2013

Rep. Pompeo Questions EPA Administrator McCarthy on Obama Climate Plan

by Marlo Lewis on September 18, 2013

in Blog, Features

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Today, the House Energy & Commerce Committee held a hearing on the administration’s climate policies. Although 13 agencies were invited to testify, the administration provided only two witnesses: EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

A notable exchange occurred about two hours and sixteen minutes into the hearing between McCarthy and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.). You can watch the segment on Youtube.

Through persistent questioning, Pompeo spotlighted a key fact well-known to the climate cognoscenti but not to the general public. Even assuming climate change is as bad as the global warming movement says it is, the administration’s policies will have no discernible effect on climate change and produce no identifiable benefit to public health and welfare.

The real objective of the administration’s current and proposed greenhouse gas regulations is not to protect the public but to influence “the international community,” particularly China, India, and other developing nations. Developing country emissions are growing so rapidly that no combination of U.S. domestic actions — not even a magical carbon tax that eliminates all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions — would detectably affect global temperatures.

The administration’s underlying theory, apparently, is that if the U.S. sets a good example, others will follow suit. But that’s been the thinking behind international climate negotiations from day one, and so far it hasn’t panned out. China and India feel no obligation to limit their emissions (and, consequently, economic growth) just because Western nations are willing to shoot themselves in the foot.

My unofficial transcript of the exchange between Pompeo and McCarthy follows:

Pompeo: Ms. McCarthy I want to ask a couple of questions of you. So one of the objectives today is to identify the greenhouse gas regulations that already existed and those in the future — how they actually impact the climate change, right? So you’d agree we want to have a successful climate policy as a result of those sets of rules and regulations that you promulgate? Fair base line statement?

McCarthy: In the context of a larger international effort,  yes.

Pompeo: You bet. And on your Web site you have 26 indicators used for tracking climate change. They identify various impacts of climate change. So you would believe that the purpose of these rules is to impact those 26 indicators, right? So you put a good greenhouse gas regulation in place, you’ll get a good outcome on at least some or all of those 26 indicators.

McCarthy: I actually . . . I think that the better way to think about it, if I might, is that it is part of an overall strategy that is positioning the U.S. for leadership in an international discussion. Because climate change requires a global effort. So this is one piece and it’s one step. But I think it’s a significant one to show the commitment of the United States.

Pompeo: Do you think it would be reasonable to take the regulations you promulgated and link them to those 26 indicators that you have on your Web site? That this is how they impacted us?

McCarthy: It is unlikely that any specific one step is going to be seen as having a visible impact on any of those impacts — a visible change in any of those impacts. What I’m suggesting is that climate change [policy] has to be a broader array of actions that the U.S. and other folks in the international community take that make significant effort towards reducing greenhouse gases and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Pompeo: But these are your indicators, Ms. McCarthy. So . . .

McCarthy: They are indicators of climate change, they are not directly applicable to performance impacts of any one action.

Pompeo: How about the cumulative impact of your actions? Certainly you’re acting in a way . . . you say these are indicators of climate change. Certainly it can’t be the case that your testimony today is that your cumulative impact of the current set of regulations and those you’re proposing isn’t going to have any impact at all on any of those indicators?

McCarthy: I think the President was very clear. What we’re attempting to do is put together a comprehensive climate plan, across the administration, that positions the U.S. for leadership on this issue and that will prompt and leverage international discussions and action. [click to continue…]

Study: Climate Change Is Real (OMG!)

by Marlo Lewis on September 18, 2013

in Blog, Features

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has published a study by 13 scientists that provides “clear evidence for a discernible human influence on the thermal structure of the atmosphere.”

The study, led by Benjamin Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, reports that, over the 34-year satellite temperature record, the troposphere (middle atmosphere) has warmed while the lower stratosphere (the atmospheric layer above the troposphere) has cooled. This is the vertical pattern or “fingerprint” predicted by greenhouse theory.*

Climate models run with only known internal climate variability (such as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation ocean cycle) and natural “forcings” (such as changes in solar irradiance and volcanic aerosol emissions ) do not produce this pattern. Models produce the “fingerprint” only when they are also “forced” with anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

In layman terms, human-caused global warming is real. OMG!

Why, you might wonder, is cooling of the lower stratosphere evidence of man-made global warming? Greenhouse gases warm the planet by blocking outgoing infrared radiation that would otherwise escape to outer space. As greenhouse gas concentrations increase in the troposphere, less outgoing heat energy reaches the lower stratosphere.

