Please pay no attention to the evidence right outside your windows! Despite the fact that we are experiencing the coldest weather in decades, Kevin Grandia blogging at the Huffington Post wants you to ignore this and start worrying about the growing trend of global warming skepticism. According to Grandia, questioning the holy theology of the Church of Global Warming is a seriously disturbing heresy. He even catalogued the increased levels of global warming skepticism by analyzing Google search stats in excruciating detail:
2009
He boasts his own self-declared army and the support of 13 governors, 53 congressmen and 180 mayors, along with the Sierra Club and the American Lung Association. He has plugged his cause on countless news shows and spent $60 million of his own money on a massive ad spree.
Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the Republican who wore the black hat during the congressional debate on bailing out Detroit's automakers, visited the North American International Auto Show Tuesday to see firsthand what automobiles mean to Detroit. It would have been more useful had Congress sent U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
In the News
Debate Over: It’s Freezing
David Harsanyi, Townhall, 16 January 2009
Paulson on Energy Rationing
Myron Ebell, Globalwarming.org, 15 January 2009
Global Government
Chris Horner, Washington Times, 14 January 2009
The Problem with Green Jobs
John Whitehead, Salon, 14 January 2009
Pickens’s Windmills Tilt against Market Realities
Neil King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 13 January 2009
Spare Detroit Car Czar’s Green Thumb
Sam Kazman, Detroit News, 13 January 2009
Bail Out Big Three by Cutting Red Tape
Iain Murray, Detroit News, 13 January 2009
Laffer Gas
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, Culture 11, 13 January 2009
Green Wacko Tobacco
Chris Horner, Human Events, 13 January 2009
News You Can Use
Inaugural Emissions
Paul Chesser
The Institute for Liberty and The Chilling Effect have calculated some “conservative” estimates of how much carbon will be emitted at next week’s swearin’ (in) of the green new president. They came up with a total of 575 million pounds of CO2 as the likely figure.
Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the new Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said at the committee’s first hearing on Thursday that he planned to mark up cap-and-trade legislation before Memorial Day. The committee has 36 Democrats and 23 Republicans. It looks to me that the Republicans on the committee will vote against any cap-and-trade bill close to unanimously. That means that Waxman will have to win over at least several of the committee’s Democrats from coal States in order to pass his bill out of committee. That makes it likely that any bill will be a lot messier than the environmental pressure groups would like to see.
Waxman held a hearing to spotlight big business support for cap-and-trade. Fifteen members of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership testified about their new agreement on the outlines of a cap-and-trade system to ration energy. Witnesses included Jeff Immelt of General Electric and Jim Rogers of Duke Energy, plus the heads of Conoco Phillips, Exelon, Rio Tinto, PNM Resources, P G and E, Siemens, and NRG Energy. Five heads of environmental front groups for big business that belong to USCAP also testified—NRDC, EDF, Nature Conservancy, WRI, and Pew Center.
Not everyone was pleased. At a briefing on USCAP’s new plan for Senators and Representatives before the hearing, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) apparently unloaded on the CEOs. His office then sent out a press release that made Corker’s broadside public. Corker in the press release calls USCAP’s plan self-serving and says: “I’m totally bewildered that in this anti-earmark atmosphere, USCAP would promote what is basically just another request from special interest groups to take money out of taxpayer pockets.”
The House Appropriations Committee released the text of an economic stimulus bill that would cut taxes by $275 billion and spend $550 billion. I haven’t seen the tax cuts yet, but they are undoubtedly designed to benefit special interests. Extending tax subsidies for renewable energy is probably included.
The new spending is described in the committee report as “$550 billion in thoughtful and carefully targeted priority investments with unprecedented accountability measures built in.” Parts of the package are pork barrel projects designed to create “green jobs.” For example, there is at least $18 billion for renewable technologies and energy efficiency. There is an $8 billion loan guarantee to finance renewable energy and transmission projects. The bill would spend $6 billion on weatherizing houses of low-income people and another $7 billion on making federal buildings more energy efficient. The Institute for Energy Research this week happened to publish a paper that blows a lot of big holes in the green jobs myth.
Senate committees held hearings this week on President-elect Barack Obama’s nominees for environment and energy posts. His choices for Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Interior, EPA Administrator, and CEQ Chairman sailed through the hearings. Senators voiced little criticism and asked few tough questions. The nominees were careful not to make controversial remarks. For example, Dr. Steven Chu, Obama’s pick for Energy, played down his anti-coal remarks and sounded more like the administrator he is about to become than the advocate that he has been.
