William Yeatman

Announcements

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) has launched a new global warming website, Climate Depot, run by Marc Morano, former communications director for the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. To visit the site, click here.

In the News

Dissenter on Warming Expands His Campaign
Leslie Kaufman, New York Times, 10 April 2009

Climate Bill Could Trigger Lawsuit Landslide
Tom Lobianco, Washington Times, 10 April 2009

A Dangerous New Global Warming Law
Alan Caruba, Warning Signs, 10 April 2009

The U.N.’s Global Green Raw Deal
Patrick Michaels, Planet Gore, 9 April 2009

Waxman-Markey Litigation Shell Game
Marlo Lewis, OpenMarket.org, 9 April 2009

Alarmists Get Their Wish
Paul Chesser, GlobalWarming.org, 9 April 2009

Wind Power Is a Complete Disaster
Michael J. Trebilcock, Financial Post, 8 April 2009

Can Renewables Meet America’s Energy Needs?
Mary Hutzler, MasterResource.org, 7 April 2009

Outrageous: Waxman-Markey’s Energy Tax
Amy Ridenour, National Center for Public Policy Research, 6 April 2009

Obama Proposes Cap Growth
Donald Lambro, Washington Times, 6 April 2009

News You Can Use

Wind Power Is Not the Answer

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this week in New Jersey said that windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace all the coal-fired power in the United States. In response, Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, told the D.C. Examiner that, “Secretary Salazar is living in Fantasy Land.” According to Pyle, “We would need to install 309,587 giant turbines – about 172 turbines per mile of coast – and hope the wind blows 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

New Study Shows Costs of Canada’s Climate Plans

I was in Toronto, Kingston, and Ottawa this week to enjoy the snow. The way the climate is warming so rapidly it might be the last snow we see for quite awhile-maybe not until December. While I was there, the Ontario Conservative Party released a study that estimates that electric bills will increase by up to $780 per household if the Liberal Party government’s Green Energy Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is passed by the Ontario Parliament. Energy Minister George Smitherman immediately disputed the study’s findings.  He said that electric bills would go up only one percent per year because the higher rates would create a “culture of conservation.”  It’s nice to see that Canadians can be just as loopy as Californians.

It’s Too Late for Obama To Hedge on Climate

Here in Washington, White House Science Adviser John P. Holdren gave interesting interviews to Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post and to Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press. He confirmed to Eilperin something that President Barack Obama seemed to say several weeks ago. The Administration would be open to a cap-and-trade bill, such as the Waxman-Markey draft (which I wrote about last week), that gives away some of the ration coupons to emitting industries. Obama favors auctioning 100% of the coupons, but clearly he and his top advisers recognize that the only way to gain the support of big business special interests is to give them some of the coupons they need to stay in business.

The problem is that the Administration and many Members of Congress have already made plans for spending all the revenue that would be raised by auctioning the coupons.  It may be solved if the revenues generated are much higher in the first eight years of a cap-and-trade regime than the $646 billion estimate in President Obama’s budget submission to Congress. A White House official, Jason Furman, was quoted as saying that they thought the revenues could be two to three times their estimate, or $1.3 to 1.9 trillion. That sounds like enough money to pay off big business and vastly increase federal spending at the same time. However, if the economy remains weak, which it may well do given the policies being pursued by the Congress and the Administration, then there may be a glut of coupons and the auction price may be low.  Cap-and-trade will siphon a lot of money out of the economy while at the same time putting a governor on the economy limiting the upper end of growth to perhaps one or two percent per year. As people’s incomes stagnate and decline, federal revenues are going to drop off a cliff without major tax increases.

Dr. Doom

Dr. Holdren told Borenstein that the Administration was actively considering geo-engineering solutions to stop global warming because the situation is so desperate. It’s relevant here to remember that the first time anyone said we had only ten years left to begin reducing emissions was about seven years ago. Geo-engineering is of course anathema to most global warming alarmists. For them, the only way to save us is to cripple the economy. Therefore, it was no surprise that environmental pressure groups came out swinging against Holdren’s comments. Holdren then quickly sent around an e-mail saying that his remarks had been taken out of context. I mention this story because the idea that Dr. Holdren could be put in charge of engineering the perfect climate is the most frightening thing I’ve heard for many years. Michael Crichton, may he rest in peace, could have written his scariest novel based closely on the real-life ravings of John P. Holdren.

