2009

On February 25, 2009, Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville testified on “Scientific Objectives for Climate Change Legislation,” before the House Ways and Means Committee.

Dr. Hansen is probably the world’s most influential scientist in the climate alarmist camp. His 1988 congressional testimony, which projected significant increases in global temperatures over the next two decades, gave birth to the warming movement.

At the Ways and Means hearing, Christy testified that datasets he and his colleagues have developed contradict the climate model hypotheses and surface temperature records on which alarmism rests. His leading example was the discrepancy between Hansen’s 1988 model forecasts and actual temperatures as measured by two independent satellite monitoring systems.

“GISS” A, B, and C are Hansen’s 1988 global warming model projections. “A” and “B” are model projections assuming business-as-usual emission levels similar to what happened (actually a bit lower than what occurred). ”C” is a model projection assuming drastic CO2 cuts. ”UAH” and “RSS” are, respectively, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and Remote Sensing Systems satellite records.

Christy comments:

All model projections show a high sensitivity to CO2 while the actual atmosphere does not. It is noteworthy that the model projection for drastic CO2 cuts still overshot the observations. This would be considered a failed hypothesis test for the models from 1988.

 Ancient history, you say? Maybe, but Christy also compared the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report’s (AR4) climate model warming projections with actual temperature data.

The red and orange lines mark the upper and lower bounds of 95% of the global warming projections calculated by 21 IPCC AR4 models for multi-year segments ending in 2020. The blue and green lines show temperature trends calculated from the UAH satellite record and the U.K. Hadley Center surface temperature record, respectively.

Christy comments:

The two main points here are (1) the observations are much cooler than the mid-range of the model spread and are at the minimum of the model simulations and (2) the satellite adjustment for surface comparisons is exceptionally good. The implication of (1) is that the best estimates of the IPCC models are too warm, or that they are too sensitive to CO2 emissions.

By now you may be wondering what any of this has to do with peer review at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Patience, grasshopper.

At the hearing, Hansen declined to address Christy’s critique of model sensitivity assumptions on the merits. Rather, he asserted that climate sensitivity is “crystal clear,” and advised the Committee to ask the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to produce a report and accept its verdict as “authoritative.”

Now, if you’re like me, you probably assume that the National Academy insists on the most rigorous standards of peer review for PNAS, the organization’s flagship publication. But an article in the current (19 September 2009) issue of Science magazine (subscription required) suggests otherwise.

The article, “PNAS Nixes Special Privileges for (Most) Papers,” reports that:

National Academy members, as elite scientists, could shepherd their own work through peer review with less vetting than at other publications by “contributing” a paper. They could also “communicate” a paper on behalf of colleagues who had not been elected to the academy’s august ranks.

The article goes on to explain that:

In practice, “communicating” a colleague’s paper meant that a member lined up referees to review it before PNAS ever saw it. This increased the chance of a favorable reception — and looked suspiciously like cronyism to outsiders.

Because of that perception, PNAS announced last week that it will end the “communicated” option for submitting papers by July 2010. However, Science reports, “The move will not affect the privileges of academy members to line up reviews before they submit their own papers to PNAS …”

I don’t know about you, but my college GPA would have been higher had I been allowed to ”line up” friends to grade my term papers and tests. And wouldn’t it be nice if, during job performance reviews at work, we could “line up” allies to decide whether we deserve a raise and a bonus?

Science further reports that the “rejection rate for communicated or contributed papers that reach the PNAS is a few percent, whereas the rejection rate for standard submissions is 80%.” Membership doth seem to have its privileges at the National Academy.

Having spent a few years in institutions of higher learning, both as a student and a teacher, I have seen how our alleged bastions of academic freedom breed conformity and group-think. 

First, there’s the quest for tenure. A young professor serious about his career dare not challenge the methodological or ideological pieties of his colleagues, lest they deny him the coveted job security he seeks. And if the acolyte makes it into the ranks of the tenured, he will think twice about offending colleagues with whom he may be stuck for decades, and he’ll take care not to jeopardize his department’s research contracts and grants by offending the political pieties of grantmakers in Washington, D.C.

Most people admitted into the august ranks of the National Academy will have been shaped by the conformity mills that our institutions of higher learning have become. Moreover, once ensconced in the club, they will be loathe to offend other members, many of whom may have voted to admit them in the first place.

