Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a
tyrant. -- Winston Churchill
“We must get the
science right or we shall get the policy wrong. There is no manmade “climate
crisis”. It is a non-problem. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is
to have the courage to do nothing.”
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, 3 July 2008
********************************************
Major event of the week: EPA proposed rulemaking to control CO2 emissions – with adverse comments by White House and Executive Departments. Here is a short editorial:
The Supreme Court decision of April 2007
required the EPA to treat CO2 as a pollutant under section 202 of the Clean Air
Act (CAA) or explain why it should not do so.
An interesting dynamic has now developed with the release of the EPA’s
draft Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR).
The document of more than 500 pages was
first sent to the OMB, which refused to open it. It is said to be the work of the EPA staff
and not the policy of the administration.
It carries critical comments from all the executive departments affected
by the proposed rulemaking. So it is
clearly an attempt by the EPA staff to put into effect an ambitious control
program – one that would have disastrous consequences for the
It is also clear that by setting the
response period to 120 days, the White House has put the burden on the next
administration to deal with this issue.
Since both candidates, McCain and Obama, have announced
their general support for CO2 mitigation, it will be interesting to see how
they will handle this situation.
But the best solution would be for Congress
to amend the Clean Air Act promptly.
There are several possibilities: They could simply declare that CO2 is
not a pollutant under the CAA. Or they
could go deeper and explain why CO2 increases would not have negative impacts
on health and human welfare. Or they
could deny that CO2 increases have any significant effect on climate -- in
accord with more recent scientific results.
Or they could amend the CAA in a fundmental way and require cost-benefit
analyses; at present, the CAA may not consider costs.
Thus, the key player to save the nation from a certain economic disaster may be John Dingell (D-Mich.), the widely respected author of the original Clean Air Act. -- SFS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1. EPA announcement,
and analysis of disastrous consequences -- by Phil Kerpen
2. Analysis of
EPA-ANPR in Science mag
3. Analysis by
Myron Ebell
4. Wash Post
story, based on EPA staff leaks
5. NY Times story
and editorial – predictable
6. Sen. Inhofe
comments on EPA-ANPR
7. Cap & Trade
leads to income redistribution -- WSJ
8. More evidence
against human contribution to climate change
9. New hope for
Global Warming deniers
*******************************************
NEWS YOU CAN USE
“T. Boone Pickens is half-right: Phasing out natural gas
for electric generation is a good idea – but substituting it with wind power is
not.” SFS
-----------------
Petroleum-driven power plants generate less
than 2% of our electricity. Decreasing the use of petroleum to produce electricity
to absolute zero would do practically nothing to affect “addiction” or
“foreign dependence” on petroleum. Suggesting that giant Solar or Wind Farms
represent an Alternative Energy solution for “petroleum addiction” is a sham
solution that shows a basic ignorance of the Electricity Sector. “Energy is not
a fungible commodity.” -- T.B Horgan
(And that is true whether you believe in Global Warming or not.)
**********************
Gore faces a major challenge shoring up his fellow
Democrats as nearly 30% of Senate Dems opposed the recent Lieberman-Warner
global warming bill. See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=91BCFE7A-802A-23AD-409F-F852F0C562E9
]
Democrats question inconvenient timing of Gore's DC global warming speech as
gas prices soar
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/some-finding-gores-timing-inconvenient-2008-07-16.html
*****************
Ivar Giaever
(Norway), the 1973 Nobel Prize winner for physics (superconductivity): “… global warming has become a new religion.
We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the
number is not important: only whether they are correct” http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3784
**********************************
'Our leaders are in
carbon-cloud cuckoo land' -- Christopher Booker
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/07/10/do1004.xml
***********************
Prominent hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel
reconsiders global warming's impact, finds warming does not increase hurricanes
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/5693436.html -
Emanuel was not disappointed that the research seemed to undercut his
old results. "One gets used to being mistaken, and we follow the evidence
and sometimes the evidence is contradictory and then we have to sort it
out." http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=909e4b84-eb40-4088-950e-e7ed8200e880
Another hurricane expert reconsiders view:
Study says global warming not worsening hurricanes =: http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/hurricanes-to-global-warming-link-blown-away/
What makes this study different is Tom Knutson, a meteorologist with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fluid dynamics lab in
Princeton, N.J. He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and
has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration
on past studies on the dangers of global warming. He said his new study, based
on a computer model, argues “against the notion that we’ve already seen a
really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from
greenhouse warming.”
