2010

So Long, Solar

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on March 27, 2010

in Blog

Oh, the glory days of almost a month ago, when advocates promoted the promise of solar energy in the United States. As one industry publication reported:

Of all the reasons that solar energy is capturing record levels of investment and spurring frenetic activity, its tremendous potential, laid out by Dan Cunningham of BP Solar (Frederick, MD), is the primary driver for the market. Participating in the Chemical Development & Marketing Assn.’s (CDMA) “Opportunities for Chemicals and Materials: Capitalizing on Wind and Solar” conference held last December at the University of Pennsylvania’s chemistry department, Cunningham addressed a crowd that included the biggest names in plastics supply—BASF, Bayer MaterialScience, Dow, and DuPont to name a few—all of which appreciate the extraordinary opportunity the burgeoning solar energy sector holds for plastics.

As impressive as the current boom is, Mike Eckhart, president of ACORE (American Council of Renewable Energy), forecasted an even brighter future for solar at the same CDMA event, particularly for the United States, which has only recently thrown the full weight of government subsidies and tax benefits behind the technology. “My prediction is in two years, solar will really take off,” Eckhart said. Admitting that the U.S. is the “laggard” in solar, Eckhart said he believes the country will catch up to the current market leader, Germany, which had 2000 MW of new solar capacity installed in 2009.

Fast-forward to a report in today’s Washington Post:

BP will close its solar-panel manufacturing plant in Frederick, the final step in moving its solar business out of the United States to facilities in China, India and other countries.

Just 3 1/2 years ago, in an announcement widely hailed by Maryland officials and promoters of “green jobs,” BP unveiled a $70 million plan to double output at the facility and erected a building to house the production lines.

But on Friday the company said it would lay off 320 workers and keep only a hundred people involved in research, sales and project development. BP said laid-off employees would receive full pay and benefits for three months, followed by severance packages and job-placement assistance. The company, unable to sell or lease the building, will tear it down.

“We remain absolutely committed to solar,” BP chief executive Tony Hayward said in an interview Friday. But he said BP was “moving to where we can manufacture cheaply.”

As usual, the charlatan promoters of unreliable, inefficient and costly energy projects once again show the success of their “green jobs” initiatives, driving employment to India and China.

Earth Hour – HAH!

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on March 27, 2010

in Blog

You may have heard something about tonight’s “Earth Hour” (this is not the weekend you want to visit Vegas), in which the World Wildlife Fund co-opted my team’s quarterback to promote a global power-down in order to draw attention to evil human consumption.

As for me, tonight our family will host a large group to celebrate my son’s birthday, so we will have even more lights on than usual — both inside and outside our humble abode. And on top of that, we will force many more vehicles out on the road at the very moment this special hour hits, as parents come to pick up their teenagers. So if my friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute are handing out any prizes for Best Celebration of their Human Achievement Hour, I hope I am at least among the top nominees.

Another Classic Colorado Ballot Initiative

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on March 26, 2010

in Blog

After yesterday’s revelation about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s dismantling of his state’s global warming regulatory infrastructure, a grassroots citizens group said they would attack the renewables rent-seeking industry via a Colorado ballot initiative. The Western Tradition Partnership announced:

(Two) Colorado citizens submitted to the Legislative Legal Council Wednesday a proposed ballot initiative restoring the right of consumers to lower their utility bills by choosing less-expensive forms of energy….

If approved, the initiative allows a utility’s customers to submit a petition requesting an election among customers on whether to opt out of so-called “renewable energy standards.” Renewable energy standards are government mandates forcing a utility to buy a certain percentage of their power from more expensive sources such as wind and solar, driving up utility bills.

Renewable energy standards are a favorite tool of speculators, who invested in the more expensive, less efficient sources and cannot attract consumers in a competitive market.  By lobbying politicians to make purchasing their product mandatory, speculators pass their losses to captive customers.

Of course the foundation for the passage of these measures has been the hyped fear from the threat of global warming, which has been proven fraudulent. WTP, which placed some fairly strict requirements in the measure’s language in order to trigger a utility customer election, reports that it is only trying to restore an opt-out provision that Colorado voters supported in a previous ballot initiative.

It has become so trendy now to challenge the crumbling global warming establishment.

