2008

Now what will the environmentlists do?  China’s lead in CO2 emissions keeps growing.  Reports the New York Times:

China has clearly overtaken the United States as the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas, a new study has found, its emissions increasing 8 percent in 2007. The Chinese increase accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the year’s global greenhouse gas emissions, the study found.

The report, released Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, found that in 2007 China’s emissions were 14 percent higher than those of the United States. In the previous year’s annual study, the researchers found for the first time that China had become the world’s leading emitter, with carbon emissions 7 percent higher by volume than the United States in 2006.

Many experts had been skeptical of the earlier study, whose results were less clear-cut than those released Friday. The International Energy Agency had continued to say only that China was projected to overtake the United States by the end of 2007. Now there is little doubt.

“The difference had grown to a 14 percent difference, and that’s indeed quite large,” said Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the Dutch agency. “It’s now so large that it’s quite a robust conclusion.”

China’s emissions are most likely to continue growing substantially for years to come because they are tied to the country’s strong economic growth and its particular mix of industry and power sources, the researchers said.

So remind me again why the U.S. is supposed to wreck it’s economy in an attempt to lower CO2 levels …

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) today announced that he wants to end the federal government’s moratorium on offshore drilling for oil and gas. Instead of a blanket ban, he prefers that states decide for themselves whether or not to allow exploration and extraction of fossil fuel deposits off their coastlines.

In light of McCain’s new federalist offshore drilling policy, his continued support for the federal government’s moratorium on drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t make much sense. After all, an overwhelming majority of Alaskans want to lift the ban.

By McCain’s reasoning, Florida and California should get to dictate drilling policy on federal lands 100 miles off their coasts, but Alaska shouldn’t be afforded the same privilege on federal land located within its borders.  

Apparently, McCain believes that some states have more rights than others.

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

Our friends at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research have been looking at Al Gore's personal residential energy consumption again, and things are only getting more embarrassing for the world's foremost global warming alarmist:

In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

Being the non-egghead, borderline C-minus high school science student that I was, I inquired with a few scientist acquaintances about the logic — as far as greenhouse gas emissions and effect on global warming goes — that Honda's new hydro-powered car would improve matters. The question: If the only emission from Honda’s new hydrogen vehicle is steam, and water vapor is the most influential greenhouse gas, isn’t that making the greenhouse effect worse? Or am I missing something?

The two answers I received:

Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at University of Alabama at Huntsville: "The big difference is that extra CO2 stays in the atmosphere much longer (many years) than extra water vapor (days)…the extra water vapor won’t accumulate the way CO2 does. But I predict that a city filled with hydrogen fueled vehicles on a hot summer day is going to get pretty unbearable."

Dr. Howard Hayden, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Connecticut: "About two years ago, NASA launched the AQUA satellite, whose purpose is to start to begin initiating (note the redundancy for emphasis) some preliminary studies of the water cycle. In other words, it is an admission that nobody on the planet has the vaguest understanding of the most important greenhouse agent. (H2O is not always gaseous, and, aside from being a greenhouse gas, is a major player in heat transport.)

But wait! There's more! What is the source of the hydrogen? Commercially, the biggest source is methane (CH4), with energy supplied by combustion."

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

The global warming panic perpetrators that are bankrolling nearly all greenhouse gas emissions policy in the states, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, are still in full-throttle marketing mode. I wrote last week about their promotional film, and how they've totally financed climate change panels in the states and written glowing articles praising their own work and that of the Center for Climate Strategies. Now RBF's Michael Northrop has written another puff piece, with zero disclosure of his organization's tight relationship with CCS:

The fact that so many states are acting with a similar impetus begs an important question: What would happen if you aggregated these policies and applied them on a national scale?

One study conducted by the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) — a non-partisan group that has worked on climate policymaking and analysis with many of these states — indicates that the adoption of a comprehensive, nationwide climate and energy policy would have substantial economic benefits. Using data from 12 states that are leaders in the field of climate change and energy, CSS (sic) calculated that were all 50 states to adopt similar rules and legislation, the aggregate economic savings would be $25 billion. The nation could achieve a 33% reduction in projected greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 — a common interim target — and save money doing so.

Amazing numbers! So why again couldn't Lieberman-Warner, which had similar high aspirations, get passed?

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

How unsurprising — a mainstream news media outlet (this one a Gannett property) finally takes a look at the absurd economic claims coming out of one of the state climate commissions (North Carolina) run by the Center for Climate Strategies, and rather than emphasize the findings of economists with PhDs, they instead play up the promises of a political science graduate student (and mouthpiece for CCS, who commissioned the rosy-economic scenario):

Appalachian State University researchers think they have the answer. Recommendations to state government by a climate-change commission wouldn’t hurt North Carolina’s economy and would actually create a modest number of jobs, the university’s Energy Center predicts.

Its study of 30 potential policies found they would create more than 32,000 jobs a year by 2020.

Next to the 5 million jobs workers in North Carolina held in 2004, it’s a drop in the bucket. But the researchers emphasize the overall positive impact.

Some of the biggest gains would come from requirements for energy efficiency, which shrink power bills, researcher David Ponder (aforementioned poli-sci guy) said.

Compare that to what the credentialed economists at the Beacon Hill Institute, who were commissioned by my colleagues at the John Locke Foundation, had to say:

“By 2011, the state would shed more than 33,000 jobs,” according to the report from the Beacon Hill Institute, the research arm of the economics department at Boston’s Suffolk University. “Annual investment would drop by about $502.4 million, real disposable income by more than $2.2 billion, and real state Gross Domestic Product by about $4.5 billion.”

“The negative economic effects would spill over into state and local tax collections,” the report adds. “We estimate a loss of $184.6 million in revenues in 2011.”

The failure of Lieberman-Warner ought to indicate where most folks believe the truth about energy costs, effects on the economy, and job creation lies.