#####################################################################################
Tony
Snow, RIP a good friend, who died
much too young, of cancer. Our friend Ken Smith,
deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Times, a position for which
Snow, when he was editor, hired him, was only 44 when he perished in 2001. We have lost two good men.
############################################
1. THE
EPA'S BLUEPRINT FOR DISASTER
Washington, D.C. -
July 11, 2008) Today EPA released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
(ANPR) soliciting public input on the effects of climate change and the
potential ramifications of the Clean Air Act in relation to greenhouse gas
emissions.
"The ANPR
reflects the complexity and the magnitude of the question of whether and how
greenhouse gases could be effectively controlled under the Clean Air Act,"
said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.
Today's action is
in response to the April 2, 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v.
EPA, which found that greenhouse gas emissions could be regulated if EPA
determines they cause or contribute to air pollution that may reasonably be
anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. With the ANPR, EPA is
evaluating the broader ramifications of the decision throughout the Clean Air
Act, which covers air pollution from both stationary and mobile sources.
The ANPR solicits
public input as EPA considers the specific effects of climate change and
potential regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. In the advance notice, EPA
presents and requests comment on the best-available science, requests relevant
data, and asks questions about the advantages and disadvantages of using the
Clean Air Act to potentially regulate stationary and mobile sources of
greenhouse gases. The ANPR also reviews various petitions, lawsuits and court
deadlines before the agency, and the profound effect regulating under the Clean
Air Act could have on the economy.
The notice's
publication in the Federal Register begins a 120-day public comment period.
Read the ANPR: http://www.epa.gov/epahome/pdf/anpr20080711.pdf
Fact sheet: http://www.epa.gov/epahome/anprfs.htm
=============================
The
EPA's Blueprint for Disaster: A new regulatory regime from our environmental
bureaucrats would grind the economy to a halt.
By Phil Kerpen
http://article.nationalreview.com/?
q=ZmEwNmFmNTllMDU2NTBkOGY2YWZkMTFlNjU xZDZmZTQ=
Opponents of
massive new energy taxes and regulations breathed a small sigh of relief last
month when the Lieberman-Warner climate-tax bill went down in flames on the
Senate floor. Even 10 Democrats broke from the party line and voted against it,
writing that they would have opposed the bill on final passage. Unfortunately,
power-mad bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency remain undaunted.
The EPA is expected
today to release a document that blueprints a dizzying array of greenhouse-gas
regulatory programs under dozens of different provisions of the 1970 Clean Air
Act. The document, called an "Advanced Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking," will formally begin the process of implementing restrictions
more draconian than those in the Lieberman-Warner bill - all without a single
vote of Congress.
A 5-4 Supreme Court
decision in Massachusetts v. EPA opened the door to this mischief, although
that ruling was limited to motor-vehicle regulation. The EPA blueprint, judging
by various leaked versions, goes far beyond that. At more than 200 pages, along
with an appendix of more than 800 pages, it is a radical plan for reordering
the entire U.S. economy.
Not only would
motor vehicles be regulated in the EPA's new rules - and to a much greater
degree than they are in new regulations coming from the Department of
Transportation - so would light-duty trucks, heavy-duty trucks, buses,
motorcycles, planes, trains, ships, boats, tractors, mining equipment, RVs,
lawn mowers, fork lifts, and just about every other piece of equipment that's
got a motor in it. The new regulations in many cases could require complete
equipment redesigns and operational changes.
The EPA also hopes
to regulate stationary-source emissions by instituting a cap-and-trade scheme
much like the massive, multi-trillion-dollar, hidden-tax-hike scam the U.S.
Senate rejected last month. If unable to do that, the EPA will deliver
something even worse: old-style, command-and-control regulation of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
The worst excess
here is the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program. This would require permitting for businesses
and structures that emit as little as 100 tons of greenhouse gases per year.