Cooler Heads Digest 26 March 2010

by William Yeatman on March 26, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Overrated
Myron Ebell, Standpoint, April 2010

Another Classic Colorado Ballot Initiative
Paul Chesser, Globalwarming.org, 26 March 2010

Cap-and-Trade Loses Standing
John Broder, New York Times, 26 March 2010

Green Meanies
Christopher Orlet, American Spectator, 25 March 2010

James Hansen Finds FOIA Request Too Burdensome
Chris Horner, Men’s News Daily, 2010

Scandal, Nature, Economy Undercut Agenda
Marlo Lewis, National Journal, 24 March 2010

We’re Saving Whales, Why Not Jobs?
State Senator Dave Cogdill, Orange County Register, 24 March 2010

There Is No Global Warming Consensus
Senator James Inhofe, U.S. News and World Report, 23 March 2010

WWF Hopes To Find $60 Billion Growing on Trees
Christopher Booker, Telegraph, 20 March 2010

News You Can Use

California Poll: Global Warming Least Important Issue

A Field Poll was released this week that asked California voters to rate the importance of twelve issues. The economy was first. Global warming was last.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

What’s Next?

With healthcare reform triumphantly enacted, several environmental pressure groups have started the “We Got Next” campaign.  That is, the next item on the agenda to turn America into a Peronist regime should be energy-rationing legislation.  Unfortunately for them, I think many Members of Congress are still having nightmares about the public’s reaction against House passage of the Waxman-Markey bill last 26th June by a 219 to 212 vote.  I mention the vote totals because the Senate healthcare bill passed the House on Sunday by the same 219 to 212 margin.  It should be recalled that the Senate planned to take up Waxman-Markey in July, but instead turned to healthcare legislation after seeing how unpopular cap-and-trade was with voters. 

My guess is that the Senate just isn’t going to get around to global warming until after it considers several other major issues, including new financial regulations, the anemic economy, the continuing mortgage foreclosure crisis, immigration reform, and what to do about the heartbreak of psoriasis.  In other words, not this year.

On the other hand, the three Mouseketeers-Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.)-continue to talk a good game.  The latest news is that they hope to have their middle-of-the-road omnibus energy-rationing bill ready to go by Lenin’s birthday (also celebrated as Earth Day), 22nd April.  They may actually have a bill put together by then.  But the chance of getting it to the Senate floor before the November election is slim.  Graham has already acknowledged that any action likely won’t occur until next year.

Murkowski Resolution

The Senate spent most of the week on the House-passed reconciliation bill, which perfects the healthcare reform bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday.  Congress will be in recess for the next two weeks.  This means that Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has approximately six weeks in which to offer her resolution of disapproval of the EPA’s endangerment finding, S. J. Res. 16, after Congress returns on 12th April.  The Congressional Review Act specifies that such resolutions must be offered within sixty legislative days after the regulation is officially transmitted to Congress.          

Across the States

West Virginia

The Environmental Protection Agency today announced its intention to veto a Clean Water Act permit granted three years ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to Arch Coal’s Spruce Mine 1 in West Virginia. It is the first time that the EPA has proposed to veto a permit that had already been issued. The EPA is acting in order to protect an insect species that is not listed as an endangered species. The proposal will be published in the Federal Register, initiating a 60-day public comment period, and the EPA pledged to hold a field hearing in West Virginia.

California

The California Air Resources Board released a study on Wednesday claiming that AB 32, the state’s global warming mitigation law, would increase economic growth and create 10,000 jobs by 2020. Evidently, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) wasn’t convinced. On Thursday, he sent a letter to CARB questioning whether its AB 32 implementation plan is “too abrupt” and thus “posing high short-term costs to capped companies.” This wouldn’t be the first time that CARB released a misleading report-a similarly rosy economic analysis on AB 32 was eviscerated in 2008 by a non-partisan panel of scholars, who concluded that the report was politically motivated.

Around the World

France

Last year President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a carbon tax to fight global warming. But polls indicate that two-thirds of French voters oppose this policy, and this week Sarkozy dropped it. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that the government’s new priorities are now “growth, jobs, competitiveness and fighting deficits.”

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

Can 30 Million Frenchmen (and Women) Be Wrong?

by Marlo Lewis on March 24, 2010

in Blog

“France today abandoned all plans to introduce a carbon fuel tax aimed at combating global warming,” the Daily Mail reports. The article continues:  

 
The policy u-turn will be viewed as a huge disappointment to the green lobby around the world.

 
Many had hoped that if a major western economy like France took the lead in taxing harmful emissions, then other countries would follow suit. 

 
But the scrapping of the tax plan was announced by Prime Minister Francois Fillon who said it could only be introduced across Europe so as to ‘avoid harming the competitiveness of French companies’.

