climate change

How the New Senate Ag Chair (Blanche Lincoln) Changes America’s Energy Policy

by William Yeatman on September 15, 2009

in Blog

Last week Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) became chairman of the Agriculture Committee, after Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), the previous chair, accepted the gavel at the Health, Labor, Education and Pension Committee (vacated by the passing of Ted Kennedy).

Lincoln becomes the first female to chair this powerful committee, and her ascension to the top-spot will have a big impact on the country’s energy policy.

For almost a decade, the Senate Ag Committee has been the primary benefactor of ethanol, a fuel made from corn. Regardless whether the Ag chair was a Republican or a Democrat, the Committee, which is dominated by corn-belt politicians, showered ethanol with subsidies and give-aways-and even a Soviet-style production quota that forces consumers to use it. Government support for ethanol has been great for corn growers (they’ve seen demand increase by almost 50% since 2005), but it’s awful for livestock farmers, who have seen the cost of corn-feed skyrocket. Consumers have also been harmed, as the price of corn derivatives (meat, dairy, soda, etc., etc.,) has increased so sharply that inflation of the cost of food doubled the historical rate in 2008.

With Lincoln taking the gavel of the Ag Committee, however, the ethanol gravy train might be coming to an end. That’s because Lincoln doesn’t represent the corn-belt. To be sure, they grow corn in Arkansas, primarily in the eastern part of the state. But in western Arkansas, farmers raise chickens. In fact, the Natural State is the nation’s #2 producer of broiler chickens. America’s ethanol policy has seriously compromised the chicken industry, so we can expect Lincoln to take a more conservative approach with fuels made out of food.

Lincoln is also likely to affect the climate debate. The Ag Committee has some jurisdiction over climate change legislation, and Lincoln’s vote on cap-and-trade is a priority for her caucus leadership, which is having a tough time finding support for a climate bill among Senate Democrats. But Arkansas politics are decidedly unfavorable to global warming alarmism. Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Arkansas), who represents Little Rock and much of Pulaski County, was the only member of his State’s delegation to vote for the American Clean Energy and Security Act, cap-and-trade legislation that passed through the House of Representatives in late June, and he has been hammered over the airwaves by utilities, agriculture interests, and political opponents ever since. Now, there is considerable speculation that his seat is in jeopardy-all thanks to his vote for a cap-and-trade. No doubt Lincoln has noticed Snyder’s plight.

Is Cap-and-Trade Slipping on Obama’s Wish List?

by William Yeatman on September 14, 2009

in Blog

Rumors surfaced last week that President Barack Obama now considers financial sector reform to be his administration’s #2 priority after healthcare. Previously, climate change was thought to be the next big-ticket item on the President’s agenda.

The tea-leaves seem to indicate that this rumor is true.

For starters, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) decided to stay on as Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, rather than accept the gavel on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (a post vacated by the passing of Ted Kennedy).

The only plausible explanation for Dodd’s decision to remain the chairman of the Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over financial sector reform, is an expectation by Dodd that Obama will push for increased regulation of Wall Street in the short term. Dodd faces a tough re-election fight in 2010, and taking on Wall Street would put him in a favorable spotlight for the foreseeable future.

And today in New York, President Obama gave a speech on the need for a new regulatory regime to govern Wall Street, thereby lending further credence to the rumor that climate change has dropped as a priority.

Meanwhile, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California), the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee (which has primary jurisdiction over climate change legislation) last week again delayed the introduction of global warming legislation, and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the second ranking Democrat in the Senate, told reporters that cap-and-trade might have to wait until 2010.

Leader of None

by Paul Driessen on September 8, 2009

in Blog

Obama’s global warming policies have few US followers – and fewer on the global stage

“Few challenges facing America – and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change,” President Obama has asserted. “We will make it clear that America is ready to lead.”

The President and Al Gore are certainly ready to lead. But how many will follow?

Even in America, and certainly on the world stage, the two increasingly look like Don Quixote and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. As they tilt for windmills, and against a “monstrous giant of infamous repute” – climate disasters conjured up by computer models and Hollywood special effects masters – their erstwhile followers are making politically correct noises, but running for the hills.

The House of Representatives passed a 1400-page energy and climate bill – by a razor-thin margin, and only after Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman packed it with enough last-minute deals to protect favored congressional districts, buy votes, and curry favor with assorted special interests. Not one legislator actually read the bill – which would create a trillion-dollar cap-trade-and-tax industry, ensure that energy and food costs “necessarily skyrocket,” kill jobs, and impose an all-intrusive Green Nanny State.