That threshold may make sense for some air pollutants. But for carbon dioxide
it's frighteningly low, and would subject millions of never-before-regulated
entities to an expensive and lengthy EPA permitting process. Any building over
100,000 square feet would be pulled in, as would numerous smaller buildings
that produce carbon dioxide. Small businesses, restaurants, schools, and
hospitals that have commercial kitchens with gas burners would all be affected.
This permitting
process would debilitate businesses across the country. It also would grind
state environmental agencies and the EPA to a standstill; inundated with permit
filings, they would unable to pursue many legitimate environmental
protections. Meanwhile, as the permit
backlog grows, all new-construction activity across the country would draw to a
halt.
The EPA blueprint
includes a lengthy discussion of how to avoid these outcomes. For one, the
agency suggests that it can establish its own threshold for permitting. It
can't. While Congress can design a regime with thresholds that it considers
appropriate, the EPA can only stretch the 1970 Clean Air Act so far. (For the
record, the act's author, John Dingell, has stated that the act should not be
forced into service to regulate greenhouse gases.) Even if the major
environmental groups agree to look the other way while more reasonable rules
are implemented, all it takes is one environmentalist to file a lawsuit and
point out how statutory language establishes thresholds for PSD regulation.
That's when the economy stops moving.
The EPA is out of
control. A radical multi-trillion-dollar reordering of our economy deserves at
least the participation of democratically elected legislators and accountable
branches of government. Whether or not Congress chooses to establish a regime
for greenhouse-gas regulation, it must immediately pass legislation to stop the
EPA from implementing its devastating vision for the U.S. economy.
-------------------------------
Phil Kerpen is
policy director for Americans for Prosperity.
******************
2.
BUSH TAKES A FINAL SWIPE, AND SALUTE, AT CO2 EMISSION CURBS
David Malakoff,
Science 18 July
2008: Vol. 321. no. 5887, pp. 324 - 325 DOI: 10.1126/science.321.5887.324a
In the end, he just
couldn't commit. Last week, the Bush Administration essentially ended its
tumultuous relationship with climate change, unveiling two decisions that all
but ensure that President George W. Bush will leave office without making a
binding commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
On 9 July, Bush and
the other leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrial powers signed a largely
symbolic pledge to help trim global emissions by 2050, rejecting stricter
language. Then, on 11 July, the Administration announced that it would not use
the nation's leading clean-air law to regulate heat-trapping gases, effectively
sidestepping a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Both announcements
reflect the fierce internal disagreements that have become hallmarks of the
Administration's climate policy. As a presidential candidate in 2000, Bush
backed using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. But he quickly
backpedaled after winning office. State and local officials continued to press
for action, however, arguing that carbon dioxide was a "pollutant"
covered by the law (Science, 8 September 2006, p. 1375). And last year their
arguments prevailed, when the Supreme Court ordered the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to explain why it wasn't regulating the gas.
The Administration
split over how to respond. One faction, led by senior EPA officials, drafted a
detailed rationale for using the law to attack climate change. But that road
map drew furious objections from Vice President Dick Cheney and other White
House officials, including presidential science adviser John Marburger,
according to documents released by EPA. A quartet of Cabinet members also
chimed in, according to EPA; the secretaries of Agriculture, Transportation,
Commerce, and Energy complained that it did not "fairly recognize the
enormous and, we believe, insurmountable burdens, difficulties, and costs"
of the strategy.
EPA chief Stephen
Johnson told reporters that the infighting convinced him that "the Clean
Air Act is the wrong tool for the job" and that it would be impossible to
forge a consensus response "in a timely manner." Instead, he issued a
588-page document that laid out dozens of complex questions raised by the law.
The document also laid bare the squabbling and asked the public to join the
debate. Johnson said he hopes the move will convince Congress that entirely new
laws are needed to deal with climate change.
…
**********************************************
3. EPA
RELEASES ANPR
Myron Ebell, CEI
The Environmental Protection Agency on July
11 released an Advance
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for regulating carbon dioxide emissions under
the Clean Air Act. This is the administrations response to the Supreme
Courts 5 to 4 decision in April 2007 that the EPA did have authority under the
act to regulate CO2. This advance notice is not so much a request for public
comments as it is a draft regulatory rule several hundred pages long. However,
it will indeed be open for public comment for 120 days beginning on the day it
is published in the Federal Register in the next week or two.