He told a meeting of MPs in Parliament that the priority for the country was getting its stagnating economy working again following the international financial crisis.

Last year President Nicolas Sarkozy said a tax on the use of oil, gas and coal would make his country one of the greenest in the world.

 
It was provisionally set at pounds 15 per per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide (CO2), and would apply to homes as well as businesses. 

 
Mr Sarkozy said money from the new tax – which would amount to some pounds 4billion a year – would be spent on green initiatives.

But there was stiff opposition from across the political spectrum, with critics saying the tax was just a ploy to boost ailing state finances. 

 
In polls, two-thirds of French voters said they were opposed to the new levy, fearing they would struggle to pay higher bills. The government was forced to amend its proposals after they were rejected by the high court in December.

France has 44.4 million registered voters, and polls indicate that two-thirds are opposed to carbon taxes. Can 30 million Frenchmen (and women) be wrong?

The article concludes by noting that, “Mr Fillon told the meeting of MPs today that the government’s priorities were now ‘growth, jobs, competitiveness and fighting deficits’.” Now, if we could only get Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman to smell the coffee! They too would drop their proposal for “linked fees” (i.e. carbon taxes) like yesterday’s french fries.

Gas pain needed to meet emission targets, Harvard study says

by Marlo Lewis on March 19, 2010

in Blog

A new Harvard University study (Analysis of Policies to Reduce Oil Consumption and Greenhouse-Gas Emissions from the U.S. Transportation Sector) offers a sobering assessment of what it will take to meet the emission reduction targets proposed by President Obama and the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

Saruman’s rebuke to Gandalf — “You have elected the way of pain!” – nicely captures the key policy implication of this study (although the researchers, of course, do not put it that way).

Congressional proponents of cap-and-trade policies typically favor cost-control measures (price collars, safety values, offsets) designed to keep emission permit prices from exceeding $30/ton of CO2 in 2010 and $60/t of CO2 in 2030. Although an economy-wide permit price of $30-$60/t CO2 would significantly reduce GHG emissions from the electric power sector, it would have only a “marginal impact” on transport-sector emissions, which account for about one-third of all U.S. GHG emissions.

As a consequence, by 2020, total annual GHG emissions under Waxman-Markey would be only 7% below 2005 levels — far short of both the Waxman-Markey target (15.4% below 2005 levels) and President Obama’s somewhat less aggressive target (14% below 2005 levels).

To reduce transportation GHG emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2025 would require gasoline prices “in the range of $7-9/gal,” the researchers estimate. They acknowledge that such prices are ”considerably higher than the American public has been historically willing to tolerate.” Yep, $7-9 a gallon would set a new record for pain at the pump!

By itself, the $30-$60/t CO2 carbon price would increase motor fuel prices by “only” $0.24-0.46/gallon. Not enough pain! To make driving hurt enough to save the planet (okay, hurt enough to produce undetectable effects on global temperatures), policymakers would also have to adopt a $0.50/gal motor fuel tax in 2010 that increases 10% a year until it reaches $3.36/gal in 2030. Even then, it won’t hurt enough unless crude oil prices increase to $124/barrel (in real dollars) by 2030. Crude oil prices as high as $198/barrel would work even better, the researchers opine.

Exactly how would “the way of pain”  produce these transport-sector emission reductions? Some of the reductions would come from consumers buying higher mpg vehicles, and some from technological innovation spurred by market demand for such vehicles. Most of it however, comes from people driving less — i.e., pain avoidance behavior!

A by-the-numbers explanation: In the base case (no carbon price, no new transportation taxes), vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) is projected to grow 39% by 2030. The economy-wide carbon price would reduce VMT by only 1% compared to the base case, and maybe not even that much due to the “rebound effect” of fuel-economy regulation (when the average vehicle gets more miles to the gallon, the average motorist travels more miles). But, add a generous serving of pain at the pump, and Voila – instead of growing 39%, VMT grows 25%. We’re saved!   