Around the World
The Russian Gas Crisis Week Two
Russia’s cutoff of gas to Ukraine and eighteen other European countries is now in its tenth day. Several deals to end the crisis have fallen apart. Negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the European Union may resume this weekend.
German gas stockpiles are down to levels usually seen at the end of the heating season. Slovenia said its gas reserves will last for another 30 days. French gas supplier GDF Suez has been sending emergency supplies to Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bosnia and Serbia. Serbia’s three largest cities are now facing blackouts because the lack of gas has forced consumers to switch to electricity to heat their homes, overloading their power grid. Residents and businesses in the Serbian, Bosnian and Hungarian capitals have resorted to burning oil, wood and coal. And angry Bulgarians demonstrated outside the parliament in Sofia.
The dispute between Russia and Ukraine currently centers around who will pay for “technical gas”—gas worth several million dollars per day that is needed to power compressors to push gas westward through the inefficient pipeline system that was built in the Soviet era. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met today with European energy company chiefs to push his idea of a consortium to help pay for this technical gas. The companies within the consortium would jointly buy the gas from Gazprom at a price of around $450 per 1,000 cubic meters, according to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
The European Commission threatened today to take unspecified sanctions against Russia and Ukraine unless gas flows to the EU resume after the weekend. The crisis appears to be changing the thinking of some European leaders on the EU’s energy priorities. Securing energy supplies suddenly seems more critical than reducing greenhouse emissions by closing down coal-fired power plants in order to address global warming. Announced plans to close down nuclear plants may also soon be reconsidered.
Scrolling through the $825 billion dollar monstrosity, my first question is–how many unemployed construction workers do they think there are? Don’t they realize that they will be competing with the private sector beyond those currently unemployed?
We signed our name to a blank check. (CEI opposed it.) Now they want us to sign again and again—bailout, stimulus, whatever they’re calling it today. But as Martin Hutchinson said, “Stimulus plans also raise the chance of a Great Depression because of the deficits they cause.”
The Wall Street Journal reported today that Americans are in favor of Obama’s stimulus with 89% in favor of deficit spending to create more renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Here’s some hard questions that should be asked about those “green” projects, though:
1. How long will it take the projects to break ground?
2. How many permanent jobs will be created and at what cost?
3. Of those permanent jobs, are they sustainable without government subsidies? EIA has reported that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and “clean coal” $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59.
4. What is the current unemployment rate of the industry to be “stimulated?”
5. You won’t catch me signing up to build a wind turbine or highway, so who will you be employing?
6. Is that national electrical grid going to bring inexpensive coal-fired power to needed US industries? E and E reports that Frederick Butler, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, acknowledged that “strategically sited” transmission lines could bypass power plants in coal states, while running through countryside laced with wind farms to promote clean energy.
Finally, as environmental economist John Whitehead cautioned yesterday in Salon:
“The Wall Street Journal’s economic forecast survey concludes that a big fiscal stimulus will lead to positive economic growth by the third quarter of 2009. But without the fiscal stimulus positive economic growth will be restored by the beginning of 2010. Speeding up the recovery is important in the short run, but there are also long-run risks associated with excessive government spending. At some large debt to gross domestic product ratio, lenders may no longer buy our government bonds and interest rates could spike.”
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Our friends at the Institute for Liberty and The Chilling Effect have cobbled together some “conservative” estimates of how much carbon will be emitted at next week’s swearin’ (in) of the green new president. They came up with a total of 575 million pounds of CO2 as the likely figure.
Will anyone of eco-conscience decide not to go now based on their principles?
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson took time out of his busy schedule wasting 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money (and thereby turning a credit crisis into a depression) to speak at Resources for the Future on Monday afternoon on the subject of how markets can address climate change and other environmental problems. What he meant of course is, how can markets be manipulated by government to achieve outcomes desired by government? He looked somber and did not laugh or smile at the pleasantries made when he was being introduced, but he didn’t look exhausted, worried, or baffled, either. I guess spending other people’s money, even when getting so little for such stupendous amounts, is always fun.
Despite good questions from RFF President Phil Sharp, Paulson spoke in generalities and didn’t give anything away. He did say that the science on global warming was clear and overwhelming. Paulson defended President Bush’s record and said that he didn’t think the president had gotten credit for changing the global debate on what to do about global warming in three important ways. First, Bush had convinced the world that any actions to reduce emissions must involve all major emitting nations and not just the developed nations. Second, he had convinced people that developing new technologies was the key to reducing emissions. And third, Bush had emphasized the role of trade.