The ANPR was accompanied by a short
introduction by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson explaining why he thought
that the EPA document demonstrated why using the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2
would be inappropriate, plus eight letters from the heads of other departments
and agencies (Energy, Commerce, OIRA, etc.) summarizing their objections and a
ten page-memo highlighting the problems such regulation would cause. In
addition, the White House put out a
strong statement that argues that the EPA notice demonstrates the folly of
trying to use the Clean Air Act to regulate something it was never designed to
regulate and that calls on Congress to take action immediately to avoid the
regulatory train wreck that will ensue if EPA is allowed to proceed.
It may well seem odd that the White House
should condemn a document produced by the administration and approved by the
White Houses Office of Management and Budget. But it makes sense. If OMB
had tried to edit the document to conform to presidential policy (and make it
less insane), they would have invited widespread and scathing criticism that
they were censoring the EPA, ignoring and overruling expert opinion, trying to
derail regulation mandated by the Supreme Court, persecuting scientists,
kicking puppies, etc. This way, they are offering the Congress and the public a
view of what is in store for the country if EPA is allowed to do what the
career EPA staff are clearly eager to do. The result would be a bewildering
number of new regulations that would be litigated for years, which once
implemented would be colossally expensive and probably ineffective at reducing
carbon-dioxide emissions. The Congress and the next administration now have no
excuse not to know what is coming unless they act to prevent it.
***********************
4. EPA WON'T ACT ON EMISSIONS THIS YEAR
Instead of
New Rules, More Comment Sought
By Juliet Eilperin and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers, July 11,
2008
The Bush
administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas
emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme
Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is
appropriate now.
The Environmental
Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further
public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and
welfare -- a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists
have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.
The Supreme Court,
in a decision 15 months ago that startled the government, ordered the EPA to
decide whether human health and welfare are being harmed by greenhouse gas
pollution from cars, power plants and other sources, or to provide a good
explanation for not doing so. But the administration has opted to postpone
action instead, according to interviews and documents obtained by The
Washington Post.
To defer compliance
with the Supreme Court's demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy
path, editing its officials' congressional testimony, refusing to read
documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees,
requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of
curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on
fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in
wider regulatory action.
The decision to
solicit further comment overrides the EPA's written recommendation from
December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to
allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare.
Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the
45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection,
and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also
bringing economic benefits, EPA's analyses found.
"They argued
that this increase in regulation should be on the next president's
record," not Bush's, said a participant in the lengthy interagency debate,
referring principally to officials in the office of Vice President Cheney, on
the White House Council on Environmental Quality, on the National Economic
Council and in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Several EPA officials, speaking on the
condition of anonymity, said that throughout the process, White House officials
instructed the agency to change their calculations with the aim of reducing the
"social cost of carbon," a regulatory term that reflects the economic
burdens stemming from greenhouse gas emissions.
Career EPA
officials argued that the global benefits of reducing carbon are worth at least
$40 per ton, but Bush appointees changed the final document to say the figure
is just an example, not an official estimate. They prohibited the agency from
submitting a 21-page document titled "Technical Support Document on
Benefits of Reducing GHG Emissions" as part of today's announcement. "The administration didn't want to show
a high-dollar value for reducing carbon," said one EPA official, adding
that the administration cut dozens of pages from a draft that outlined
cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases.
Some officials said
the administration has also minimized the benefits of tighter fuel-economy
standards by assuming that oil will cost $58 a barrel in the future, compared
with its current price of $141.65. While the EPA calculated in a May 30 draft
that stricter standards would save U.S. society $2 trillion by 2020, officials
revised that figure last month -- using the $58 estimate -- to predict that they
would save only between $340 billion and $830 billion.
The proposal that
the EPA will unveil today, known as an advance notice of proposed rulemaking,
stands in stark contrast to the agency's original Dec. 5 finding -- backed up
by a lengthy scientific analysis -- that global warming is unequivocal, that
there is "compelling and robust" evidence that the emissions endanger
public welfare and that the EPA administrator is "required by law" to
act to protect Americans from future harm.