A few other tidbits from the Harvard study: 

  • Economy-wide CO2 prices must be more than twice as high (250%) as oil price increases to result in the same increase in the price of gasoline. For example, a $50/barrel increase in the price of oil is comparable to a CO2 price of $130/t.
  • Tax credits for advanced vehicles (diesels, hybrids), ranging from $3000 to $8000 per vehicle, require excessive government expenditures ($22-38 billion per year, on a par with the 2008 U.S. auto bailout).
  • Such subsidies are also counter-productive, because they blunt automakers’ incentive to increase the fuel economy of conventional vehicles, which occupy a larger share of the market.
  • If Congress is unwilling to elect the way of pain (impose transportation taxes and steeper CO2 prices), covered entities will increasingly purchase offsets rather than reduce emissions to comply with the Waxman-Markey cap. Specifically, they will purchase an estimated 730-860 tons of CO2-equivalent offsets in 2020 and more than 2 billion tons in 2027 — breaching the proposed statutory limit.
  • A $30-$60/t CO2 carbon price combined with $7-$9/gallon gasoline would reduce GDP only 1% in 2030. However, this conclusion depends on the assumption that Congress adopts a textbook perfect revenue-neutral carbon tax, in which all emission permits are auctioned, and all revenues are retured to taxpayers. 
  • The actual GDP losses would be higher: ”Given the politics surrounding the debate in Washington, D.C., revenue neutrality is likely to be an elusive goal and thus our analysis may understate the economic impacts, since only a small number of the permits are likely to be auctioned.”

The Harvard study makes even more obvious what should no longer be controversial. Congress has not yet adopted tough controls on GHG emissions not because a “well-funded denial machine” is “confusing the public,” but because Members of Congress seek above all else to get re-elected, and inflicting pain on voters is not a smart way to win their support!

Cooler Heads Digest 19 March 2010

by William Yeatman on March 19, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

Another Source Admits that NASA Climate Data Is Inferior to Climategate Data
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 19 March 2010

Obama’s EPA Stifles New Energy Gains
Washington Examiner editorial, 19 March 2010

Global Warming on Trial
Dexter Wright, American Thinker, 19 March 2010

Son of Global Warming
Mike Rosen, Denver Post, 18 March 2010

A Tax by Any Other Name
Marlo Lewis, National Journal, 16 March 2010

Cap-and-Trade Is Like a Zombie in a Bad Horror Movie
William Yeatman, A Line of Sight, 16 March 2010

Be Careful What You Wish for
Iain Murray, GlobalWarming.org, 16 March 2010

Global Warming Scientists vs. Global Whining Scientists
David Schnare, MasterResource.org, 16 March 2010

In Denial
Steven Hayward, Weekly Standard, 15 March 2010

News You Can Use

Global Warming Last in Poll of Environmental Concerns

Gallup’s annual poll of environmental issues shows that global warming is at the bottom of Americans’ concerns.  Of the eight environmental issues listed, global warming finished last.  Only 28% of Americans listed it as a top concern.  This is down from 33% last year and 41% in 2007, which was the peak year.  Respondents could list multiple issues as top concerns.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman Give Big Business Special Interests a Peek at Their Energy-Rationing Bill

According to a highly informative story by Darren Samuelsohn in Greenwire, which was republished on the New York Times’s web site, Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) held a private meeting with big business special interests this week to build support for their ongoing efforts to produce a compromise energy-rationing bill.  They shared an eight-page outline of their draft bill, but collected the copies at the end of the meeting.

Samuelsohn was able to glean a number of details of the outline’s contents by interviewing attendees as they left the meeting.  From what he reports, the current draft looks to me to be as much of an incoherent mess as the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House last June.  The draft still has a number of unfinished sections, but would require greenhouse gas emission reductions of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 80% below by 2050.  Electric utilities would be regulated beginning in 2012, but other stationary sources would wait until 2016.

The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman draft would reportedly pre-empt greenhouse gas regulations by the EPA and the States.  The cost of ration coupons would be allowed to fluctuate within an initial range of $10 to $30 per ton of carbon dioxide.  This price collar would be adjusted for inflation and would also include an automatic cost escalator.

No word on whether the draft still includes a “carbon fee” on transportation fuels.  Carbon fee is polite terminology for a gas tax.

What the three Senators are cooking up looks to me to be dead on arrival.  The schedule already makes it highly unlikely that the bill will reach the Senate floor before the election in November.  Senator Kerry said that “a full outline of the bill” will be delivered to a group of Senators next week.  In a later story in Climate Wire, Evan Lehman reported that Kerry said that the bill would be completed “next week or over the Easter recess” and then “will be sent to the Congressional Budget Office and U. S. EPA for a review that could take five or six weeks.”

