Dow Chemical Co. will raise prices as much as 25 percent in July, the largest increase in company history and the second in two months, to recoup surging energy and raw-material costs.
2008
Every dogma has its day, and so it is with the posturing that blames the run-up in oil prices on "speculators." The new political consensus is that further "common-sense regulation" of the energy futures market is necessary. Let's grant that the sentiment is common, but the sense – like the evidence – is nonexistent.
The Los Angeles Times reports that California Republican legislators plan to use upcoming budget talks to negotiate the costs of implementing AB 32, The Climate Solutions Act. Democrat lawmakers are proposing an $11 billion tax hike to help meet the state’s $15 billion deficit. GOP lawmakers object to increased taxes, but they are indicating that a compromise is possible if the governor exercises a provision in AB 32 that allows him to postpone implementation by declaring that it would cause the state "significant economic harm."
John McCain and Barack Obama are hammering each other on energy policy for a second week.
I think some environmentalists, such as Lawrence Solomon, foresee it but not many do: there may be a day that the global warming issue comes back to bite them.
In a national atmosphere requiring global warming alarmism and "energy security”, a phrase even enviros use when convenient, McCain is calling for 45 new nuclear power plants. And Governor Crist of Florida, a strong proponent of global warming alarmist policies, is now considering allowing oil drilling off his coast. I can hear the greens wailing from here.
Did they really expect to run the United States of America off of windmills and corn cobs?
As Ed Craig notes below, the "muzzled" James Hansen is unloading today through the media and in Capitol Hill testimony about how people who disagree with him need to be tried for crimes against humanity.
First, this bodes ill for Gore producer Laurie David. Second, his legal counsel is proving as sound as his science advocacy.
Today's unhinged exhibition occurs in the context of commemorating Hansen's testimony 20 years ago, which kicked off the modern global-warming alarmist movement ten years into the warming spell — on the heels of 30 years of cooling — and ten years before that warming peaked.
And Ed is right to look to Hollywood for parallels, since the Left media has openly celebrated Hansen's dog-and-pony show as well-managed "stagecraft" — a story I chronicle in my forthcoming book, "Red Hot Lies" (a volume that surely guarantees my own trial for enviro-war crimes).
Specifically, the PBS series Frontline aired a special in April 2007 that lifted the curtain on the sort of illusions that politicians and their abettors employed to kick off the campaign.
Frontline interviewed key players in the June 1988 Senate hearing at which then-Senator Al Gore rolled out the official conversion from panic over “global cooling” to global warming alarmism. Frontline interviewed Gore’s colleague, then-Sen. Tim Wirth (now running Ted Turner’s UN Foundation). Comforted by the friendly nature of the PBS program, Wirth freely admitted the clever scheming that went into getting the dramatic shot of scientist James Hansen mopping his brow amid a sweaty press corps. An admiring Frontline termed this “Stagecraft.”
Sen. TIMOTHY WIRTH (D-CO), 1987-1993: We knew there was this scientist at NASA, you know, who had really identified the human impact before anybody else had done so and was very certain about it. So we called him up and asked him if he would testify.
DEBORAH AMOS: On Capitol Hill, Sen. Timothy Wirth was one of the few politicians already concerned about global warming, and he was not above using a little stagecraft for Hansen's testimony.
TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.
DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn't working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.[Shot of witnesses at hearing]
WIRTH: Dr. Hansen, if you’d start us off, we’d appreciate it. The wonderful Jim Hansen was wiping his brow at the table at the hearing, at the witness table, and giving this remarkable testimony.[nice shot of a sweaty Hansen]
JAMES HANSEN: [June 1988 Senate hearing] Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.
The Washington Post also commemorates astronomer James Hansen's testimony of 20 years ago that started the global-warming panic. They fall for the spin, big time. Here's how the drama opens:
There have been hotter days on Capitol Hill, but few where the heat itself became a kind of congressional exhibit. It was 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, and the warmth leaked in through the three big windows in Dirksen 366, overpowered the air conditioner, and left the crowd sweating and in shirt sleeves.
James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist, was testifying before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He was planning to say something radical: Global warming was real, it was a threat, and it was already underway.
Hansen had hoped for a sweltering day to underscore his message.
"We were just lucky," Hansen said last week.
Hmmm. As noted below, Hansen's cohort then-Sen. Tim Wirth has made clear that this was as close to orchestrated as they could make it — even attempting to time the temperature market (perhaps that's what Hansen meant by getting "lucky") — and the aforementioned "overpowered" air conditioner actually had just been turned off and the windows left open before hearing time.
Clearly, someone is lying. Or revising history. And we know Hansen would never, ever revise history. Especially about temperatures. Oh, right, he actually has an extensive history of revising past temperatures, both on his own initiative (revisions in 2000 and 2007 resulted in recent temps ticking upward, both times with corresponding drops in earlier temps exaggerating a warming trend) and not so voluntarily (August 2007, when the false warming trend he'd inserted in U.S. data, beginning as luck would have it in 2000, was uncovered, and corrected…for once, without a NASA press release!).
Hopefully Congress can get to the bottom of it. The key question might just be whether publishing such disinformation is a prosecutable offense. Possibly you know an astronomer who can tell you.
President George W. Bush took a bold halfway step Wednesday to support more oil and natural gas production in the United States. He urged Congress to pass legislation that would open the 85% of federal offshore waters that are closed to exploration. Currently these areas are closed by congressional moratoria and by presidential executive order. The President wants the Congress to act, but he didn’t rescind his father’s 1990 executive order, which was extended by President Clinton to 2012. So forgive me if I’m under whelmed.
