on right now. Another 17% say government spending is the most important issue, while only 2% say “climate change and the environment” is the top issue.

Yesterday, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) mounted a tirade (Congressional Record, pp. 1955-57) against the McConnell amendment (a.k.a. S. 482, the Inhofe-Upton Energy Tax Prevention Act) to the small business reauthorization bill (S. 493). The amendment would stop EPA from ‘legislating’ climate policy under the guise of implementing the Clean Air Act (CAA), a statute enacted in 1970, years before global warming emerged as a public policy issue.

The Senate is expected to vote later today on S. 493, so it worthwhile examining Boxer’s speech, which opponents of the bill will undoubtedly recycle in today’s debate.

I discuss the rhetorical traps S. 482 supporters should avoid in an earlier post. Stick to your moral high ground, namely, the constitutional premise that Congress, not an administrative agency with no political accountability to the people, should make the big decisions regarding national policy. The fact that Congress remains deadlocked on climate and energy policy is a compelling reason for EPA not to ‘enact’ greenhouse gas (GHG) controls. It is not an excuse for EPA to substitute its will for that of the people’s representatives.

Okay, that said, let’s examine Boxer’s rant. It is lengthy, repetitive, and often ad homonym, so I’ll try to hit just the main points.

Boxer: S. 482 would “stop the Environmental Protection agency forever from enforcing the Clean Air Act as it relates to carbon pollution.”

She begs the question. How does the CAA “relate” to carbon pollution? The CAA never mentions “greenhouse gases,” “greenhouse effect,” or “global climate change.” It mentions carbon dioxide (CO2) only once — Sec. 103(g) — a provision authorizing EPA to “develop, evaluate, and demonstrate non regulatory strategies for air pollution prevention” (emphasis added). Lest any trigger-happy EPA regulator see the words “carbon dioxide” and go off half-cocked, Sec. 103(g) concludes with an admonition: “Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to authorize the imposition on any person of air pollution control requirements.”

Boxer: “This [S. 482] is a first of a kind. It has never been done. It is essentially a repeal of the Clean Air Act as it involves one particular pollutant, carbon, which has been found to be an endangerment to our people.”

Again, the only provision in the CAA “as it involves” CO2 admonishes EPA not to regulate.

Boxer: “I guess the question for us as a body is, Whom do we stand with, the biggest polluters in America or the American people, 69 percent of whom said in a bipartisan poll: ‘EPA should update Clean Air Act standards with stricter air pollution limits.’’’

The folks Boxer is pleased to call “polluters” are also energy producers and job creators.

The poll she invokes is meaningless. Everybody is for cleaner air in the abstract. That tells us nothing about how much they are willing to pay for it, or what other public priorities (e.g. affordable energy, job creation) they are willing to sacrifice or put at risk. Far more relevant for Congress is the November 2010 elections. Voters punished lawmakers who supported the stealth energy tax formerly known as cap-and-trade. By threatening to sic EPA on CO2 emitters if Congress did not enact cap-and-trade, Team Obama tacitly acknowledged that EPA’s GHG regulations are less efficient, less predictable, and potentially more costly than the Waxman-Markey bill they could not sell to Congress and the public.

[Update: In a Mar. 27-29, 2011 survey by the Tarrance Group of 800 likely registered voters, 64% agree that "no new expensive regulation of business should be allowed without first getting approval from Congress," and a majority (53%) say that the level of environmental regulation should remain where it is now (25%) or there should be less (28%).]

Boxer: “Mr. President, 69 percent believe ‘EPA scientists, not Congress, should set pollution standards.’ But we have Senators playing scientist, putting on their white coats, deciding what EPA should do, when it ought to be based on science.”

S. 482 takes no position one way or the other on climate science. Nor would it put Congress in charge of setting pollution standards. Rather, S. 482 simply affirms that Congress, not EPA, should decide national policy on climate change.

Note also the biased phrasing (“EPA scientists”) of the poll question Boxer quotes. EPA and its apologists would have us believe that the agency is an apolitical honest broker — a gathering of scientific elders who seek only truth and care not for their agency’s power, prestige, and budget, and act in splendid isolation from the policy preferences and agendas of the environmental movement. Dream on!