Is this a momentous discovery? No, it’s a yawn.

Back in the early 2000s, prominent climate “skeptic” Patrick Michaels explained to me that surface and tropospheric warming combined with stratospheric cooling were strong evidence of anthropogenic climate change. He said: “The Sun doesn’t only shine in Irkutsk” (i.e. in the high northern latitudes where most of the Earth’s surface warming has occurred).

His point? The Sun also shines on the stratosphere. If changes in solar irradiance were the primary cause of global warming, the stratosphere should be warming too. Instead, it’s cooling.

After savoring Pat’s Irkutsk quip for a few moments, I accepted the implication and moved on. Apparently, the Santer team and PNAS still consider it big news.

The PNAS paper is, I suspect, a desperate attempt to divert public attention from the crisis in “consensus” science due to the modeling fraternity’s failure to anticipate a 16-year pause in global warming. Publishing another study ‘proving’ the reality of climate change amounts to ignoring the elephant in the room.

Try as they might to change the subject, however, the elephant is conspicuous in their “clear evidence” that climate change is real.

Here is the vertical profile (“fingerprint”) of changes in atmospheric heat projected by the latest climate models:

Santer all model trend

Here is the observed pattern based on the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) dataset:

Santer RSS trend

Note what’s different: The tropical troposphere warms much faster in the models than in the observations. [click to continue…]

Post image for DOE’s Social Cost of Carbon Mischief (My Comment Letter in Support of Landmark Legal Foundation’s Petition)

DOE’s Social Cost of Carbon Mischief (My Comment Letter in Support of Landmark Legal Foundation’s Petition)

by Marlo Lewis on September 17, 2013

in Features

Yesterday on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I submitted a comment letter to the Department of Energy in support of the Landmark Legal Foundation’s petition to rescind or redo DOE’s final rule establishing first-ever conservation standards for microwave ovens in off and standby mode.

Maybe you didn’t know your microwave oven is destroying the planet when you’re not even using it! The only permanent cure for this problem would be to ban microwave ovens — along with dish washers, automobiles, and other appurtenances of modern life. But since DOE can’t do that, it will do the next best thing — put your appliances on a diet.

The energy savings from the standards will be HUGE! According to DOE (p. 36356), the standards will save 0.72 quads (quadrillion Btus) of energy during 2016-2045. For perspective, the U.S. consumes more than 97 quads annually. So over 30 years, DOE’s rule will save a whopping 75 thousandths of the energy the U.S. consumes each year. Don’t you feel better now? I do. When it comes to saving the planet, our government will leave no flyspeck unturned.

Why bother petitioning to rescind such small potatoes? Why bother submitting a comment letter on the petition?

The microwave rule sets a mischievous precedent. DOE inserted into the final rule the government’s new, higher social cost of carbon (SCC) estimates, and did so without subjecting those estimates to proper notice and public comment.

My comment letter develops the following points:

  • Inserting the administration’s revised SCC estimates into the final microwave rule without subjecting them to public notice and comment during the rulemaking was improper. 
  • SCC analysis all-too-easily becomes a pretext or excuse for expanding regulatory activism and increasing regulatory stringency. Indeed, that is its primary purpose.
  • Carbon’s alleged social cost is highly subjective, deriving from assumptions about inherently speculative issues such as climate sensitivity, how global warming will affect weather patterns, how climate changes will affect economic activity, and how adaptive capabilities will develop as climate changes. Uncertainties multiply through each stage of the analysis, enabling modelers to get pretty much whatever results they want.
  • Contrary to the popular “worse than we thought” mantra, the state of the climate is better than we’ve been told. Catastrophic scenarios are implausible; climate models predict more warming than is actually observed; the science on the key variable – climate sensitivity – is increasingly unsettled; there has been no long-term trend in hurricanes, droughts, floods, or tornadoes, or in properly-adjusted weather-related damages; and since the 1920s, global deaths and death rates related to extreme weather have declined 93% and 98%, respectively. The government’s SCC estimates should be going down, not up. [click to continue…]

New York Times Covers the Ethanol Scam: Ethanol Mandates Spawn Credits That Enrich Wall Street Speculators, Rip Off Consumers

by Hans Bader on September 16, 2013

in Politics

The New York Times ran a front page story Sunday  on a new outrage resulting from one of the biggest scams in America today, ethanol mandates, and how they have made American consumers poorer, while enriching Wall Street profiteers through ethanol credits.  The story is entitled “Wall St. Exploits Ethanol Credits, and Prices Spike,” and focuses on

the rapidly growing role of Wall Street banks in gaming the ethanol credits market. Ethanol credits (or RINs, as they’re called) were created by the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress as a way to assure the inclusion of ethanol in gasoline as an energy-saving measure. But gasoline producers who couldn’t or didn’t want to include ethanol could buy credits from those who did. . . In stepped the speculators, amassing millions of credits and making a killing on the wide spread between the bid and ask prices of the credits. Predictably, this drove the price through the roof: the credits, which cost 7 cents each in January, peaked at $1.43 in July and now are trading for 60 cents.