Around the World

Bonn Conference Ends in Failure

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Bonn ended this week. It was the latest round of negotiations to pave the way for the fifteenth Conference of the Parties this December in Copenhagen, where member nations have pledged to conclude negotiations on a successor agreement to the failed Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012.

There was no progress on the most important issue-legally binding emissions cuts. The head of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, said that the numbers discussed for emissions targets for industrialized countries were “well short” of the 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The U.S. delegation spent most of the Bonn talks trying to dampen expectations. European member countries bemoaned the lack of “leadership,” an implicit attack on American inaction. And developing countries continued to reject emissions targets of any kind, while at the same time demanding hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for clean energy technologies and adaptation. Environmentalists were sorely disappointed.

Predictably, the only thing the negotiators agreed upon was the need for more negotiations on top of those already scheduled for Bonn in June and Bangkok in October. They agreed to meet in Bonn again in August, and at an undisclosed location in November, presumably somewhere tropical. These jet-setting diplomats have a tough job-endless, inconclusive meetings at five-star resorts all over the world.

Announcements

• You can now receive tweets on the global warming battle by following cooler_heads on Twitter! You’ll receive links to new blog posts on globalwarming.org and thoughts and links from CEI’s global warming team experts.

• The George C. Marshall Institute has released two new studies on the Economic, Environmental, and Energy Security Consequences of a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

In the News

Video: Marc Morano debating Joe Romm on RollCallTV
Part 1: Starts at 3:45 min.
Part 2: Starts immediately

Congress Balks at Obama’s Cap and Trade Proposal
Wall Street Journal, 3 April 2009

Technology is the Answer to Climate Change
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Wall Street Journal, 3 April 2009

Embracing Trendy Green Policies did not Help the British Tories
Iain Murray and Matthew Sinclair, National Review Online, 1 April 2009

Wall Street Sees “Bucks to be Made” in House Climate Plan
Nathanial Gronewald, New York Times, 2 April 2009

Enviro Group Sues Obama Administration Over New CAFE Standards
Business Week, 2 April 2009

Is Our President a “Carbon Communist”?
Chris Horner, Human Events, 1 April 2009

We’re Experiencing a Very Deep Solar Minimum
NASA, Science.NASA.gov, 1 April 2009

Climate Change Scepticism is Going Mainstream
Chris Ayres, TimesOnline, 1 April 2009

The Obama Administration Risks a Cap and Trade War
Wall Street Journal, 30 March 2009

News You Can Use

We listed the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s March 29 cover story on Freeman Dyson in last week’s news stories, but we want to mention it again.  Nicholas Dawidoff’s fascinating profile of the great physicist focuses on the fact that Dyson is a “Global-Warming Heretic” even though his political views are orthodox left.  The alarmist community is not pleased.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Waxman and Markey Roll Out Monstrosity

The House Energy and Commerce Committee this week released a draft of the energy-rationing bill that Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) plan to mark up in May. The official summary of the bill can be found here and the text of the draft bill here.  A summary analysis by the Heritage Foundation can be found here. The centerpiece of the 648-page bill is a cap-and-trade program, but it contains many other provisions designed to constrict energy supplies and raise prices.

These include: a renewable mandate for electric utilities; funding for carbon capture and storage technology research and a performance standard for new coal-fired power plants; a low carbon transportation fuel standard; new emissions standards for trains, ships, and heavy equipment; developing a smart grid that can control your thermostat; and new energy efficiency standards for buildings, appliances, utilities, industries, and government facilities. All this is quite surprising.  A cap-and-trade program works best if there aren’t a lot of other overlapping programs. Adding all these new programs means that emission reductions achieved by cap-and-trade would come at a much higher cost. It also implies that Representatives Waxman and Markey don’t have much faith in cap-and-trade, which suggests that they have been paying attention to the failing European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme.

Also of note is a requirement that utilities “must demonstrate that its customers have achieved a required level of cumulative electricity or natural gas savings relative to business-as-usual projections.”  It sounds like the bill would do for the family home what the Obama Administration has done to General Motors.

Instead of pre-empting California ‘s emission standards for new vehicles, Waxman and Markey would direct the executive branch to negotiate to try to harmonize federal and conflicting state auto fuel economy programs. However, the draft bill does pre-empt the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. That is a notable recognition that doing so would create a regulatory nightmare.

