Last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis participated on a panel given to the subject of global warming. Joining Marlo on the dais were Joe Bast (President, The Heartland Institute), Steve Milloy (Director of External Policy & Strategy, Murray Energy Corporation), Marc Morano (Publisher, Climate Depot), George Landrith (President, Frontiers of Freedom), and Shannon Smith (CEO, Abundant Power Group). Video below.
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As Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is one of the top three most powerful elected officials in America. It is, therefore, rather disconcerting that his priorities are so out of line with those of the American people. To wit, note the discrepancy between the two excerpts below.
In the first (above), Sen. Reid avers that climate change is not just America’s, but the world’s #1 priority. In the second (below), a Gallup pollster reports that climate change is 14th on a list of 15 priorities, according to U.S. voters.
Secy. of State John Kerry last week exhorted all State Department officials to conclude a new international climate change agreement, integrate climate change with other priorities, and, in general, “elevate the environment in everything we do.” In the same week, climate researchers produced two more studies undercutting Kerry’s opinion that climate change is “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”
The studies address the core scientific issue of climate sensitivity — the question of how much warming results from a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations.
There are two types of sensitivity estimates. Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is an estimate of the increase in ‘steady state’ surface temperature after the climate system has fully adjusted to a doubling of CO2 concentrations — a process assumed to take centuries or longer due to oceanic thermal inertia. Transient climate sensitivity (TCS) is the estimated increase in surface temperature during the 20-year period when CO2 doubling occurs, presumably during the final decades of this century.
ECS is the key variable in both climate model predictions of future global warming and model estimates of the “social cost of carbon” – the damage allegedly inflicted on society by an incremental ton of CO2 emissions.
The IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) estimated a “likely” ECS range of 2°C-4.5°C, with a “best estimate” of 3°C. Since 2011, however, the warming pause and the growing divergence of model predictions and observed global temperatures have been the impetus for several studies finding that IPCC sensitivity estimates are too hot.
Cato Institute scientists Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger maintain a growing list of such studies, which totaled 18 as of February 2014.
The average sensitivity estimate of the 18 studies is just under 2°C. In other words, the AR4 “best estimate” of 3°C is 50% higher than the mean estimate of the new studies. That may be why the IPCC’s 2013-2014 Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) declines to offer a “best estimate.”
A new “best estimate” of 2°C would deflate the scary climate change impacts featured elsewhere in AR5, but recycling the same old 3°C “best estimate” would deflate the IPCC’s claim to be an honest broker. So instead the IPCC chose to lower the low end of the “likely” sensitivity range. Whereas the “likely” range in AR4 was 2°C-4.5°C, in AR5 it is 1.5°C-4.5°C.
That small concession, however, does not dispel the growing challenge to consensus climatology. As indicated in the chart above, the average sensitivity of the climate models used in AR5 is 3.2°C. That is 60% higher than the mean of recent estimates (<2°C). Let’s take a quick look at three studies that have come out this year. [click to continue…]
On February 28, 2014, I took part in a National Review Law and Disorder Debate, “Man vs. Wild: California in Crisis,” in Washington, D.C. The keynote speakers were Representatives David Valadao (R., Calif.) and Jim Costa (D., Calif.), and panel members included me, Maria Guiterrez (from the Central Valley), and Aubrey Bettencourt (a California almond grower). The moderator was National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru. Click here to view the keynote speeches. Below, I’ve posted the panel discussion.
U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry on 7th March 2014 issued his first official Policy Guidance to all Ambassadors and other heads of missions abroad. It’s not about Russia’s aggressive takeover of the Crimea, a part of the sovereign state of Ukraine. It’s not about China’s naval buildup. It’s not about the implosion of Venezuela’s elected dictatorship. It’s not about Iran’s ongoing program to build nuclear weapons. It’s not about the continuing civil war in Syria. It’s about what Secretary Kerry thinks is the major national security threat facing the United States—global warming!
Here is how Secretary Kerry introduces his Policy Guidance:
Leading the way toward progress on this issue is the right role for the United States, and it’s the right role for the Department of State. That’s why I’ve decided to make climate change the subject of my first Policy Guidance as Secretary of State. I have been deeply impressed by the way Secretary Clinton elevated global women’s issues as a top-tier diplomatic priority, and believe me, we’re committed to keeping them there. When the opportunities for women grow, the possibilities for peace, prosperity, and security grow even more. President Obama and I believe the same thing about climate change. This isn’t just a challenge, it’s also an incredible opportunity. And the Policy Guidance I’m issuing today is an important step in the right direction.
One thing’s for sure: there’s no time to lose. The scientific facts are coming back to us in a stronger fashion and with greater urgency than ever before. That’s why I spoke in Jakarta about the threat of climate change and what we, as citizens of the world, can do to address it. That’s why I raised this issue at our senior management retreat here in Washington, and why I’ll be raising it again at our Chiefs of Mission Conference next week. This challenge demands elevated urgency and attention from all of us.