So it should come as no surprise that “the rejection rate for communicated or contributed papers that reach the PNAS is a few percent, whereas the rejection rate for standard submissions is 80%.” 

Even apart from these considerations, cronyism seems to be a significant problem in climate-related research. The IPCC reports are collections of literature reviews in which the lead authors often review their own work. Statistician Edward Wegman noted in his assessment of the infamous “hockey stick“ reconstruction of global temperatures (which allegedly proved that 1998 was the warmest year of the past 1,000 years) that “authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they seem on the surface.” 

So when National Academy member James Hansen declines to debate John Christy on the merits, and instead advises Congress to let the NAS decide the scientific basis of climate legislation, he is actually asking Congress to let the old-boy network to which he belongs call the shots.

That Hansen would proffer such self-serving advice rather than debate the core issue on the merits is reason enough to be skeptical of the science he espouses.

In his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama talked a lot about “bipartisanship,” but in office, he has governed from the far left, on both domestic and foreign policy, by meddling overseas in favor of left-wing would-be dictators, and at home in support of powerful left-wing unions, at the expense of taxpayers, airline security, the Constitution, and the rule of law.  (One possible exception to his left-wing path is his support for the obscene Wall Street bailouts, which disgusted left and right alike, although those bailouts showered billions of dollars on the liberal Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, which was so rich that it didn’t even need the money).

The Wall Street Journal criticizes Obama for seeking to force Honduras to accept the return of its ex-president and would-be dictator, Manuel Zelaya, a demand backed by left-wing Latin American dictators. “Mr. Zelaya was deposed and deported this summer after he agitated street protests to support a rewrite of the Honduran constitution so he could serve a second term. The constitution strictly prohibits a change in the term-limits provision. On multiple occasions he was warned to desist, and on June 28 the Supreme Court ordered his arrest. Every major Honduran institution supported the move, even members in Congress of his own political party, the Catholic Church and the country’s human rights ombudsman. To avoid violence the Honduran military escorted Mr. Zelaya out of the country. In other words, his removal from office was legal and constitutional, though his ejection from the country gave the false appearance of an old-fashioned Latin American coup. The U.S. has since come down solidly on the side of—Mr. Zelaya.”

The Weekly Standard criticizes Obama for blocking travel to the U.S. by Hondurans, even while inviting to the White House, and giving a visa to, an official of Burma’s genocidal government, which has used mass rape and massacres against ethnic minority groups, and used torture and murder against Buddhist monks protesting oppression. The Obama Administration earlier imposed travel sanctions on the people of Honduras to punish them for their Supreme Court’s ruling refusing to allow the return of Honduras’s ex-president dictator to office.  Michael Barone, the dean of American political commentators, chides Obama for undemocratically “opposing the elected Congress, courts and civil society of Honduras.”

The Washington Times calls it “the worst foreign policy ever.” It notes that Obama has bullied “Honduras, which is desperately trying to stave off a socialist takeover by an anti-American autocrat whom the State Department has concluded is worthy of full U.S. support. This has delighted Cuban dictators Raul and Fidel Castro and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, who are very willing to let the United States carry their water. Venezuela, meanwhile, has signed a major arms deal with Russia, continues to build the anti-Gringo “Bolivarian” bloc, bullies U.S. ally Colombia and plans to launch its own nuclear program.” (Obama’s actions have also emboldened Nicaragua’s corrupt, bullying President Daniel Ortega to behave dictatorially).

The Washington Times reports that “President Obama’s diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission” has praised Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his crackdown on independent media, in remarks in which he “described Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela as ‘an incredible revolution.’” (Chavez recently closed 240 radio stations in Venezuela, and his regime has shot unarmed demonstrators).  Other Obama appointees have Marxist roots or sympathies.   Obama’s green jobs czar was the race-baiter Van Jones, “a self-avowed communist” who remained in office for months, desite controversy, until revelations that he was a Truther who believed that George Bush may have been behind the 9/11 attacks. Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.

The Times also criticizes Obama’s congressional allies for moving to unionize airline security screeners and authorize collective bargaining at the TSA, making it more difficult for lazy or careless employees to be fired for incompetence.  The unions have “urged TSA Acting Administrator Gale D. Rossides to suspend use of the agency’s skills test for screeners. Failure rates this year reached more than 50 percent and were as high as 80 percent at some airports. The skills test shows that large numbers of airport screeners are failing at jobs that are intrinsic to keeping our airports and commercial airplanes secure, and the union’s response is to get rid of the test. The government employees union is also pushing to have failed screeners’ records cleared because pay and bonuses are tied to performance and unsatisfactory employee records prevent those who were fired for poor performance from being reinstated. So much for worker accountability.”