The net result is that consumers will pay at the pump, notes investment adviser David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors.  As he  observes, ethanol mandates are having very negative “geopolitical effects” as well.  He agrees that “Ethanol was a bad policy, primarily to buy and reward grain-state votes. It spurred grain planting to meet the mandate, but not fast enough, so prices called out for more. The poor were hurt overseas,” and unrest in the Middle East ensued.  As Kotok points out, ethanol is

a massive scam. Our national policy diverts 40% of the U.S. corn crop (14% of the global corn crop) in order to produce a fuel that requires almost as much energy to produce as it supplies. Our ethanol mandate has starved millions of people; I’ve watched it with my own eyes in many countries in my travels. A 2011 study by the National Academy of Sciences estimates that, since 2007, the expanding U.S. biofuels subsidy has fueled 20%-40% of the increase the world has seen in the prices for agricultural commodities. In a country like Guatemala, that means that tortilla prices double and egg prices triple. (Source: [New York Times]).  Ethanol damages engines, too — ask any user; I’ve seen it myself throughout the US, and Popular Mechanics concurs [Link]. Corn ethanol has poisoned our planet while it has lined certain private and politically connected pockets with billions. It has succeeded in raising our costs, for minimal net energy gains. . . .Global urban dwellers at the low end suffered again. . . .The spike in prices this year was a reaction to the shortage in corn caused by the drought last year. Rather than pay high prices for corn, blenders bought stockpiled RINs. The real story of the market was the explosion from $0.02 per RIN, when nobody wanted them, to $0.07 in August 2012 when the short corn crop became clear. This surge attracted the Wall Street players. They benefited when corn prices spiked again in Jan-Feb on the perception that South America crops would not clear the market before US crops came in in August-September. . . .Please remember that this all starts in the corn-farmed, politically charged Iowa caucuses. Which means, it is our sick and rotten political system that produces these behaviors.  That will likely continue until we repeatedly and mercilessly pound the politicians who have sold our nation down a river of ethanol.

[click to continue…]

Risk vs. Risk: California Farmers Worry More about Climate Policy than Climate Change

by Marlo Lewis on September 12, 2013

in Features

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For years the carbon-suppression lobby has been trying to focus public controversy on the issue of whether anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is “real” or whether there is a scientific “consensus” that most warming of the past 50 years is man-made.

In their preferred framing of the debate, accepting the reality of AGW or the supposed “consensus” logically and morally demands acceptance of their policy agenda of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, EPA emission standards for power plants, Soviet-style production quota for renewable energy, Stimulus loans for Solyndra, blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, and the like.

Hogwash. As my organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has argued for the past 16 years or longer, the core issue for policy makers and the public is whether the risks of climate change outweigh those of climate change policy. Which should we fear more: climate change or the taxes, regulations, mandates, treaties, and other schemes supposedly needed to “solve” the “crisis”?

An interest group that seems to grasp the real issue is farmers. “Farmers believe they can dodge climate risks, but they’re wary of government rules,” states the headline of an article in today’s Climate Wire. Reporter Tiffany Stecker begins the article as follows:

Farmers and farm groups have usually been opposed to government climate policies. A new study finds they are not so much skeptics of climate change as they are about the rules that may come with [it] and how they might harm their business.

The new study, funded by the California Energy Commission, conducted by researchers at UC Davis and the Agricultural Sustainability Institute, and published in Science Direct, surveyed 162 farmers in Yolo, California.

Climate policies may affect the adaptive capacity of agricultural systems to respond to climate change if they require resources and costs that exacerbate vulnerabilities. In the words of one farmer in Yolo County, California, ‘‘We can adapt to the environmental aspects of climate change. I’m not sure we can adapt to the legislature.’’