That finding appeared
in a 37-page document prepared by an EPA task force of 60 to 70 people that was
discussed at dozens of interagency meetings led by Susan Dudley, the head of
the OMB's regulatory review office. She "understood that some regulation
was inevitable," a participant in these meetings said, particularly since
Bush promised, a month after the April 2007 Supreme Court ruling, to "take
the first steps toward regulations" to curb emissions by the end of last
year.
Rep. Edward J.
Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence
and Global Warming, said yesterday, "If this administration spent the same
effort fighting global warming as they do editing and censoring global warming
documents, the planet might not be in such dire straits." Markey, whose staff was allowed to review the
Dec. 5 EPA document but not to keep a copy, called the White House's reaction
to its own experts' opinions "distressing and unjust."
White House
spokesman Tony Fratto declined to discuss the administration's decision-making
but disputed the assertion that "we are trying to drag our feet." He
said regulating is "a long process" and it is wrong to assert that it
"could be done quickly and easily" in the aftermath of the Supreme Court
decision. "The EPA has worked diligently to try to get this done," he
added.
EPA spokesman
Jonathan Shradar said: "You don't just wake up one day and say, 'Here's
the decision.' It's a long process with lots of thought, lots of analysis and
lots of research that gets you to that decision point." When the EPA
releases its notice today, he said, "We're going to be more transparent
than we've been, laying it all out and saying, 'How should we do this?' "
The full story of
how the finding of public endangerment and Bush's promised greenhouse
regulations got sidetracked is still not known. Participants have not
disclosed, for example, which White House official ordered an EPA deputy
associate administrator to withdraw the finding last December after it was
transmitted by e-mail to Dudley's office. An official said the person involved
was "more senior than the head of OMB," but declined to be more
precise.
The idea of
instituting complex new controls on emissions by cars, ships, aircraft, power
plants, factories and office buildings was never greeted warmly by any senior
Bush appointees, but officials said that after the Supreme Court's slap they
divided into roughly two groups: those who felt that regulating under the Clean
Air Act was unavoidable, reasonable and best done under Bush; and those who
wished to sidestep the law and press for its eventual modification after delay
and public debate.
In the former camp,
at least initially, was EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, a career official
who previously oversaw pesticide regulations, and much of the agency's senior
ranks. After the court ruling, in Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental
Protection Agency et al.," people were bouncing back and forth into each
other's offices, saying, 'Can you believe this? Look at this decision; look at
the language; this is so strong,' " recalled one agency official, who like
the others asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. "People
thought, 'We are going to move forward and do the right thing.' "
Within a week,
Johnson met with roughly 20 officials in the EPA's fifth-floor conference room
and said they would undertake a major effort to meet the court's demand.
Despite what one participant described as resistance from Cheney's office and
other opponents of regulation, Bush signed an executive order on May 14, 2007,
directing the EPA to work with the Transportation, Energy and Agriculture
departments to "take the first steps toward regulations" to reduce
the nation's gas usage by 20 percent over the next decade.
The agency
subsequently spent $5.3 million on contractors and solicited 500 comments from
government experts on the technical underpinning for a formal finding that
man-made global warming caused dangers; the question was, to what? Officials
said some advocated saying that it endangered both human welfare and health,
instead of just welfare; while others -- reflecting broad utility and coal
industry concerns -- argued that invoking health would lead more quickly to
costly regulation of carbon dioxide emissions by power plants as well as cars.
In a late October
briefing, Johnson's staff warned him against leaving out health risks, noting
in a PowerPoint presentation that doing so "creates potential for
confusion, criticism, suspicion -- e.g., is EPA downplaying public health risks
and/or ignoring the science of climate change, in order to avoid doing
more?" But Johnson, seconded by top
deputies such as then-Deputy Associate Administrator Jason Burnett, decided he
could sidestep the health issue. "The idea was to cabin it off to 'welfare,'
" a former EPA official said. "There was a general feeling that you
wanted to limit the findings as much as you could." Even within the EPA, the details of how much
auto emissions should be limited provoked fierce arguments. Some officials
began carrying around copies of Bush's executive order, waving it while arguing
with senior political appointees.