I’m counting on Chiefs of Mission to make climate change a priority for all relevant personnel and to promote concerted action at posts and in host countries to address this problem. I’ve also directed all bureaus of the Department to focus on climate change in their day-to-day work.
Every four years the Pentagon publishes a Quadrennial Defense Review presenting its assessment of the nation’s “strategic challenges and opportunities,” and outlining DOD’s plans and budget priorities for protecting U.S. security interests. The just-published 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review calls the effects of climate change “threat multipliers,” much as the previous 2010 QDR called climate change an “accelerant of instability or conflict.”
These reports contain no trace of Secy. of State John Kerry’s hysteria about climate change being “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” Nonetheless, the usual suspects frequently cite DOD’s assessments as proof that climate change is a national security threat (‘even the generals are worried’).
Let’s look at pertinent passages in the 2014 QDR, beginning with the Executive Summary:
The impacts of climate change may increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions, including defense support to civil authorities, while at the same time undermining the capacity of our domestic installations to support training activities [p. VI].
Well, sure, if we make a long train of assumptions about climate change causing droughts and floods, and the latter causing crop failure, and the latter causing food riots, and the latter causing state failure or exacerbating regional conflict, then it “may” increase the “frequency, scale, and complexity” of future missions. But don’t bet money on it.
So far, the alleged link between global warming and extreme weather “exists” only in the virtual world of non-validated computer climate models. There has been no trend in the strength or frequency of land-falling hurricanes in the world’s five main hurricane basins during the past 50-70 years; no trend globally in accumulated cyclone energy since 1970; no trend in global weather-related losses since 1960 once impacts are adjusted for increases in wealth, population, and the consumer price index; little change in global drought over the past 60 years; and no trend in U.S. flood magnitudes over the past 85 years.
Plus, the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions allegedly responsible for the “climate crisis” added literally trillions of dollars to global agricultural output over the past 50 years, and will likely increase output by many more trillions over the next 35 years. The net impact of CO2 emissions on global food security and, thus, international stability and peace, is likely to be positive in coming decades. [click to continue…]
From 2007 to 2012, the GDP of Texas grew by 13%, compared to 2.5% for the nation as a whole, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman reports. Krugman, however, doesn’t want to give credit to Gov. Rick Perry, the shale boom, or “the more general miracle of free-market capitalism.”
So what explains the Lone Star State’s strong economic performance? Krugman opines:
Partly we’re seeing the continuation of the long-term movement of U.S. population and jobs to the Sunbelt; Ed Glaeser likes to point out that the single best predictor of state growth is the number of winter degree days. On top of that, Texas does do one very important thing right: it has relaxed zoning, which keeps housing abundant and cheap.
In other words, the Texas economy benefits from warm weather and the absence of think-globally, act-locally climate policy — land-use restrictions misleadingly labeled “smart growth.”
In a recent column, Cato Institute scientists Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger find a long-term and accelerating increase in average U.S. experiential temperature — the average temperature Americans experience in their daily lives primarily because of how they vote with their feet.
This map shows population growth rates by state from 1900 to 2010:
This map shows average temperature by state from 1900-2010:
Comparing the two maps “reveals a pretty strong indication that people seem to be seeking out warmer states,” the two scientists write. But they do more than eyeball the relationship, they quantify it. [click to continue…]
In the News
‘All of the Above’ Is an Argument for Cronyism
Robert Bradley, Jr., Master Resource, 28 February 2014
Fact-Checking Bill Maher on Climate Change
Greg Pollowitz, Planet Gore, 28 February 2014
Soon, Climate Change Will Be the Cause of Everything
Charles C. Cooke, National Review Online, 27 February 2014
The Original Sin of Global Warming
Robert Tracinski, The Federalist, 26 February 2014
The EPA’s Breathtakingly Lawless Attempt to Regulate Greenhouse Gases
Marlo Lewis, Forbes, 25 February 2014
Obama’s Rush to Regulate
Ben Goad, The Hill, 24 February 2014
The EPA “Spy” and Double Standards
Wall Street Journal editorial, 23 February 2014
[click to continue…]
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA. The case is the first since Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) to examine the extent of the EPA’s Clean Air Act authority to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The Court is limiting its review to one question:
Whether EPA permissibly determined that greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouse gases.
In other words, the Court is reviewing the agency’s April 2010 Timing Rule.
According to the Timing Rule, regulation of any air pollutant under any part of the Clean Air Act automatically requires anyone seeking to build or modify a “major” stationary source of that pollutant to apply for a Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) preconstruction permit from EPA or a state environmental agency. The EPA began regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) when its greenhouse gas Tailpipe Rule took effect (Jan. 2, 2011). To qualify for a PSD permit, an applicant must demonstrate that the proposed facility or modification will comply with “best available control technology” (BACT) standards.