Obama also wants to introduce union-backed collective bargaining at the TSA. (A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security.)

The Obama administration is also undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized.  Political cronyism is also playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO).  Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with ”alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.

Earlier, the Obama administration ripped off taxpayers and retirees in the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts, in order to enrich the left-wing United Auto Workers union, in unnecessary bailouts that have cost at least $70 billion, drawing criticism even from the liberal Washington Post.  Many commentators argued that the auto bailouts were illegal, such as the Heritage Foundation and Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

In the Washington Post, George Will criticizes Obama for caving in to demands by left-wing unions for protectionist policies like tire tariffs that will harm consumers without saving jobs.   The stimulus package passed earlier this year contained protectionist provisions that backfired, destroying thousands of U.S. jobs by triggering massive retaliation against our export industry while doing little to reduce imports.

The Obama administration has now ordered a private provider of Medicare Advantage services to remain silent about how the Obama health-care plan would destroy the Medicare Advantage programs relied on by millions of seniors.  Eugene Volokh, a leading expert on First Amendment law, says that this violates the First Amendment.

Obama’s congressional allies have decided to conceal the exact language of their health-care bill until after it is voted on in committee, preventing the public from learning about controversial provisions buried in it.  (Earlier versions of ObamaCare have contained lots of provisions that do nothing to enhance health care, like racial preferences that were criticized as unconstitutional by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights).

Obama’s Energy Secretary likens the American people to unruly “teenage kids” who don’t know what’s good for them, and need to be told what to do.  (The cap-and-trade bill he backs to fight global warming would be devastating for the economy and do nothing to protect the environment).

Obama’s health care plan would raise taxes, break promises, harm people with insurance, explode the budget deficit, destroy many inexpensive health-care plans, and take away important freedoms.

Two good pieces of work at the Washington Examiner today about those who profit from a carbon-capping economy:

1. David Freddoso provides a sampling of salaries of executives at some top environmental activist nonprofits, including Environmental Defense, World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, and others. I’ve done some of this kind of thing in this space in the past, but David offers a handy list.

2. Reporter Tim Carney explains why some of the nation’s largest utilities, responsible for burning large percentages of our overall coal consumption, lobby in favor of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill despite the certain increased costs it will spur. The main utility under Carney’s scrutiny is American Electric Power:

Waxman-Markey would give away 85 percent of the credits initially, allocating the credits among different industries. AEP, a diverse company, might be able to tap three of the bill’s piles of free credits — the 30 percent going to electricity distributors, the 2 percent going to electric utilities, and the 5 percent going to merchant coal generators.

While AEP would get credits for free, that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. If the company has more credits than emissions, AEP could sell these credits to needy companies. That means Waxman-Markey could spell profits.

Also, because much of AEP’s business is as a regulated utility — meaning it effectively faces no competition, and the state government sets its rates — some of its costs can be passed onto consumers.

Carney goes on to document AEP’s eleven-fold increase in lobbying expenses since the beginning of 2007. Now, as Marlo Lewis so excellently explained yesterday, they are “reaping what they sowed.”

Today’s ClimateWire (subscription required) carries an analysis by reporter Lauren Morello that begins:

Say goodbye to “greenhouse gases.” Say hello to “carbon pollution” and ”heat-trapping gases.”  

Morello observes a shift in the vocabulary U.S. government officials are using to talk about global warming — a change much in evidence in President Obama’s climate speech yesterday at the U.N.

Obama officials increasingly avoid the non-pejorative (although somewhat metaphorical) term “greenhouse gas” to describe carbon dioxide and instead refer to “carbon pollution” and “heat-trapping gases.”

Morello quotes NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco’s explanation that these terms are emphasized to “make what’s happening more understandable and more accessible to non-technical audiences.”

Fortunately, she also quotes CEI’s Myron Ebell, who cuts to the chase: “The cleverest thing that the global warming alarmists have done is to categorize carbon dioxide emissions as pollution, because it’s not true.”

The Obama administration’s shift to this terminology is actually way behind the green bamboozle curve. Al Gore repeatedly called carbon dioxide “global warming pollution” in his 2006 film and book, An Inconvenient Truth. Major environmental groups have been denouncing “greenhouse pollution” and “global warming pollution” for years.