But broader
concerns over the regulatory "domino effect" that would be caused by
any endangerment finding were expressed by members of the National Economic
Council, the Council on Environmental Quality, and officials such as OMB
general counsel Jeffrey A. Rosen and Cheney energy adviser F. Chase Hutto III,
several meeting participants said. One
said that Rosen asked at one meeting if carbon dioxide emissions from a
tailpipe could be treated differently than those from a power plant, wondering
if the molecules are different. The answer was that they are not.
Hutto, a former
Cato Institute intern and Bush campaign volunteer during the Florida vote
recount in 2000, whose grandfather patented at least seven piston inventions
for the Ford Motor Company, has "an anti-regulatory philosophy and concern
about what regulation means for the American way of life. He would talk, for
example, about not wanting greenhouse gas controls to do away with the large
American automobile," said the meeting participant. A spokeswoman for Cheney's office said Hutto
had expressed opinions at the interagency meetings, but she declined to discuss
what they were.
By late November, Johnson
had held a meeting with his staff at which he advocated finding a danger to
public welfare and praised the agency's technical supporting document as
"excellent." But when Burnett sent the proposal to the White House,
the OMB staff refused to open it, and it sat in limbo for months. Instead, the
Bush administration supported legislation to tighten fuel-economy standards,
but by less than the EPA had been considering.
Then, on March 27,
Johnson returned to the EPA's fifth-floor conference room to inform his staff
that he would abandon the idea of drafting a formal rule and would instead call
for the "advanced notice," which only invited comment on possible
regulation. This would avoid "any unintended consequences" that could
stem from a broad rule curbing carbon dioxide, he said. "I know some people are going to say
we're kicking the can down the road," Johnson said as he faced a group of
angry career officials. But he said that was not the case.
----------------------------------------------
Staff researchers
Julie Tate and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
******************************
5. DECISIONS SHUT DOOR ON BUSH CLEAN-AIR STEPS
By Felicity Barringer, NY Times, July 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/washington/12enviro.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1215869464-YZNecIOfJFIn0VJK+2Q5jQ
Any major steps by
the Bush administration to control air pollution or reduce emissions of
heat-trapping gases came to a dead end on Friday, the combined result of a
federal court ruling and a decision by the head of the Environmental Protection
Agency.
In the morning, a
federal appeals court struck down the cornerstone of the administration's
strategy to control industrial air pollution by agreeing with arguments by the
utility industry that the E.P.A. had exceeded its authority when it established
the Clean Air Interstate Rule in 2005. The court, the United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit, said the rule, which set new requirements
for major pollutants, had "fatal flaws."
A few hours later,
the E.P.A. chief rejected any obligation to regulate heat-trapping gases like
carbon dioxide under existing law, saying that to do so would involve an
"unprecedented expansion" of the agency's authority that would have
"a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy,"
touching "every household in the land."
Taken together, the
developments make it clear that any significant new effort to fight air
pollution will fall to the next president.
The comments by the
E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, reinforced a message that the
administration had been sending for months: that it does not intend to impose
mandatory controls on the emissions that cause climate change. John Walke, a
lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental
group, said, "As a result of today, July 11, the Bush administration has
failed to achieve a single ounce in reductions of smog, soot, mercury or global
warming pollution from power plants."
Mr. Johnson said he
was "extremely disappointed" in the court decision "because it's
overturning one of the most significant and health-protective rules in our nation's
history." But on climate change, he
said laws like the Clean Air Act were "ill-suited" to the
complexities of regulating greenhouse gases.
Mr. Johnson's
comments appeared as a preface to a report by the E.P.A. staff sketching out
how the emission of heat-trapping gases, particularly by vehicles, might be
handled under the Clean Air Act. The report was intended to address a Supreme
Court directive that the agency decide whether such gases threaten people's
health or welfare. But it also reflects the deep disapproval of controls on
such gases by the White House and agencies like the Transportation, Agriculture
and Commerce Departments. In effect, Mr.
Johnson was simultaneously publishing the policy analysis of his scientific and
legal experts and repudiating its conclusions.