Although there are surely honest people at the agency, EPA is not an honest broker. EPA is a major stakeholder, a big dog in the fight. Boxer ignores the massive conflict of interest that Congress, wittingly or otherwise, built into the CAA. The same agency that makes endangerment findings gets to regulate based on such findings. EPA therefore has an organizational interest in interpreting the science in ways that expand its power. This ethically flawed situation was tolerable when EPA confined itself to regulating substances that Congress authorized EPA to regulate (ambient air pollutants, toxic air pollutants, acid rain precursors, ozone depleting substances). But, to repeat the obvious fact that Boxer studiously avoids, Congress never told EPA to regulate the class of substances known as “greenhouse gases.”

Boxer: “What is the science telling us? That it is dangerous to breathe in air pollution with lots of carbon in it.”

Got that? In the same breath that Boxer scolds her GOP colleagues for not heeding science, she demonstrates her ignorance of science.  Carbon dioxide, like water vapor, the atmosphere’s main greenhouse gas, is an essential constituent of clean air.

S. 482 supporters please note: The oft-repeated phrase “carbon pollution” is meant to mislead the public. It embodies one of the oldest rhetorical tricks in the book, which is to call something benign or even beneficial by a name commonly given to something odious. When EPA’s apologists deliberately confuse CO2 with air pollution and denounce S. 482 as the “dirty air act,” they tacitly confess that they cannot sell global warming policy on its own merits.

Boxer: “Every single time we try to rein in pollution, special interests say: No, no, no, a thousand times no. We will stop growth. We will stop jobs. We will kill the economy. It is awful, awful, awful. Let me give one economic fact: If you can’t breathe, you can’t work. Here is a picture of a little girl suffering, struggling. I urge my colleagues who support Senator McConnell to look at this. They are not here, but maybe on TV they will. Look at this picture. Is that what we want for her future?”

This is either sheer demagoguery or invincible ignorance. Let me count the ways: (1) Boxer provides not one scrap of evidence that the child in the picture would not have asthma or would not have to wear a respirator if EPA adopts tougher controls on air pollution. (2) S. 482 in no way restricts EPA from issuing regulations targeting ozone, particulate matter, or other pollutants that affect respiratory function. (3) Air pollution will continue to decline even if EPA were to freeze current regulations in place because newer, cleaner vehicles and equipment will continue to replace older models and capital stock. (4) Air pollution at today’s historically low levels is not likely a major factor in childhood asthma. As Joel Schwartz and Stephen Hayward observe (see Chapter 7 of their book, Air Quality in America), air pollution has declined as asthma has been rising, and hospital visits for asthma are lowest in July and August, when ozone levels are highest.

Boxer: “If I went up to you and I said: If you know something worked perfectly well, would you mess with it? Would you change it? No. Why would you, if it is working well?”

The CAA may not be perfect, but it was certainly working better before EPA started to mess with it. As EPA itself confesses, regulating GHGs via the CAA leads to “absurd results” — policy outcomes that conflict with and undermine congressional intent. EPA and its state counterparts would have to process an estimated 81,000 preconstruction permit applications per year (instead of 280) and 6.1 million operating permits per year (instead of 15,000). The permitting programs would crash under their own weight, crippling both environmental enforcement and construction activity while exposing millions of non-permitted firms to new litigation risks. A more potent Anti-Stimulus Program would be hard to imagine. This is not what Congress authorized when it enacted the CAA in 1970, nor when it amended the statute in 1977 and 1990.

To avoid such “absurd results,” EPA issued its so-called Tailoring Rule, which revises CAA definitions of “major emitting facility” to exempt all but very large CO2 emitters from the permitting programs. But this just substitutes one absurdity for another.

“Tailoring” is bureaucrat-speak for “amending.” To avoid breaking the CAA beyond repair, EPA must play lawmaker, flout the separation of powers, and effectively rewrite portions of the statute. Nothing in the CAA authorizes EPA to revise the text in order to avoid an administrative debacle of its own making.

One would think that a Senator might be jealous of the authority exclusively vested in Congress by the Constitution. But no, Boxer is eager to have EPA ‘legislate’ climate policy and ‘amend’ the CAA provided the agency implements an anti-carbon agenda the Senate has repeatedly declined to pass.