The Supreme Court takes the cake, however, deciding in Massachusetts v. EPA (April 2007) that carbon dioxide is an “air pollutant” merely by virtue of the fact that it is “emitted into” the air. By that logic, even zero-pollution, completely clean air is an “air pollutant,” provided it is “emitted.”

This sort of terminological confusion is not harmless. By defining CO2 as an “air pollutant” merely because it is “emitted,” the Court set the stage for a gigantic regulatory chain reaction under the Clean Air Act that could easily dwarf Waxman-Markey and the Kyoto Protocol in cost and scope, as I explain here.

If Lubchenco really wants to demystify the climate debate, she might start by describing CO2 more accurately. Here’s my pick: ”a plant-fertilizing, biosphere-greening, colorless, odorless, non-polluting, trace gas.”

An article in today’s New York Times laments the difficulty of “building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.”

In today’s Politico, I take a look at one of the 397 new regulations in the House version of cap and trade legislation. If the bill passes, almost all homes for sale would be required to undergo an environmental inspection. The home cannot be sold until it is up to code.

One unintended consequence could be the end of fixer-upper homes.

Another would be lower home ownership rates. Which, of course, directly contradicts of decades of federal policy.

Yesterday, in State of Connecticut et al. v. American Electric Power et al., the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals decided that states and other plaintiffs have the right to sue five electric utilities – American Electric Power, Cinergy, Southern Co., Excel Energy, and the Tennessey Valley Authority – for creating a ”public nuisance” by emitting CO2 and, thus, contributing to global warming.

With regard to American Electric Power (AEP) and Cinergy, I am tempted to say, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys. These utilities for years have lobbied for carbon cap-and-trade schemes. Instead of opposing climate alarmism, they have helped promote it. Boys, you reap what you sow!  How are you going to deny plaintiffs’ allegations that your CO2 emissions are a public nuisance, when you have repeatedly stated on the record that man-made global warming is a big, big problem?

In the 139-page decision, Judges Joseph McClaughlin and Peter Hall (appointed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush respectively) rejected the lower court’s opinion (and the utilities’ argument) that the relief sought by plaintiffs — a gradually decreasing cap on the utilities’ CO2 emissions — raised “non-justificiable political questions.”

In a sane universe, the Appelate Court would have upheld the lower court’s decision. Energy policy is manifestly a political question — perhaps the most politicized issue to come down the pike in decades. If courts and litigators can dictate energy policy (actually, anti-energy policy) to the nation, then constitutional self-government is at an end.

The Court held that granting plaintiffs’ proposed remedy would not “decide overarching policy questions such as whether other industries or emission sources not before the court must also reduce emissions or determine how across-the board emissions reductions would affect the economy and national security.” Rather, the Court said, granting the remedy sought would only require the lower court to “resolve the particular nuisance issue before it” involving just the five utilities in the case (p. 30).

Who do Judges McClaughlin and Hall think they’re fooling? If plaintiffs sue the utilities and win, the precedent they establish would have enormous policy consequences. That’s the whole point. Setting the precedent for additional “public nuisance” litigation to restructure energy markets and the economy is what the case is all about.

Nobody seriously believes that capping the five utilites’ emissions would in itself provide any measurable relief from climate change, or any damages allegedly resulting from climate change. The litigation is either political grandstanding  and ambulance chasing, or it is designed to set the stage for a broader, policy-changing, litigation campaign. 

Once a court actually determines that CO2 emissions are a public nuisance, the same plaintiffs — or others — could argue that nothing less than eliminating AEP and Cinergy’s emissions is adequate to avoid dangerous “tipping points” and reduce “injuries” to the public (p. 8). Logically, if lower emissions is better, zero emissions is best.

Surely there is no shortage of eco-litigation groups willing to press the legal logic as far as it will go. The Center for Biological Diversity, for example, leads a coalition calling itself 350 or Bust. The idea is to use all available legal means to bring atmospheric CO2 concentrations down to 350 parts per million (today’s level is about 387 ppm). Accomplishing that goal would likely require a global depression over many decades. Pardon me if I view the alliance of climate alarmism and judicial activism as one of the biggest public nuisances we face.

