Barack Obama thinks the government should intervene on gas prices to "give families some relief," and last week called for releasing 70 million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. John McCain proposes an end to the ban on offshore drilling and has pushed for a gas-tax holiday because "we need it, we need it very badly."
2008
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
It shouldn't be surprising given the nature of the URLs for various state climate commissions (www: mdclimatechange.us; ncclimatechange.us; scclimatechange.us; mnclimatechange.us; and so forth) that the ownership of those domain names for every state belongs to Thomas D. Peterson, individual (you can look it up). He is known to those of us who track these climate commissions as the executive director of the Center for Climate Strategies, where he is utilized as an independent consultant (just like all of CCS's experts, as they have no employees). The last couple of years he has earned six-figure salaries flying back-and-forth, up-and-down the country to various state climate commission meetings as they happen, doing his part to spread both his own CO2 emissions and his gospel message against them. Peterson even owns the domain names for states where there are not yet climate commissions, and also where the climateers have hired other consultants.
Despite Peterson's lack of an employer/employee relationship with CCS, the fact that he owns the domain names of the state climate commissions whose Web sites and technical documents bear the CCS name, demonstrates the degree of confidence and faith the nonprofit has in him. He ought to feel pretty good about that.
In the News
No Will to Drill
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 8 August 2008
Republican Energy Fumble
Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal, 8 August 2008
Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not
Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 3 August 2008
Al Gore Places Infant Son in Rocket to Escape Dying Planet
The Onion, 30 July 2008
Gore Hits the Waves with a Massive New Houseboat
Steve Gill, Pajamas Media, 6 August 2008
Dialogue with Lord Lawson and the Rt. Hon. Oliver Letwin, M. P., on Global Warming and UK Policies
Daniel Johnson, Standpoint Magazine, July 2008
Poland Seeks Allies to Block New EU Emissions Caps
Thomson Financial News, 6 August 2008
British Emissions Increasing?
Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 2 August 2008
Protesters Try to Stop New Coal Power Plant in England
Golnar Motevalli, Reuters, 6 August 2008
Monbiot: Fate of the World Hinges on Stopping New Coal Plant
George Monbiot, The Guardian, 5 August 2008
Inside the Beltway
CEI's Myron Ebell
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson has denied the request from Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) to suspend the ethanol mandate. From Texas Governor Rick Perry ® to suspend the ethanol mandate. Johnson decided that the economic harm being done was not severe enough to waive the 2008 mandate of 9 billion gallons or the 2009 mandate of 11.1 billion gallons, as the law allows.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has introduced a bill, H. R. 6666, that would prohibit EPA from regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
The U. S. Climate Change Science Program last month released the first draft of the second National Assessment of Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States and invited expert comments by August 14th. The draft and how to file comments may be found here.
A bit of background: the first National Assessment was released in 2000 by the Clinton-Gore Administration. It was a classic piece of junk science. CEI, led by my colleague Chris Horner, filed suit on procedural grounds. That suit was settled by the Bush Administration in 2001 with a statement that explained that the National Assessment did not represent government policy. The Bush Administration settled a second suit filed by Chris when it admitted that the National Assessment had not been subjected to Federal Information Quality Act guidelines (that is, they admitted that it was junk science).
Apparently, the Bush Administration has forgotten what happened to the first National Assessment. Many of the same people who produced the first Assessment have been in charge of producing the second Assessment. What they have produced is an even bigger piece of junk science than the first. It’s full of undocumented or poorly documented claims. For example: tipping points are becoming more likely (page 5); many climate changes are occurring even faster than expected just a few years ago (page 6); extreme weather events are already having increasing impacts (page 6); past climate history is no longer an adequate guide to future climate change (page 7).
Once you get past these general claims to the details, it gets much worse. William Kovacs of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce has already written a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asking that the draft Assessment be withdrawn because it does not meet the standards required by the Federal Information Quality Act guidelines.
International News
Australia’s Labor Party government, led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, is finding that it isn’t easy to enact cap-and-trade legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Paul Howes, head of one of the Labor Party’s biggest supporters, the Australian Workers Union, has endorsed a key element in competing proposals of the Liberal Party, which is the main opposition party. The Liberals, with help from the smaller, more conservative opposition National Party and from dissidents in the Labor Party, could probably defeat any Labor emissions reduction legislation, but the Liberals themselves appear to be hopelessly divided and confused on the issue. Liberal leader Brendan Nelson has moved from one position to another and then back again. As the debate continues, the heavy costs of emissions reductions in an economy based on cheap brown coal are becoming more and more apparent.
Geoff Lawrence and Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
The Center for Climate Strategies, the advocacy-disguised-as-objective-consultancy group advising more than a dozen state climate commissions on greenhouse gas emission policies, wants to expand its funding. CCS is the public policy arm of Pennsylvania-based Enterprising Environmental Solutions, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.