Republicans want to control what people do in their bedrooms, insists the old canard. Democrats, it appears, want to dictate what we do everywhere outside of our bedrooms. And Sancho Gore wants to become the world’s first global warming billionaire, by selling climate indulgences, aka carbon offsets.

The reaction has been predictable – by anyone except House and White House czars and czarinas.

Citizens are livid over yet another attempt to use a purported crisis to justify further expanding the government and spending billions more tax dollars for alarmist research, activism and propaganda, just ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference. Global warming continues to rank dead-last in Pew Research and other polls that actually list it as an issue. Rasmussen puts the President’s approval ratings at 46% and falling. Zogby reports that 57% of Americans oppose cap-and-trade bills.

Manufacturing states, which get 60-98% of their electricity from coal, worry that the only thing they’ll export in ten years will be jobs. Democrat senators from those states worry that the energy and climate issue will be “toxic for them during midterm elections,” says Politico magazine.

Even companies that had eagerly sought seats at the negotiating table are now gagging. ConocoPhillips, Caterpillar and others finally realize that cap-and-tax will severely penalize them and their customers.

Not even the climate is cooperating. Outside of Dallas, 2009 has brought some of coldest summer days on record across the US. Near freezing temperatures nipped at crops, and gas heaters were sine qua non at an August 29 outdoor wedding in Wisconsin. The Farmers Almanac predicts a brutal 2009-2010 winter.

In Europe, every longitude has a platitude about saving the planet. But EU countries that agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels are well above their Kyoto Protocol targets – Austria by 30% and Spain by 37% as of 2008. And despite new commitments to cut emissions 40 years from now, you don’t need tarot cards or entrails to predict the more probable EU emissions future.

Germany plans to build 27 coal-fired electrical generating plants by 2020. Italy plans to double its reliance on coal in just five years. Europe as a whole will have 40 new coal-fired power plants by 2015, columnist Alan Caruba reports. The Polish Academy of Sciences has publicly challenged manmade global warming disaster hypotheses. And only 11% of Czech citizens believe rising carbon dioxide emissions caused global temperatures to climb 1975-1998 – and also caused them to rise 1915-1940, fall 1940-1975, then stabilize and decline again 1998-2009.

Australia just voted down punitive global warming legislation. New Zealand has put its emissions-bashing program in a deep freeze.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s top economic aid bluntly dismissed any talk of following President Obama’s quixotic lead. “We won’t sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction,” he told reporters at the July 2009 G8 meeting.

Chinese and Indian leaders are equally adamant. China is playing a smart hand in this high-stakes climate poker game, drawing up plans to combat global warming sometime in the future, and gradually improve its energy efficiency and pollution control. However, it is building a new coal-fired power plant every week and putting millions of new cars on its growing network of highways.

So is India, which will double its coal-based electricity generation and produce millions of Tata and other affordable cars by 2020. “India will not accept any binding emission-reduction target, period,” Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has stated. “This is a non-negotiable stand.”

India and China have a “complete convergence” of views on these matters, Ramesh added. No wonder: 400 million Indians still do not have electricity; 500 million Chinese still do not.

No electricity means no refrigeration, to keep food and medicines from spoiling. It means no water purification, to reduce baby-killing intestinal diseases. No modern heating and air conditioning, to reduce hypothermia in winter, heat stroke in summer, and lung disease year-round. It means no lights or computers, no modern offices, factories, schools, shops, clinics or hospitals.

Fossil fuels are “gradually eliminating poverty in the Third world,” observes UCLA economist Deepak Lal. Any call to curb carbon emissions would “condemn billions to continued poverty. While numerous Western do-gooders shed crocodile tears about the Third World’s poor, they are willing to prevent them from taking the only feasible current route out from this abject state” – oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric energy development. The situation is intolerable, unsustainable, lethal and immoral.

The only way India and China would agree to cut their emissions is if the United States cut its emissions 40% by 2020, says Ramesh – back to 1959 levels and pre-JFK living standards, when the US population was 179 million (versus 306 million today). No way will that happen. So Asian energy and economic development will continue apace. And rightly so, to foster human rights and environmental justice.

All is not bleak, however, for Canute Obama’s impossible dream of controlling global temperatures.

British politicians remain committed to slashing CO2 emissions and replacing hydrocarbons with wind power. Unfortunately, the biggest UK wind projects have been abandoned or put on indefinite hold – and a growing demand/supply imbalance portends still higher energy prices, widespread power cuts, rolling blackouts and energy rationing, the Daily Telegraph reported on August 31. Brits may soon trade their stiff upper lips for contentious town hall meetings and ballot-box revolution.

The Democratic Party of Japan’s landslide victory in the August 30 election will likely create a new coalition government tilted strongly to the left. The DJP has pledged to cut carbon dioxide gas emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 – though this will likely strangle economic growth and job creation, especially if one coalition partner’s opposition to nuclear power becomes DJP policy.