It’s easy to suppose that public nuisance litigation will target only major emitters such as coal-burning utilities. But remember, utilities emit CO2 only in the process of serving customers who consume electricity. People powering their factories, lighting their homes, and running their laptops are ultimately to blame for destroying the planet, according to the “science” invoked by plaintiffs. In their worldview, everybody is injuring everybody else. So, shouldn’t everybody have the right sue everybody else?

I am reminded of the South Park Episode, Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow – a parody of the preachy, global warming, Sci-Fi disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow. 

Stan and Cartman crash a speed boat into the world’s largest beaver dam, flooding the people of Beaverton out of their homes. Later that night, Stan, feeling guilty, asks his parents what’s being done to rescue the flood victims. Stan’s father says that’s not as important as finding out who deserves the blame. Some in South Park accuse George Bush; others accuse Al Qaeda. Stan’s father and other Colorado scientists announce they have found the real culprit: global warming.

Then comes the really bad news: Global warming will strike not the day after tomorrow, as scientists had previously thought, but two days before the day after tomorrow – today! There is panic in the streets, not just in South Park but all around the country. Fearing that global warming will shift the climate into an ice age, Stan’s father dons Arctic weather gear and nearly perishes in the summer heat. 

The Army rescues the Beaverton residents still stranded on their rooftops and ends the global warming panic — but only by blaming the flood on yet another bogeyman: Six-Legged, pincered, “Crab People.” Unable to live with the guilt any longer, Stan confesses to the people of South Park: ”I broke the dam.” One of the adults translates: “Don’t you see what this child is saying … we all broke the dam.” Another adult steps forward and says, “I broke the dam.” Then another and another.

We all emit CO2. We all consume electricity. Even if our utility generates juice from nukes or hydro, we drive CO2-emitting cars and consume goods and services made either directly or indirectly with CO2-emitting fossil energy. According to the “science” underpinning plaintiffs’ lawsuit, we’re all responsible for every damage and harm that anyone can plausibly (or implausibly) blame on global warming — every flood, every eroded beach, every summer dry spell, every tornado, and hurricane, etc. We have met the public nuisance, and it is us!

South Park explains the two-fold appeal of global warming hysteria. First, warmism feeds and legitimizes the desire to punish and blame. It justifies and focuses political indignation. It incites political and legal attack on coal-power plants and oil companies – key sources of our prosperity.

Second, warmism gratifies the need to feel connected to something really big and important, usually on the cheap. It feeds feelings of collective guilt (”we all broke the dam”) while offering a number of easy expiation rituals (”I recyle,” ”I voted for Obama,” “I support cap-and-trade”). 

In light of this, ahem, analysis, we should expect future common law CO2 litigation cases to (a) demand bigger penalties for major emitters and bigger cuts in their CO2 emissions than plaintiffs in State of Connecticut currently demand, and (b) target smaller and smaller entities as public nuisances.

Sounding more like Yes Men prankster than president, President Obama spoke of rising seas, floods, drought, and climate refugees. Yet his policies have been far from humorous.

His aim to double generating capacity from wind and other renewable resources sounds similar to President Bush’s goals. Yet to quote George Wallace of the American Bird Conservancy, “To meet (President Bush’s) request that 20 percent of the nation’s energy comes from renewable sources by 2030, the number of turbines would have to increase 30-fold. At current mortality rates, the wind industry would be killing between 900,000 and 1.8 million birds per year.” (Environment and Energy Daily, July 11, 2008)

Obama at least admits that these types of “clean energy” energy haven’t been profitable when he says that the “House of Representatives passed an energy and climate bill in June that would finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy for American businesses…” (emphasis mine). He and I differ on his “profitable” prediction, however. Wind and solar energy have been receiving government subsidies since the ’70s, now at the rate of $23 per megawatt hour. (Coal-fired power only costs around $25 per megawatt hour and receives a 44 cent per megawatt hour subsidy.) Yet renewables still aren’t profitable, as he admits. Gifts to corporations such as GE won’t change that.

The president also boasted of “investing billions to cut energy waste in our homes, buildings, and appliances – helping American families save money on energy bills in the process.” Yet, he has tied the hands of those same families from receiving money from efficiency gains when he has supported guaranteed utilities profits. Decoupled rates, for gas utility service, electric utility service, or both, as twenty states have, guarantee profit levels for utilities despite usage reductions.

The $7 trillion dollar federal debt that these policies are helping to create is definitely not “a future that is worthy of our children.”