Because of the narrow scope of review — the Justices have no intention of revisiting Mass. v. EPA, reviewing EPA’s greenhouse gas Endangerment Rule and Tailpipe Rule, or revisiting the Court’s opinion in American Electric Power v. Connecticut that EPA may adopt new source performance standards (NSPS) to regulate CO2 emissions from stationary sources — some observers conclude that UARG v. EPA is not very important and it really doesn’t matter what the Court decides. Not so.
Because BACT standards are facility-specific, they are more intrusive than NSPS, which apply to industrial source categories. Especially if the regulated “pollutant” is CO2, a byproduct of energy use, BACT is an invitation for bureaucratic micro-management of industrial design and operations. As I discuss in a recent Forbes column:
Because there are no bolt-on commercial technologies to reduce CO2 emissions from industrial processes, BACT for CO2 will consist mainly of facility-specific changes in work practices and equipment to improve energy efficiency. Thus, warns the Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group, a petitioner in the case, BACT for CO2 will empower the EPA and its state counterpart agencies to meddle in “every aspect of a facility’s operation and design that affects either its emission of carbon dioxide or its consumption of energy, because the latter is the primary determinant of the former.” Options listed by EPA include everything from changing light bulbs in the factory cafeteria, to replacing draft fans and water heaters, to basic design changes that, in EPA’s words, “fundamentally redefine the nature” of the facility.
More importantly, overturning the Timing Rule could significantly narrow the scope and slow the pace of EPA regulation of CO2 from industrial facilities.
Consider how long it can take to adopt just one NSPS regulation. EPA committed to adopt CO2 NSPS for new coal-fired power plants and petroleum refineries in Dec. 2010. They still have not even proposed NSPS for refineries. Maybe they’ll finalize the NSPS (“carbon pollution”) rule for new power plants this year. But the rule is beset with legal problems (for example, it is based on the fiction that carbon capture and storage, a technology at least 10 years away from commercialization, has been “adequately demonstrated”). If litigants block the “carbon pollution” rule, then EPA won’t be able to move ahead with CO2 performance standards for existing coal plants.
So here’s the big practical difference. The NSPS route forces EPA to fight for regulatory turf one industry at a time. BACT permitting pursuant to the Timing Rule empowers EPA to impose CO2 regulation on “major” sources throughout the economy in one fell swoop.
The political significance is obvious. If the Court nixes BACT for CO2, EPA will be able to establish far fewer regulatory beachheads between now and Obama’s departure. That would facilitate efforts by future Congresses and the next president to halt or even roll back EPA’s greenhouse gas regulatory agenda. [click to continue…]
Yesterday was the deadline for filing comments with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon (SCC) estimates. I submitted a comment letter on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, CFACT, Freedom Action, FreedomWorks Foundation, Frontiers of Freedom, George C. Marshall Institute, Heartland Institute, Rio Grande Foundation, Science & Environmental Policy Project, and Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.
We argue that carbon’s social cost is an unknown quantity; that SCC analysts can get just about any result they desire by fiddling with non-validated climate parameters, made-up damage functions, and below-market discount rates; and that SCC analysis is computer-aided sophistry, its political function being to make renewable energy look like a bargain at any price and fossil energy look unaffordable no matter how cheap.
One point we emphasize that may come as a complete shock to OMB is that there are potentially very large social costs of carbon mitigation.
Those include:
- The public health and welfare risks of policies that raise business and household energy costs.
- The economic, fiscal, and energy security risks of policies that endanger the shale revolution.
- The economic development risks of policies that limit poor countries’ access to affordable energy.
- The risks to international peace and stability of impeding developing country economic growth through carbon caps or taxes and carbon-tariff protectionism.
- The proliferation risks of policies that increase developing country demand for fissile materials and nuclear technology.
- The risks to scientific integrity when government is both chief funder of climate research and chief beneficiary of “consensus” science supporting a bigger role for government in economic decisions.
- The risk to the democratic process when governments promote “consensus” climatology to justify bypassing legislatures and marginalizing opponents as “anti-science.”
Here I will excerpt* the discussion addressing point 7 — the risks climate policy poses to democratic self-government.
“Perhaps the biggest casualty [of the global warming movement] is science,” author Rupert Darwall opines. Climate models produce long-term forecasts that cannot be validated in our lifetimes. Inevitably, “consensus” and “expert judgment” displace reproducibility as tests of scientific validity. Government grants and appointments reward researchers whose findings support the consensus. Since the politicians and agencies funding the research and invoking “consensus” are the same ones seeking greater control over energy markets and energy production, researchers face continual pressure or temptation to cross the line between policy relevance and policy advocacy. Groupthink becomes the norm.
A related casualty is the democratic process. The Obama administration’s M.O. is to “enact” climate policies through regulations Congress has not approved and would reject if introduced as legislation and put to a vote. Such policies include the 54 mpg fuel-economy standard, application of best available control technology standards to major stationary greenhouse gas emitters, and a “carbon pollution rule” that effectively bans construction of new commercial coal generation. Administration officials and their allies invoke the “consensus of scientists” to explain why they “can’t wait” for the people’s representatives to act. [click to continue…]
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