Paulson said that Treasury would play a key role in developing climate policies because the critical thing was getting the price signal right, which was something Treasury knew about. He commended Billy Pizer, whom Paulson hired away from RFF and who was in the audience, and the team Pizer has assembled at Treasury on their work designing possible regulatory regimes to constrain carbon dioxide emissions. He added that the work Pizer and crew had done meant that the next administration would be much better prepared to take action than he had been.
Getting the price signal right–that is, raising energy prices just the right amount–will give companies the incentive they need to develop the new energy technologies that were needed, according to Paulson. But although he was a leading promoter of cap-and trade while heading Goldman Sachs, Paulson would not say whether he preferred a carbon tax or cap-and-trade. If it’s done right, the effect of cap-and-trade will be indistinguishable from a carbon tax. The choice would be up to the next administration and Congress. Whether the price signal is conveyed through a tax or a cap-and-trade program, Paulson said that price increases must be gradual and incremental and predictable, so that companies would know what they needed to do.
As for those new technologies, Paulson said that while he had learned from his time in Washington that many problems were intractable because the politics were so complex, he had found one bright spot. The scientists at the Department of Energy had convinced him that the technological breakthroughs needed to solve our energy and climate problems had already been made or were on the verge of being made.
It struck me as odd that Paulson talked about the price signal providing an incentive to develop new technologies without referring to the experience of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme. There, although the costs to consumers are apparent, it appears that companies are too busy scrambling to round up enough rationing coupons to meet this year’s quota to spend any time developing breakthrough technologies.
Paulson noted that countries would not be willing to take action to reduce emissions (that is, raise energy prices and thereby reduce economic growth) unless there was sustained economic growth. He did not see and therefore did not address the conundrum he had created. It is a common blind spot among the energy rationers.
Questions from the audience had to be written on cards, which were then culled by Ray Kopp of RFF. I was surprised that my question was not selected. I did note in parenthesis at the bottom of the card under my name and affiliation that CEI was proud that we had opposed his confirmation, but my question was friendly: I asked whether he thought the purpose of cap-and-trade was not reducing emissions but rather transferring wealth to special interests such as investment bankers acting as middlemen in the trading of rationing coupons.
Paulson’s most interesting answer was in reply to a question about how he planned to be involved in environmental issues after he left office next week. He said that he would give some thought to it before deciding what he was going to do next and then added that his various involvements with conservation organizations had all been at the urging of his wife, Wendy, who was in the audience, and that his next steps would be taken with her guidance as well. When Paulson was chairman of Goldman Sachs, he also served as chairman of the Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s most sinister organizations.
Al Gore keeps two huge sport utility vehicles running outside the building wherever he speaks. International environmental diplomats rack up huge carbon footprints flying around the world to luxurious hotel resorts for climate conferences. A Prius gets less gas mileage than a Hummer.
To this list of eco-ironies, we can add New York Representative Eric Massa’s failed fuel cell road trip. According to Jason Chen at Gizmodo, Massa “tried to drive a fuel cell car from NY to DC to make an environmental point and to show how great fuel cell cars are.”
But things got complicated.
Chen continues:
“Massa drove one fuel cell car while a hybrid SUV [Chevy Tahoe] towing an additional SUV followed along. Once he got half way, he switched to new fuel cell car [which I assume was towed to the half way point sometime earlier so that it would be waiting for the environmentally-conscious congressman]. The empty fuel cell was then towed back by the first SUV. As he continued on his journey, the second SUV followed. Once Massa arrived in DC, the second SUV then towed the second fuel cell car back to NY.
So basically, one SUV traveled 400 miles and one SUV traveled 600 miles for a total of 1000 miles on a 300 mile trip. That's not even counting the mileage on the fuel cell car. Nice work there Captain Planet.”
The natural gas crisis in Europe continued Wednesday as the standoff between Russia and Ukraine left millions of homes without heating fuel for another day.
I was in the room in The Hague in November 2000 when then-French President Jacques Chirac hailed the Kyoto Protocol, or "global warming" treaty, as "the first component of an authentic global governance." Then-European Union Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom seconded the sentiment when she told London's Independent that Kyoto was "not about whether scientists agree" but instead "about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide."
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