Mr. Johnson alluded
to the difficulty of applying the Clean Air Act, designed for conventional
pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, to greenhouse gases. Because interagency consensus could not be
reached on a road map for such regulation, Mr. Johnson said, he was
simultaneously publishing his staff's work and the comments of its critics,
which had a definite tinge of hostility toward the E.P.A. regulators. For instance, the chairman of the Council on
Environmental Quality, James Connaughton, wrote that the E.P.A.'s staff
"myopically focuses on the Clean Air Act and ignores or understates major
intended and unintended consequences that would flow from misapplying
decades-old regulatory tools."
The final E.P.A.
document, known as an advance notice of proposed rule making, did not contain a
staff analysis about the economic benefits of regulation that had been in an
earlier draft. That May 30 draft, which circulated widely in Washington, set
the benefits of regulation at up to $2 trillion. The final version, based on
the revised assumption that gasoline would cost about $2.20 per gallon in the
foreseeable future, estimated the economic benefit at no more than about $830
billion.
--------------------------------------------------
Matthew L. Wald
contributed reporting.
======================================
Posturing
and Abdication
July 13, 2008 NY
Times EDITORIAL
The Bush
administration made clear on Friday that it will do virtually nothing to
regulate the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. With no shame and no
apology, it stuck a thumb in the eye of the Supreme Court, repudiated its own
scientists and exposed the hollowness of Mr. Bush's claims to have seen the
light on climate change.
That is the import
of an announcement by Stephen Johnson, the administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency, that the E.P.A. will continue to delay a decision on whether
global warming threatens human health and welfare and requires regulations to
address it. Mr. Johnson said his agency would seek further public comment on
the matter, a process that will almost certainly stretch beyond the end of Mr.
Bush's term.
The urgent problem
of global warming demands urgent action. And the Supreme Court surely expected
a speedier response when - 15 months ago - it ordered the E.P.A. to determine
whether greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles (and, by extension, other
sources) endangers human welfare and, if so, to issue regulations to limit
emissions.
Mr. Bush initially
promised to comply, and last December, a task force of agency scientists
concluded that emissions do indeed endanger public welfare, that the E.P.A. is
required to issue regulations, and that while remedial action could cost
industry billions of dollars, the public welfare and the economy as a whole
will benefit.
The agency sent its
findings to the White House. The details of what happened next are not clear.
But investigations by Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Edward Markey
have established that the White House, prodded by Vice President Dick Cheney's
office, decided to ignore the findings - refusing at first to even open the
e-mail containing them and then asking Mr. Johnson to devise another response
that would relieve the administration of taking prompt action.
Along the way, the
administration engaged in what Senator Boxer has aptly called a "master
plan" to ensure that the E.P.A.'s response to the Supreme Court's decision
would be as weak as possible. This campaign
of obfuscation and intimidation included doctoring Congressional testimony on
the health effects of climate change; ordering the E.P.A. to recompute its
numbers to minimize the economic benefits of curbing carbon dioxide; and
promoting the fiction that the modest fuel-economy improvements in last year's
energy bill would solve the problem of carbon dioxide emissions from
automobiles.
All this is
unfortunate but not surprising. Mr. Bush spent years denying there was a
climate change problem. And while he no longer denies the science, he still
insists on putting the concerns of industry over the needs of the planet.
We were skeptical
last week when Mr. Bush joined other world leaders in a pledge to halve global
greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century. We worried that without
nearer-term targets there would be too little pressure on governments to act.
Now we have no doubt that he was merely posturing. The next president, armed
with the E.P.A.'s findings, can and must do better.
*******************************************************
6.
INHOFE SAYS EPA’S CLIMATE ANNOUNCEMENT IS A 'NIGHTMARE SCENARIO'
Believes Regulations will
Bankrupt the American Economy
WASHINGTON, DC Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member
of the Environment and Public Works Committee, today expressed concern over the
Environmental Protection Agency’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR)
soliciting public input on the effects of climate change and the potential
ramifications of the Clean Air Act in relation to carbon dioxide emissions. The
notice is in response to the April 2, 2007, Supreme Court decision in
Massachusetts v. EPA.
Senator Inhofe agrees with Administrator Steve Johnson, who stated, Regulation
under the Clean Air act could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA
authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the
economy and touch every household in the land.