Obama’s Strange Economic Logic

Ian Talley reported in a Wall Street Journal blog this week that “Senior Obama administration officials say the nation’s economic recovery could stall if Congress doesn’t pass a climate bill this year.”  The reason they give is that all the hundreds of billions of dollars that investors are eager to invest in green energy are parked on the sideline until Congress mandates and subsidizes these investments so that they are guaranteed to make a profit.  Of course, people with an understanding of elementary economics could argue that the nation’s economic recovery is already stalling because of policies that discourage investments in lower-cost conventional energy.  A bill that requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would do more than stall the nation’s economic recovery-it would send the economy back into recession.  Of course, other government policies are already doing that.

More Companies to Boycott

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers sent a letter to the Senate this week opposing Senator Lisa Murkowski’s resolution to disapprove the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.  The letter claims that blocking the endangerment finding would undo the deal that the Obama Administration made with California on auto fuel economy standards.  The result, the letter alleges, would be to replace uniform national fuel economy rules with a patchwork of state rules.  As my CEI colleague Marlo Lewis writes in a blog posted here, the whole issue is goofy.  The United Auto Workers announced their opposition to the Murkowski resolution this week as well.  On the other hand, the National Association of Auto Dealers officially supports the resolution.

For boycott purposes, the members of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers are: General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota, Chrysler, BMW, Mazda, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Porsche, and Volkswagen.  I think my next car will be a Packard, although I have my eye on a Hispano-Suiza.

Another company to put on the boycott list is Weyerhauser, which joined the U. S. Climate Action Partnership this week.  Weyerhauser hopes to get rich off selling carbon offsets provided by young forests and selling lots of biomass from their timberlands to produce biofuels.  You can see all of US CAP’s corporate and environmental front group members at us-cap.org. 

Update: EPA Endangerment Lawsuits

The federal D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals has consolidated the sixteen lawsuits that seek to overturn the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare into one suit, Coalition for Responsible Regulation, Inc, et al. versus EPA.  The Coalition consists of the Industrial Minerals Association of North America, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Great Northern Project Development, Rosebud Mining, Massey Energy, and Alpha Natural Resources.  All the other original plaintiffs are still part of the suit.

Thursday was the deadline for other interested parties to request to intervene in the case.  Robin Bravender lists the state intervenors in a Greenwire story republished on the New York Times’s web site. 

In addition to the suits filed by Virginia, Alabama, and Texas, fourteen other States have asked to intervene against EPA.  They are Alaska and Michigan in separate filings and Nebraska, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and Governor Haley Barbour on behalf of Mississippi in a joint filing.

Minnesota and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection have asked to intervene on EPA’s side.  This is in addition to the sixteen other States and New York City that asked to intervene in January.  Those States are Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

In related news, the Democratically-controlled Illinois House of Representatives this week voted to ask Congress to delay EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources.  Last week, five House Democrats sent a letter to EPA asking the same thing.  They are Jim Costa and Joe Baca of California, Ciro Rodriguez and Gene Green of Texas, and Harry Teague of New Mexico.

Obama’s Anti-Energy Drilling Policy

The Obama Administration’s war on conventional energy continued this week, as an excellent editorial in the Washington Examiner discusses. The EPA announced that it was going to do a comprehensive study on the potential adverse impacts on water quality and public health of hydraulic fracturing technology.  Hydraulic fracturing has been used for a long time in the oil and gas industry.  Earlier studies, including a 2004 EPA study, have not found significant adverse impacts.  Environmental pressure groups are desperate to limit hydraulic fracturing because of the massive natural gas reserves that have recently become available as a result of advances in the technology.  The United States now has abundant natural gas for at least a couple hundred years-as long as government allows it to be produced.

Last week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that no new leases for offshore oil production would be auctioned until 2014 at the earliest.  This week Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer (D) sent a letter to Salazar demanding that hundreds of oil and gas leases in the Flathead National Forest be cancelled.  Also this week, the Bureau of Land Management settled a lawsuit brought by environmental pressure by cancelling 61 oil and gas leases in Montana because they had not considered the effects on the global climate that result from oil and gas production.

Across the States

Global Warming Heats Up California Politics

Former E-bay CEO Meg Whitman, the leading GOP candidate for the 2010 California gubernatorial election, has campaigned on a pledge to delay implementation of AB 32, a state law that fights global warming by raising energy prices. For the first time, polls this week indicate that Whitman has surged ahead of likely Democratic candidate, Attorney General Jerry Brown, an avowed environmentalist. Similarly, the Senate’s most ardent environmentalist, Barbara Boxer (D), is running even against her two leading Republican challengers, former Hewlett Packard executive Carly Fiorina and former Congressman Tom Campbell. Fiorina in particular has campaigned against Boxer’s support for a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme.