Farmers Climate Risk vs. Regulatory Risk

Figure explanation: Average level of concern for local climate change impacts. Farmers’ responses to the question, ‘‘How concerned are you about the following climate-related risks and the future impact they may have on your farming operations during your career?’’ Responses are ranked on a four point scale ranging from very concerned to not concerned. [click to continue…]

EPA Carbon ‘Pollution’ Rule to Require Carbon Capture and Storage for New Coal Power Plants

by Marlo Lewis on September 12, 2013

in Blog, Features

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Next week the EPA is expected to issue its revised greenhouse gas (GHG) performance standards for new coal- and gas-fired power plants, also known as the Carbon ‘Pollution’ Rule. In addition, in 2014 the EPA is expected to adopt “guidelines” for controlling GHG emissions from existing power plants.

This morning in my in-box, I received an unattributed analysis of the revised Carbon ‘Pollution’ Rule. The analysis is in my opinion completely sound and leaves no doubt the EPA is still aggressively waging regulatory warfare on coal electric generation and, thus, on affordable energy. Here’s the text:

EPA Greenhouse Gas Performance Standards for New Units

1. Next week, EPA will issue greenhouse gas (GHG) performance standards for new coal and natural gas-fired electric generating units (EGUs). EPA’s proposed performance standards for coal-fired EGUs are expected to require carbon capture and storage (CCS). EPA’s justification for these highly aggressive standards is expected to rely heavily on the Kemper County IGCC facility in Mississippi, which is still under construction and not expected to begin operation until next spring.

2. These proposed standards are not appropriate under the Clean Air Act (CAA), which provides that performance standards must reflect “the best system of emission reduction which (taking into account the cost of achieving such reduction and any non-air quality health and environmental impact and energy requirements) the Administrator determines has been adequately demonstrated.”

A CCS-based standard is not the “best system of emission reduction,” or “BSER,” under this language because: (a) Kemper is not even running yet, and so its performance level has not been demonstrated; (b) Kemper could not have been built without significant government support; and (c) Kemper has access to enhanced oil recovery (EOR) sites where the captured CO2 can be injected, whereas coal-fired EGUs built in many areas of the country will not be located near EOR sites and will not be able to store CO2 unless significant new storage sites and pipelines are developed and a permitting and legal liability system are put in place. [click to continue…]

Rep. Trey Gowdy Grills Lisa Jackson about ‘Contact me at home’ Email to Lobbyist

by Marlo Lewis on September 11, 2013

in Blog, Features

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Yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on “Preventing Violations of Federal Transparency Laws.” This is a huge problem.

When agencies flout transparency laws — as for example the White House, the EPA, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) did when negotiating motor vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards under a “put nothing in writing, ever” vow of silence — they obstruct congressional oversight, facilitate corruption, and undermine the government’s accountability to the public.

The highpoint of yesterday’s hearing was an exchange between Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson (a.k.a. “Richard Windsor”). Gowdy pressed Jackson about an email she sent to Siemens lobbyist Alison Taylor on Dec. 8, 2009. In it Jackson writes: “P.S. Can you use my home email rather than this one when you need to contact me directly? Tx Lisa.”

At the hearing, Jackson argued there was no impropriety in instructing Taylor to email her at home, because she and Taylor are friends, and she was trying to move a private conservation to her private account. The text of the email (see bottom of post) contains no hint or suggestion that Taylor emailed Jackson to discuss a personal matter, and none that Jackson was trying to clarify the need to keep discussions of personal matters out of government email. Rather, thanks to Gowdy’s persistent questioning, it’s obvious that Jackson was inviting Taylor to use Jackson’s home email to discuss official EPA business.

Why does that matter?

As Chairman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) pointed out, conducting official business via personal email defeats the intent of transparency laws like the Federal Records Act. The FRA requires agency heads to “make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency.” Communications conducted via government email accounts are automatically captured for record-keeping purposes. In contrast, conducting official business via personal email empowers agency officials to hide or delete conversations with lobbyists and other interested parties rather than preserve those communications for the record.

In the video of the hearing, Gowdy’s examination of Jackson, with Issa’s follow-up, runs roughly from 113:50 to 120:15.

My unofficial transcript of the segment follows.

Gowdy: Ms. Jackson, “Can you use my home email rather than this one when you need to contact me directly.” Why did you say that?

Jackson: Because Alison Taylor, the author in the email chain, was a friend, and I believe a personal friend should use personal email.

Gowdy: Is there an exception for personal friends in the Federal Records Act?

Jackson: Sir, as I have already stated, my intention was to comply with the Federal Records Act.