Jean Chemnick at Energy & Environment News this morning reported on a Center for American Progress event yesterday, during which U.S. Representative Henry Waxman made an eye-catching claim about the politics of energy rationing. According to Waxman, the conventional wisdom that “energy and environmental issues are more regional than partisan” is wrong, because “there is now a starker divide between the parties on environmental issues than at any time during my career.”

The record suggests otherwise. Consider,

• On June 6 2008, in the immediate wake of the Senate’s rejection of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade, 10 Senate Democrats—about 20 percent of the caucus—sent Senator Barbara Boxer a letter explaining that they voted or would have voted against the “solution” to the supposed problem of climate change because it would cause “undue hardship” for their constituents.
• On June 26 2009, forty Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a cap-and-trade energy rationing bill co-written by Henry Waxman.
• During the 2010 summer, Senate Democrats held weekly caucus meetings trying to build support for a Senate companion bill to the American Clean Energy and Security Act. They failed (spectacularly), because few Senators were willing to vote for an energy tax during a recession.

Quote contrary to what Rep. Henry Waxman would have you believe, Congressional opposition to expensive energy climate “solutions” is bi-partisan.

Former Vice President Al Gore is the gift that keeps on giving to opponents of global warming alarmism and energy rationing policies. He leads what I think of as the Dream Team: Gore is the public leader; James Hansen is the go-to scientist; Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) pushed through a cap-and-trade bill in the House that killed cap-and-trade; Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was the main promoter in the Senate; when he dropped the ball, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was in charge for awhile; and she has now been replaced by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) with help from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

I used to think that we were just incredibly lucky that the alarmist movement was led by this group of second raters.   I now realize that it isn’t luck.  Global warming alarmism attracts incompetents, know-nothings, and looney tunes.

We have missed Al Gore in the debate, but luckily Kerry and Graham were fully up to sinking cap-and-trade in the Senate (not that it had much chance anyway) without any help from the leader of the forces of darkness. So it was good to see that Gore returned this week on a conference call sponsored by Repower America (aka the Alliance for Climate Protection).

Gore on the conference call acknowledged that cap-and-trade was dead and that the alarmists had lost in 2010.  He bitterly blamed the usual suspects: Big Oil, King Coal, right-wing media, and professional deniers (I believe that is where he would put me and CEI).  This is boilerplate nonsense.  Three of the big five oil companies (BP, Shell, and Conoco Phillips) support cap-and-trade, as well as most of the big electric utilities (Duke Energy, P G and E, Exelon, PNM Resources, Entergy, etc.) and many other major corporations, such as General Electric, Dow Chemical, General Motors, and Ford Motor.  Cap-and-trade died when the American people found out that it was a colossal transfer of wealth from them to corporate special interests (see the list in the previous sentence).

Gore even said that our system of government was not working as the founders intended it to work.  In fact, in the debate over cap-and-trade the system of checks and balances in the Constitution is working exactly as the founders intended.  It has prevented an elite from hijacking the economy for its own enrichment.

I can see why Gore is bitter.  His comparatively modest investments in green energy promised to make him a global warming billionaire if cap-and-trade were enacted. Unluckily for him, the American people have said no emphatically.

[This was originally posted on Politico's Energy Arena here.]

To listen to Democratic Party leadership tell it, one would never know that a cap-and-trade has anything to do with global warming.

For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) pitched the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme that narrowly passed in the House, as a “vote for jobs,” rather than as a vote for global warming mitigation. Of course, this is malarkey-government only “creates” green jobs by destroying many more jobs in other, less politically favored economic sectors.

Now Democratic leaders in the Senate are saying that cap-and-trade is all about national security. Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), in particular, has been pushing the thesis that climate change is going to cause conflict over scarce natural resource, drought-induced famine, and massive population flows. Kerry’s idea is to give political cover to moderate democrats otherwise loath to vote for an energy tax-moderates tend to represent Americans who are concerned with national security, but skeptical of global warming alarmism. By framing climate change as a threat to national security, these moderates might escape the adverse political consequences of voting for a cap-and-trade scheme.

That’s a risky bet for moderates, because Kerry’s national security argument is bogus. To learn why, read this excellent blog post by my colleague Marlo Lewis. Kerry’s claims are also refuted Christopher Monckton at the Science & Public Policy Institute, available here.