Then there is Africa, where leaders appear ready to support curbs on energy use – in exchange for up to $300 billion per year in additional foreign aid, “to cushion the impact of global warming.” That will be nice for their private bank accounts, but less so for Africa’s 750 million people who still don’t have electricity. Those people will simply be sacrificed, to prevent natural or fictitious climate disasters.

Of course, the real goal was never to control the climate. It was always to control energy use, lives, jobs, economies, transportation and housing – and usher in a new era of high tax global governance. The American people are increasingly saying they’re not ready to grant that power to Obama Gore & Company.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death.

The Hot Air in the President’s Newly Worsened Budget

by William Yeatman on August 26, 2009

in Blog

The White House revised its long term budget outlook yesterday, but not in a good way-President Barack Obama tacked another $2 trillion onto America’s tab (to China). Two days ago, the U.S. taxpayer was projected to owe “only” $7 trillion (to China) through 2020; now, it’s $9 trillion.

But wait! There’s more! America’s dismal deficit is even worse than Obama is willing to admit.

Yesterday Reuters reported that Obama’s budget predictions include more than $600 billion in revenues raised from a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme to fight so-called “global warming.” That’s a problem, because the House of Representatives in June passed a climate bill that gives away 85% of the cap-and-trade revenue that the White House was counting on in its new and unimproved budget.

So it looks as if the Obama administration needs to further revise the deficit.

Climate Science on Trial? Let’s Hope So

by William Yeatman on August 25, 2009

in Blog

Hear, Hear! The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants to cross examine climate science. Last April, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rulemaking that carbon dioxide-the same stuff humans exhale-“endangers” human health and welfare because it causes so-called “global warming.” Now the Chamber demands that the EPA publically defend the science upon which it based the “endangerment” rulemaking, in what the Chamber says would be the “scopes monkey trial of the 21st century,” according to today’s LA Times.

Under the EPA’s rules, a public airing of the information that leads to a regulatory rule-making is allowed, but rarely performed.

A little background: An “endangerment” finding is more than mere bureaucratese. In fact, it would tripwire provisions of the Clean Air Act would send the American economy back to the Stone Age. I’m not exaggerating. If carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare, than it is subject to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards of the Clean Air Act, which would require draconian regulations.

Despite the far-reaching economic consequences of an “endangerment” finding, there was little transparency in the EPA decision-making process. Earlier this summer, the Competitive Enterprise Institute revealed evidence that the EPA actually suppressed a dissenting voice from a career official.

Big decisions behind closed doors and bullying 70 year olds into silence….is this the change that Obama promised? I think not. Perhaps the President thinks it’s ok to engage in these shenanigans, because there is a scientific “consensus” on global warming.

The President is of course wrong; there is no consensus. Many smart people (we’re talking visionaries, such as Freeman Dyson) are also humble enough to admit that humans don’t know nearly as much about the climate as they think.

For example, global temperatures haven’t increased statistically since 1995, even though atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased 5% during that time. The global climate models, however, predicted that temperatures increase with emissions. That is, the models were wrong.  These are the same models that predict dire global warming. And it is these alarmist predictions that animate the global warming hysteria.

The Chamber simply wants the EPA to demonstrate why it thinks that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare. That doesn’t strike me as being terribly burdensome. If Obama is serious about “change,” then he should allow the global warming scopes monkey trial.

Hansen belittles models, carbon trading, Kyoto; calls for coal-destroying carbon tax

by Marlo Lewis on March 3, 2009

in Blog

Last week’s House Ways & Means Committee hearing on “scientific objectives for climate change legislation” contained much grist for skeptical mills.

Dr. James Hansen did not challenge any of Dr. John Christy’s specific arguments that UN climate models overestimate climate sensitivity. Instead, he advised Congress to ask the National Academy of Sciences for an “authoritative” assessment, because the science is “crystal clear.”

Hansen was quite harsh in criticizing Kyoto (an “abject failure”) and carbon trading (a politically unsustainable hidden tax for the benefit of special interests). He outlined a proposal for what he calls carbon “Tax & Dividend,” whereby 100% of the revenues would be refunded to the American people via monthly deposits to their bank accounts.

As I discuss here, Hansen’s beguiling proposal could decimate coal-based power in a decade or two, pushing electricity prices up faster than dividend payments increase, and saddling the economy with a growth-chilling energy crisis.

Marlo Lewis Debates Global Warming Policy with Greenpeace

by Carl Wolk on February 3, 2009

in Blog, videos

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYpXoMdZqX4 285 234]

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