Gowdy: That wasn’t my question, actually. Is there an exemption or an exception that you’re aware of for personal friends? It’s a simple – it’s not a complicated question. Are you aware of an exception to the Federal Records Act for personal friends? Yes or no? [click to continue…]

America’s Energy Advantage Calls for Nat Gas Export Restrictions – Again. Why Now?

by Marlo Lewis on September 10, 2013

in Features

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Today on Real Clear Politics, Jennifer Diggins, Public Affairs director for Nucor Energy and Chair of America’s Energy Advantage (AEA), urges the Department of Energy (DOE) to ‘slow-track’ applications to export domestically-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG). Other AEA members include Eastman, Huntsman, Celanese, Alcoa, and, most prominently, Dow Chemical.

The question is one of timing. Why now? AEA made a big splash back in March when Dow CEO Andrew Liveris decried “unfettered” LNG exports in testimony before the House Energy & Commerce Committee and on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. But during the past few months, Dow and AEA have not said much about curbing gas exports. Indeed, Dow recently posted a column on its blog extolling the benefits of free trade. There’s not a trace of Liveris’s mercantilist fervor in that column.

I suspect Diggins is responding to “This Gas Is Dow’s Gas,” a song and video produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) lampooning Dow’s anti-gas export campaign as corporate welfare, rent seeking, and political plunder. See CEI’s press release for details and commentary by your humble servant.

To watch the video, click on This Gas Is Dow’s Gas.

Consensus Shmensus

by Marlo Lewis on September 5, 2013

in Blog, Features

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Months ago, indefatigable watchdog Anthony Watts called out Organizing for Action (OFA) for declaring, in a Tweet issued in President Obama’s name, that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: Climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”

OFA was invoking a study in Environmental Research Letters by John Cook and colleagues, who supposedly found that 97% of climate scientists accept the “consensus” position on climate change. Cook manages Skeptical Science, a Web site dedicated to debunking climate “skeptics.”

As Watts and others, such as Andrew Montford of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, point out, Cook et al. did not attempt to estimate the number or percentage of climate scientists who agree or disagree that climate change is “dangerous.”*

But what about Cook et al.’s widely reported finding that 97% of climate scientists believe most of the 0.7°C warming since 1950 is due to the buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gases? Does the Cook team actually demonstrate overwhelming agreement with that core “consensus” position of the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?

Not by a long shot, argue University of Delaware climatologist David Legates and three colleagues in Climate “Consensus” and Misinformation. In fact, less than 1% of the 11,944 science papers (actually, just the abstracts) surveyed by the Cook researchers express agreement with the so-called consensus. [click to continue…]

E-15: Life in the Fast Lane

by Marlo Lewis on September 4, 2013

in Features

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Guest Post by Dave Juday

There is a debate ongoing about the efficacy of so-called e-15, i.e. motor gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol.  The standard blend has always been 10 percent ethanol.  While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted final approval for e-15 in June 2012 for use in late model cars and light duty trucks, the American Automobile Association has cautioned, “this new fuel entered the market without adequate protections to prevent misfuelings and despite remaining questions about potential vehicle damage, even for EPA-approved 2001 and newer vehicles.”

Such concerns are nonsense says the ethanol trade association Growth Energy.  The testing by EPA was “exhaustive,” there are misfueling labels required for pumps, and “additionally, NASCAR has run on … a fuel blended with 15 percent ethanol for over four million miles.”

This last point should give pause.  Are the engines used in the professional stock car racing circuit a fair proxy for the family auto?  For driving conditions?  Is it even really the same e-15 fuel?

The fuel is different.  NASCAR switched to e-15 in 2011 and uses a version that has a 98 octane rating.  Retail e-15 has an octane rating of 90.  Regular grade gasoline available commercially has an octane rating of 87; premium grade is 93.

Driving conditions, of course, are different.  NASCAR winners so far in the 2013 season have logged average speeds of 153 miles per hour at the Brickyard in Indianapolis, 144 miles per hour at Michigan International Speedway, and 129 miles per hour at Pocono Speedway.  Is that a model for the average morning stop-and-go, engine idling commute?

The engines are different.  Consider, the top selling model in the US for 2011 and 2012 was the Ford F-Series pick-up truck which come with V-6 or V-8 engines that range from 302 to 360 horsepower respectively.  For passenger cars, the top seller in 2012 was the Toyota Camry.  The Camry has two engine choices – a 2.5 liter four-cylinder which produces 178 horsepower, or a 3.5 liter that has 268 horsepower.  The average NASCAR engine makes about 750 horsepower. [click to continue…]

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