The cap-and-trade provisions are peculiar and complicated and will require much closer study than I have given them.  The baseline year is 2005, and the targets for emissions reductions are -3% by 2012, -20% by 2020, -42% by 2030, and -83% by 2050.  It appears that the initial reductions could be met through the current economic downturn and by buying a few carbon offsets rather than by making emissions reductions.  Indeed, the carbon offset provisions are remarkably generous.  The cap-and-trade title would also create a huge “strategic reserve” of rationing coupons that could be sold “in case prices rise faster than expected.”  The draft bill does not say how many of the rationing coupons would be given away for free and how many would be auctioned.  That decision will apparently be made later after the various special interests have a chance to threaten and plead.

Waxman and Markey also include provisions to create a trade war and destroy the World Trade Organization. They call it “ensuring domestic competitiveness.”  Similar provisions to “assist” consumers with higher energy bills were left blank and are to be filled in later.

The most astonishing thing in the Waxman-Markey draft is that they state openly that the cap-and-trade provisions “are modeled closely on the recommendations of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership.”  That is to say, the powerful big business special interests that are to be regulated got to write their own regulations. I wonder who will benefit from that, consumers or the big companies that belong to US CAP?  I seem to recall that Chairman Waxman has criticized and even investigated Republicans who introduced bills that were written by outside special interests. That was different, I guess. The second most astonishing thing is how little attention the mainstream media and environmental pressure groups have given to this fact that the regulated are being allowed to write the regulations.

Senate Budget Resolution Includes Good Intentions

Senators passed their version of the budget resolution by a 55-43 margin on Thursday. Several amendments related to the President’s budget proposal to raise $646 billion in federal revenues from a cap-and-trade program were voted and adopted.  The Senate agreed on a 67 to 31 vote to an amendment offered by Senators Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) that says that cap-and-trade should not be included in budget reconciliation legislation.  Reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered and so require only a simple majority to pass.

Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) amendment that states that revenues derived from selling rationing coupons under cap-and-trade should be used to help people pay their higher energy bills was passed by a 54 to 43 vote.  But then the Senate passed a competing amendment from Senator John Thune (R-SD) by an 89 to 8 margin.  It states that any energy-rationing legislation passed should not raise energy or gasoline prices. And by a 54 to 44 vote, Senators agreed to an amendment offered by Senator Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) that urges that any climate legislation passed does not cause significant job losses.

Some people are claiming that passing the Thune amendment means that cap-and-trade is dead in the Senate because cap-and-trade would only work if it raised energy prices. But all these votes are hortatory and non-binding on future Senate votes.  The unavoidable reality is that the colossal revenues that can be generated by auctioning cap-and-trade rationing coupons are an irresistible prospect for many in Congress. Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) told the Washington Post that cap-and-trade was “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time” (you can almost hear his lips smacking). Or as I have been putting it, “the biggest tax increase in history.” So a House-Senate conference committee on the budget could still decide to use budget reconciliation to sneak cap-and-trade through the Senate.

Around the World

Though the G-20 countries decided on a $1.1 trillion package, no agreements were made in regard to climate change. Greenpeace executive director John Sauven’s angst is noted: “Tacking climate change on to the end of the communique (two short paragraphs) as an afterthought does not demonstrate anything like the seriousness we needed to see. Hundreds of billions were found for the IMF and World Bank, but for making the transition to a green economy there is no money on the table, just vague aspirations, talks about talks and agreements to agree.” (parenthetical added)

China now calls for developed countries to give a full 1 percent of their GDPs to developing nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

In April, the President will host a Major Economies Meeting to lay the groundwork for an international agreement at Copenhagen later this year. This is the new name for the process set up by President George W. Bush, which he called the Major Emitters Meeting.

In the States

California

The California Senate voted this week to increase the state’s renewable power mandate to from 20% to 33% of total load by 2020. However Sen. John Benoit ( R-Palm Desert ) said the increased mandate for solar, wind and geothermal power will not only hurt residents who are already having trouble paying their bills, but will also drive manufacturing firms out of the state. “We are going to make ourselves the greenest Third World economy in the world,” he said.

Tennessee

Last Saturday while climate realists were celebrating Human Achievement Hour, some climate alarmists were refraining from using energy for Earth Hour. But not all. Although Al Gore turned off most of his lights, the blue hue from the use of televisions or computers and brightly-lit trees in his garden evidenced his Do As I Say mentality.