Battle over AB 32 Initiative Intensifies

Greenwire reported this week that Levi Strauss and Google are funding the opposition to a California ballot initiative that would suspend AB 32 until the State’s unemployment drops to 5.5% (it currently stands at 12%).

Around the World

COP 16 in Cancun a Failure (4 Months before It Begins)

Government negotiators are already dampening expectations for the 16th Conference of the Parties to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which will occur this December in Cancun, Mexico. Kunihiko Shimada, principal international negotiator at the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, told Bloomberg that a deal this year is “almost impossible.” Jos Delbeke, who spearheads European Union climate policy at the European Commission, ruled out a “comprehensive legal agreement” in 2010.

Alarmist Ads Banned in the U.K.

The Times this week reported that the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned two government-funded print advertisements that use nursery rhymes to warn people of the dangers of climate change. The ASA ruled that the claims made in the newspaper adverts were not supported by solid science and told the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that they should not be published again.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

Some U.K. government ads on global warming too scary

by Fran Smith on March 18, 2010

in Blog

“Is global warming the new apocalypse?” asks The Times of London in an article focusing on children’s fears about global warming in the context of a scare-mongering U.K. government advertising  campaign to promote climate-change awareness.

Recently the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that some of the campaign’s print ads using nursery rhymes overstated the risks of global warming and were to be banned. But it passed on a TV ad that got almost 1000 complaints that it was too scary.

Check out an earlier CEI post on global warming alarmists’ exploitation of children. Look again at CEI’s response to an earlier apocalyptic video shown at the COP15 Copenhagen meeting on climate change.

The LA Times Refuses To Report Honestly on Costs of Climate Law

by William Yeatman on March 18, 2010

in Blog

Why can’t the LA Times be fair about the costs of AB 32, California’s global warming law?

Last week, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found that the “net jobs impact” of AB 32 is “likely to be negative.” No surprises there-AB 32 is designed to raise the price of energy, and expensive energy hinders economic growth.

The LA Times, however, was unconvinced. The editorial board juxtaposed the LAO analysis with a report from the California Air Resources Board asserting that AB 32 would create 120,000 jobs. The LA Times asked, “Which is right?”

As if the answer is in doubt!

There’s a more important question: Why is the LA Times citing a discredited report? CARB’s rosy economic analysis of AB 32 was eviscerated by a non-partisan peer review panel of scholars.

Then again, I read about the peer review rebuke of CARB’s analysis in the Sacramento Bee, because the LA Times ignored it. How convenient.

Be Careful What You Wish For…

by Iain Murray on March 16, 2010

in Blog

For many years, the climate alarmist movement pushed the development of corn ethanol as the “fuel of the future” on the grounds that it would decrease fossil fuel emissions. As I detail in my book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, massive efforts were devoted to promoting this technology, with a textbook baptist-bootlegger alliance between green groups and Big Corn (most notably Archer Daniels Midland).  Politicians joined in happily, with Al Gore stumping for Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar because of her support for ethanol and countless Presidential candidates in Iowa talking up the fuel.

The result of that push has, it seems, been an increase in fossil fuels.  For the latest on this, see Corned grief: biofuels may increase CO2 at Watts Up With That?

The indirect effects of increasing production of maize ethanol were first addressed in 2008 by Timothy Searchinger and his coauthors, who presented a simpler calculation in Science. Searchinger concluded that burning maize ethanol led to greenhouse gas emissions twice as large as if gasoline had been burned instead. The question assumed global importance because the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act mandates a steep increase in US production of biofuels over the next dozen years, and certifications about life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are needed for some of this increase. In addition, the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard requires including estimates of the effects of indirect land-use change on greenhouse gas emissions. The board’s approach is based on the work reported in BioScience.

Hertel and colleagues’ analysis incorporates some effects that could lessen the impact of land-use conversion, but their bottom line, though only one-quarter as large as the earlier estimate of Searchinger and his coauthors, still indicates that the maize ethanol now being produced in the United States will not significantly reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, compared with burning gasoline. The authors acknowledge that some game-changing technical or economic development could render their estimates moot, but sensitivity analyses undertaken in their study suggest that the findings are quite robust.

Promotion of technologies based on theory rather than practice has been a hallmark of the green movement. Every indication seems to be that their foolish promotion of ethanol has been written out of their history, rather than being treated as a cautionary tale to learn from.

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