To refresh your memories, CCS lobbies from state to state encouraging governments (mostly executive branch) to establish study commissions for the purpose of developing policy options related to climate change. These policy options include massive new taxes, regulations, and subsidies and nearly all of them are designed to restrict individual freedom.
CCS is typically able to persuade state governments to establish a study commission because it volunteers to serve as the "technical consultant" for any such commission at minimal (if any) cost to the state. CCS develops the policy options, performs its own analyses (which always support CCS's forgone conclusions about science and economics), and controls the entire process. Once CCS is able to establish themselves as a state's technical consultant, they essentially have a stranglehold on that state's public policy.
Because CCS uses its low-cost or cost-free appeal to seduce state governments into allowing CCS to control climate change policy, the magnitude of its funding is a big deal. If CCS is able to expand its funding base (it is currently supported by left-wing foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund) it will be able to expand its operations and have tighter control over state policymaking.
CCS is now looking to hire a new development officer in order to expand its influence. From the job posting:
CCS seeks a talented fundraising and program development professional to lead its efforts to fund the expansion of its programs and increased demand for its current range of services. The position reports directly to the CCS President and CEO, and works regularly with the EESI Executive Director, EESI Senior Accountant and a number of CCS consultants serving as program coordinators. The development officer participates in weekly internal conference calls, external conference calls with current and prospective funders, occasional in-person meetings at administrative offices or field locations of CCS and EESI, and potentially in annual or biannual donor briefings, involving occasional travel. A Washington, DC metro location is preferred.
CCS, as a policy center, is supported primarily by private foundation grants and state government contracts. It is not a membership-based organization and has no member services program. Primary goals for CCS development include: Retention of CCS core group of donors; expansion and diversification of the CCS core group of private foundation donors; expansion of private individual donor support; pursuit of RFP’s issued by state, regional and local government organizations; pursuit of RFP’s and grant programs of the federal government.
We suspect that a couple of issues are driving this. First, because the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has picked up all or most of the full tab for the most recently created climate commissions where CCS has been hired (Arkansas, Michigan, Kansas, Iowa), it may be that they are close to running afoul of the "minimum public support threshold" that nonprofits must reach, and therefore need to diversify. The other issue is that they are realizing some success, they see regional initiatives being developed, and they want to stay in the game.
Also it is interesting that CCS says "it is not a membership-based organization" and "has no member services program." That is because, as EESI's Form 990 tax returns explain, the (parent nonprofit advocacy group) Pennsylvania Environmental Council "is the only member of EESI" and "controls" EESI.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
The Baltimore Sun on Sunday reported that one of the Maryland Commission on Climate Change's leadership troika, Donald Boesch (pictured) of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, has nursed along 19 fellow scientists (apparently none having to do with meteorology or atmospheric science), as well as representatives from the U.S. Geological Survey and two environmental groups (unidentified for some unknown reason), to produce a report that forecasts much hotter temperatures and permanently rising tides:
Look for balmier winters and blistering summers in the decades to come. Enjoy the colorful fall foliage in Western Maryland – while you can. And unless circumstances change, prepare to see a different mix of plants, trees and birds by the end of the century, worsening dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay, and for the state that some call "America in miniature" to get dramatically smaller as rising waters push the shoreline inland.
So says a group of scientists who have compiled the first comprehensive assessment of how Maryland could be altered by global climate change.
This report is probably littered with many "could be"-like phrases, based not on observational data but instead on fanciful computer modeling devoid of any proof of anthropogenic cause, but that would be only imagining things. Why just imagining? Because I am not hopeful after speaking with Dave Nemazie of the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science, who hemmed and hawed when I asked for a copy of the report that (again, I'm guessing) one of the envirogroups involved leaked to the Sun to develop some nice advanced press from sympathetic media. Here's a rough paraphrase of how our phone conversation went:
Me: Can I get a copy of the report?
Nemazie: It hasn't been released yet.
Me: Can I get a copy of the report?
Nemazie: It's going to be released as part of a larger report by the governor later this month.
Me: What if I officially submit a request for the report under Maryland's Public Information Act?
Nemazie: Well, chances are that by the time the 30 days are up that we have to comply with the records request, the governor will have already released the report.
Me: So, you're telling me that you are going to run out the clock on the records request so that the rest of the public cannot see it until the governor officially releases it?
Nemazie: Something along the lines of "I'll have to check into it…"
I subsequently submitted a formal request for a copy of the report:
Please provide for me the most up-to-date version of the report that you, or an appropriate person at UMCES, can access. I prefer an electronic version of the report, emailed if possible, which should enable a rapid fulfillment of my request. If that is not the case please notify me as soon as possible and please include an explanation as to why the report cannot be provided quickly.
As I was writing this post I received this response from Nemazie:
Paul, this e-mail is to confirm that UMCES has received your request. We will follow Maryland State Law in providing you a response.