When the House in 2006 passed a bill to open up the Outer Continental Shelf, the Bush Administration was a lot less than helpful. That bill would have given States veto power over oil production off their coasts and it would have shared federal royalties equally with the States that allowed production. It was a good bill, but didn’t go anywhere in the Senate. The Democratic-controlled 110th Congress isn’t going to touch it.
That is, unless it’s forced to take it up. Rep. John Peterson (R-Penna.) is trying to offer an amendment to the Department of Interior Appropriations bill that would allow offshore exploration. His amendment was defeated in subcommittee on a straight 6 to 9 party-line vote earlier, but when he tried to offer it again on Wednesday at full committee markup, the bill mark up was cancelled. Apparently, the Democratic leadership is fearful that some Democratic Members are wavering. Peterson has clearly picked up support since last year among Republicans. His amendment was defeated then by a 29 to 37 vote, with six Democrats voting yes and six Republicans voting no.
The main obstacle has been the Florida delegation. Even though the 2006 bill provided a 125-mile buffer zone off Florida’s coasts, it wasn’t enough for most Florida Members or for Senator Mel Martinez (R-Fla.). Now, Florida Republican House Members are changing their minds.
So has Senator John McCain (R-Az). As part of his presidential campaign, this week he came out in favor of more offshore oil and gas production as long as the affected States have veto power. But he still opposes drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife refuge in Alaska.
The environmental pressure groups repeat over and over that “we can’t drill our way out of the problem”. That supposedly is because the U. S. has only three percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, but uses twenty percent of the world’s oil. True, but that’s because we haven’t explored 85% of our Outer Continental Shelf or ANWR or quite a few other federal lands in the Rocky Mountains and Alaska, including the National Petroleum Reserve. Yes, that’s right, oil exploration has been blocked by lawsuits in most of the National PETROLEUM Reserve. It’s too environmentally sensitive and ecologically unique.
CBS and MSNBC last week carried an Associated Press story on groundbreaking new research suggesting that earthquakes are getting worse because of rising temperatures caused by climate change.
It turns out that the “research” in question was performed by Dr. T. J. Chalko, a huckster who has claimed that global warming will cause the world to explode.
CBS, MSNBC, and the Associated Press are three of the largest, most respected sources of journalism in the world. What does the Chalko debacle tell you about the state of science reporting in America? A simple Google search would have revealed Chalko’s wacky fraudulence in ten seconds. Yet none was performed; instead, an easily identifiable hoax was passed as the truth.
So next time you read an alarmist headline, remember the name “T. J. Chalko”.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Americans for Prosperity has been conducting a state-by-state "Hot Air Tour" to draw attention to the dramatic economic harm that would be caused by global warming alarmists' "solutions." Today they were scheduled to launch their attention-getting hot-air balloon over Al Gore's home near Nashville, after getting their permits all lined up, but I just got this message from AFP director of policy Phil Kerpen:
The Nashville Parks Department is denying us permission to launch the balloon, citing the fact that our permit says balloon rides but not specifically the word "launch." This despite the fact that we have explained to them on the phone multiple times our precise flight plan and before today there was no indication that there was a problem or any defect in our permit. Clearly, Gore is calling in favors to stop the embarrassing visual and negative coverage surrounding our event and ratcheting up the beating he is taking over his home energy use.
Yes, clearly this would represent too much embarrassment in one week for the former veep.
UPDATE 3:30 p.m.: From Phil Kerpen, and AFP's blog,
UPDATE 3:00 pm Eastern time: Roy Wilson at the Nashville Parks Department must not have liked our earlier post, since he just completely revoked our permit — even though his department's own rules state that he can't do that unless we break a law or one of the department's rules, which we haven't done and have no intention of doing. Then he hung up on our legal counsel. In the meantime, good news to report — we've secured a private location for this afternoon's event. We'll be in a field at the corner of Sneed and Vaughn Roads — just about a mile and a half from the original event location.
Sounds like lawsuit potential. Meanwhile, Nashville Parks Dept. Contact info:
http://www.nashville.gov/parks/administration.htm
Centennial Park Office
Nashville, TN 37201
Phone: (615) 862-8400
Fax: (615) 862-8414
UPDATE 4:00 P.M.:
Per a phone conversation I had with AFP's Phil Kerpen, he explained that AFP acknowledged a defect in the permit application to Nashville Parks Dept. So AFP agreed to limit its activity in the park to what it outlined in its application, not fully launch a hot-air balloon, and keep it to tethered rides, and let the event go on. That was not good enough for the Parks Dept., who refused to permit AFP at all to hold an event, and demanded that they leave. Kerpen said the Parks Dept. knew all along what AFP was going to do, to the point that they were asking for insurance information for the balloon rides yesterday afternoon.
Why? Curt Garrigan of the Nashville Parks Dept. told me, "they did not submit an application for the event that was accurate. For that reason we did not issue a permit for the event." So I asked him, why not still issue the permit if they were willing to comply with the guidelines they laid out in their application. Garrigan's answer: "They sent out a media release to the public that said they were launching from that site."
So, apparently the Parks Dept. refused to allow AFP to hold any event at all based upon what they perceived to be public deception. Great public servants at work here: upending a well-publicized event in which they knew all the details, but dismissed on a technicality.
Cross-posted at American Spectator.
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