Last month, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) suspended wildlife biologist Charles Monnett, who is being investigated by the Department of Interior’s (DOI’s) inspector general (IG). Monnett is the lead author of a 2006 study (linking loss of Arctic sea ice to the first documented finding of drowned polar bears. The paper helped galvanize support for DOI’s listing of the bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Al Gore touted the study in An Inconvenient Truth.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) condemned the IG investigation as a “witch hunt” (Greenwire, Aug. 10, 2011, subscription required). Last week, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Greenpeace sent a letter to DOI Secretary Ken Salazar accusing BOEMRE of trying to muzzle scientists whose research may impede the granting of permits to drill for oil and gas in the bear’s Arctic habitat.
The transcript of the IG’s February 23, 2011 interrogation of Monnett shows that the IG “sent agents with no scientific training to ask decidedly unscientific questions about bizarre allegations relating to the polar bear paper,” CBD and Greenpeace contend. I can’t help but agree. What’s going on? [click to continue…]
A blustery “bullshitting” Al Gore clip is wending its way through the Internet. On August 4, he was speaking at the Aspen Institute FOCAS seminar in Colorado. The minute plus clip is the most interesting part of an hour-and-half long snooze fest—though he does perk it up when he talks about how climate change has fallen from the front burner of the public psyche. He uses several different fecal terms to describe the various valid theories regarding climate change.
Could the rant be the result of science questioning his profitable propaganda?
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There are many reasons to dislike wind power. For some people, giant wind turbines mar scenic vistas. Others don’t like it because it’s an unreliable, expensive source of electricity. I hate it reflexively, because the government forces us to use it, but that’s only an ancillary explanation of my anti-wind beliefs. To me, wind power is most objectionable because it kills things that I enjoy, like human beings.
Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that there were 281 occupational health “incidents” in the wind power industry last year. Since the late 1970s, wind power has killed 78 people. It is ironic, in the Alanis Morissettian sense of the word, that global warming has yet to kill anyone, but wind power—a global warming “solution”—has taken out nearly 4 score humans.
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Environmentalist special interests run the sleaziest attack ads in the business, as has been noted before on this blog, and also by my colleague Marlo Lewis. It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican (like Sen. Scott Brown) or a Democrat (like Sen. Mary Landrieu)—if you don’t toe the green line, then environmentalist advocacy groups will go for your jugular. Almost always, these enviro organizations try to pin an allegation of child abuse on those with whom they disagree. Classy!
Case in point: The American Lung Association’s tasteless new television ad campaign, which I’ve posted at the end of this blog. Here’s how the ALA described the spot in a press release:
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Last week I wrote about the brave automakers who were taking out radio ads opposing the Obama Administration’s proposal to raise Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFE) standards for new cars and light trucks to 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025. This week I must report that thirteen automakers signed on to a 54.5 miles per gallon CAFE standard by 2025. President Obama announced the deal on Friday.
My CEI colleague Marlo Lewis discusses this insanity here. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Tex.), Chairman of the House Science Committee, sent out a press release last night making the point that CEI’s Sam Kazman has made for decades: CAFE kills. Kazman makes the point again here.
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Earlier this week, Politico published an op-ed by former Sen. Majority Leader George Mitchell (1989-1995) and former EPA Administrator William Reilly (1989-1993) that is as intellectually mushy as it is politically devious.
In “Calif. Must Again Lead Way on Emission Standards,” Mitchell and Reilly pretend that the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) proposal to establish a 62 mpg fuel economy standard is the moderate middle between automakers who “protest that the proposal is too demanding” and environmentalists who “want something more stringent.” Horsefeathers!
In September 2010, CARB, EPA, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued an Interim Joint Technical Assessment Report where they considered raising the passenger car fuel economy standard from 35.5 mpg in 2016 to 47 mpg, 51 mpg, 56 mpg, or 62 mpg in 2025.
Let’s not forget that the 2016 standard imposed by EPA, CARB, and NHTSA accelerated by four years the standard Congress set in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which was itself 27% more stringent than the previous standard (27.5 mpg). In May 2011, the Auto Alliance, citing a U.S. Energy Information Administration assessment (p. 26), cautioned EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that a 62 mpg standard would depress auto sales in 2025 by 14%. Team Obama subsequently settled on a 56 mpg standard. That’s a tad less extreme than the 62 mpg standard championed by CARB, but it’s still over the top.
A remarkable study by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) — The U.S. Automotive Market and Industry in 2025 (June 2011) — reveals how cockamamie these proposals are. [click to continue…]
Great news–the Federal Trade Commission is reexamining its textile care labeling regulation! This is the rule, first issued in 1971, that requires those little labels in clothing that tell you “dry clean only” or “wash in cold water” or whatever else is appropriate. Some people find certain of these labels irritating—literally irritating, that is, like when they’re made of stiff fabric that rubs against your neck. Personally, I find them pretty handy, though I’m not sure we need a federal rule to guarantee their presence.
The FTC says its reexamination is part of its systematic review of all its regs. It’s not clear whether the end result will be better or worse. Right now the rule actually prohibits any reference to “professional wetcleaning” in a label (that’s the allegedly eco-friendly water-based type of commercial cleaning, as opposed to traditional solvent-based drycleaning). Perhaps that will change. On the other hand, the FTC is also considering whether to mandate care instructions in foreign languages. That’s sure to make those itchy labels even itchier.
Here’s my suggestion: any label that states that an item can be home-laundered should also state the following, “If your washing machine is a newly-manufactured conventional top-loader, don’t even bother trying to wash this or any other article of clothing.” This would reflect the fact that, as Consumer Reports found several months ago, these washing machine models are now “often mediocre or worse.”
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A government showdown between the Congress and the President will come to a head this morning at 9 A.M. That’s the deadline set by the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee (of the Energy and Commerce Committee) for the Office of Management and Budget to produce documents relating to the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office’s* issuance of a loan guarantee to Solyndra, Inc. The Subcommittee took the rare step of subpoenaing the executive branch agency on Thursday, July 14, by a party-line vote, 14-8.
Here’s the background. In late 2009, Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar rooftop components, was the recipient of the first loan guarantee issued by the Department of Energy pursuant to the “Section 1705 program” created by the 2009 stimulus. Only months after receiving the $535 million loan guarantee, Solyndra pulled back on a planned public offering after a PricewaterhouseCooper’s audit found that the company’s finances “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” In November 2010, the company announced that it would shutter a plant and lay off 170 employees. Last week, Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison made the rounds on Capitol Hill to perform damage control. I suspect that whatever rosy financial numbers he presented were influenced heavily by the billions of dollars in renewable energy subsidies that are still trickling out of the Department of Energy. (So much for the stimulus mantra, “temporary, targeted, and timely,” right?). As such, I wouldn’t trust any data put forth by any renewable energy company until after the stimulus money is (finally) spent.
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The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has started running radio ads complaining about the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to raise Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFE) standards for cars and light trucks to 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025. According to the Detroit Free Press, the sixty-second ads “feature an ominous voice warning ‘after tough times, today’s auto industry is on the road to economic recovery,’ but that fuel economy rules ‘threatens that progress’ –leading to less choice, higher prices, job losses, and an ‘electric vehicle mandate.’
This is the first sign that the auto industry is finally waking up to the reality that their cozy 2007 deal on CAFE isn’t such a good deal after all. CAFE standards are scheduled to increase to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.
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