In other words, look for the state to exhaust the full, legally-allowed 30 days before providing a copy of the report that undoubtedly is easily accessible in PDF or Word form and is a public document. You need not look very far to figure out that Maryland state government workers believe they exist not to serve the public, but instead to unnecessarily delay, obfuscate and release information on their own terms.
As for Boesch, this new report is totally in his alarmism character as explained by Red Maryland blogger friend Mark Newgent last October:
Boesch says further, “It is time to take swift and direct action to solve our climate crisis. We have lost much time debating its existence while the scientific evidence and consensus has grown ever stronger.” Boesch has created a gimpy straw man here. No serious global warming skeptic has denied that the earth is in a warming period. In reality, skeptics contest the nature and causes of global warming and the efficacy of the policy prescriptions of alarmists like Al Gore.
What is really at stake here is money, as in federal grant money. Thus the impetus for Boesch doing the Al Gore impersonation, labeling the situation a “crisis” and calling for swift action.
Since 2000, UMCES has received $65,849,037 in federal grant money.
Here are the numbers per year:
2000- $8,831,655
2001- $8,317,034
2002- $10,215,781
2003- $11,873,279
2004- $10,627,340
2005- $12,055,985
2006 -$3,927,963 (data available for 2006 3Q only)UMCES funding increased 37% between 2000 and 2005 (last year for full data), which neatly corresponds with the advent of global warming alarmism. Adding global warming to the list of the Chesapeake Bay’s woes allows Boesch to expand his budget and operations.
T. Boone Pickens, oil man turned wind man, was in Washington last week, and even Senators paid special attention. Pickens was here to testify, or perhaps lobby is a better word, in favor of what is being called the Pickens plan: build up the wind infrastructure in the Midwest to replace natural gas, currently used for electricity, so that it can be used in the transportation sector.
Obviously, the plan itself is not feasible: wind power is expensive and intermittent. Moreover, the majority of the population, and therefore electrical demand, live on the coasts, hundreds or thousands of miles away from the proposed wind farms. Pickens believes revamping the electrical grid is long overdue, and that if the federal government does not want to do it, then “get out of the way” for private investors to do it. But who is going to invest tens of billions of dollars to lay the power lines (and battle private property owners for rights to lay the power lines on their property) all over the country for an uncompetitive energy source?
Well, the federal government, at least in part, according to Pickens, who wants to see $150 billion from taxpayers channeled to the wind industry over a ten year period. Pickens’s real crusade is against foreign oil, not global warming, which is “on page two” for him. He sees importation of energy as a bad thing, since we bring in roughly 60% of our oil from abroad. He wants more of everything American: oil (including offshore and ANWR), coal, natural gas, wind, solar, biomass, nuclear—everything. Unfortunately though, Pickens, who was sure to remind everyone at the hearing that he was a lifelong geologist and oilman, is pessimistic about the amount of recoverable oil reserves from ANWR and offshore, despite 80 billion barrels being a generally accepted low-ball estimate.
Pickens is really in an ideal political position to lobby for wind energy: he has donated millions to Republican Party causes (including the Swift Boat group from 2004) and is now jumping ships to push for an environmental cause that the Democrats cannot object to. His authority as a successful oilman gives credibility to his pessimism on recoverable oil in ANWR and offshore, which makes Democrats grin. With this kind of political power, Pickens has now invested (or is planning to invest—the details are unclear) an astounding two billion dollars on wind power, in addition to spending $58 million (tax deductible) in advertising to promote his mission. His visit to the Hill was little more than requesting a guarantee to double or triple his investment.
Hell — otherwise known as Congress — has officially frozen over. For the first time since the 1950s, Members will skip town today for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill. Then again, Democrats appear ready to sacrifice their whole agenda, even spending, rather than allow new domestic energy production.
Blame it on a delayed Fiscal Year 2009 budget, on a long fight over funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential veto threats or over energy issues Republicans are using to score political points: This year, Democrats have no plans to finish as many as ten of the twelve annual appropriations bills before Congress adjourns.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it to come to a vote. With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote. Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because, as she explained to Politico: "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet."
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
The answer — which is that they don't understand economics — is revealed in a blog post by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Lisa Stiffler. Her report explains a review by the Beacon Hill Institute (co-sponsored by the Washington Policy Center) of the state's Climate Advisory Team recommendations to raise the costs of energy so high that people will want to move their tailpipe emissions to other countries.
That was a joke – the tailpipe emissions part.
Anyway, the BHI study is similar to ones they've done for other states where the economic analyses of costs associated with climate commissions' recommendations are severely underestimated. In Washington, BHI found among other things that the Climate Advisory Team "misinterprets costs as benefits." And then there is this revelation from reporter Stiffler:
For example, jobs are credited as a benefit, but the reviewers said this is actually a cost. This sort of confuses me as I thought job creation was generally a positive step.
Of course it is "a positive step" in the backwards world of journalism, where jobs digging holes for no apparent reason are considered productive.
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