Obviously the concept of regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act is
flawed and the Act must be amended by Congress," Senator Inhofe said.
"Today’s notice should concern all lawmakers, no one should want the EPA
to exercise the kind of power and authority that the career staff at EPA
contemplates.
Just last month the United States Senate considered and soundly rejected the
climate cap-and-trade proposal known as the Lieberman-Warner Bill. It is ironic
that the EPA has proposed an even more economically destructive scheme this
close to that Bill’s demise. If Congress does not act, then the resulting
regulations could be the largest regulatory intrusion into American’s personal
lives, a nightmare scenario. Big brother is alive and well in the career ranks
at the EPA.
****************************
7. CAP
AND REDISTRIBUTION DOWN UNDER
Wall Street
Journal, July 14, 2008 [ Courtesy NCPA]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121597161575549059.html
The Group of Eight
may be waking up to the cost of fighting global warming, but in Australia, the
opposite is happening. Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd has promised to implement an emissions trading scheme by 2010. Rudd just wants to do what every Labor
politician likes: tax industry and redistribute the proceeds, at huge cost to
the economy, says the Wall Street Journal.
Earlier this month,
economist Ross Garnaut released a report on climate change and how to combat
it. The report says the solution is in
removing the links between economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions:
o The report suggests selling artificial
permits that allow companies to "pollute."
o Industry would either fold under the cost
burden or pass those costs onto consumers.
o Meanwhile, the government would haul in huge
revenues from the permit sales.
Garnaut and Rudd
both acknowledge that emissions trading would be costly -- especially in a
country where natural resources account for around half of all exports. To alleviate this government-created problem,
the Garnaut Review suggests some government-directed money shuffling:
o Up to 30 percent of sales revenues would go
to trade-exposed, emissions-intensive export industries; in essence, this means
the government would pay companies to stay in Australia rather than move to a
country that doesn't impose arbitrary costs on business.
o Another 30 percent of this indirect tax
would go to research, development and commercialization of new, low-emissions
technologies.
o The bulk of the proposed handouts are
reserved for households, to relieve the regressive income distribution effects
of the emissions trading system.
The Garnaut Review
estimates that Australia accounts for only 1.5 percent of the world's total
greenhouse gas emissions; therefore, what Canberra does is largely irrelevant,
says the Journal.
*****************************************
8. NO
SMOKING HOT SPOT
David Evans |
July 18, 2008
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html
I DEVOTED six years
to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I
am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that
measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change
and forestry sector. I've been following the global warming debate closely for
years.
When I started that
job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed
pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other
suspects. The evidence was not
conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to
act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together
and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political
support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and
useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new
evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main
cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that
carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global
warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my
mind. What do you do, sir?"
There has not been
a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and
our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The
greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years,
and cannot find it.
Each possible cause
of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming
occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a
hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been
measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with
thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the
atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot
spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So
we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the
global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature, then I would be an
alarmist again.
When the signature
was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists
objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be
accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds
of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that
they missed the hot spot.
Recently the
alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead
take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run
the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say
that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If
you believe that you'd believe anything.
2. There is no
evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global
warming. None.
There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory
suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is
hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon
emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
3. The
satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend
ended in 2001,
and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the
temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the
"urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer
stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation
changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we
can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data,
and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global
temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite
only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
4. The new ice
cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million
years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the
accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about
which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial.
The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their
relevance. The last point was known and
past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice
cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global
warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps
would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's
assertion.
Until now the
global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest.
Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming. So far that debate has just consisted of a
simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience
is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon
emissions. In the minds of the audience,
the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the
alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely
asserted, not proved. If there really
was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think
we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent
$50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual
evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of
observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon
emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations
are not evidence, they are just theory.
What is going to
happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The
Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce
carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is
not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to
light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to
be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen
through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions,
they will be seen likewise.
The onus should be
on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are
necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the
evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.
------------------------------------------------
Dr David Evans
was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.
********************************
9. NEW
HOPE FOR GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS
By Christopher
Chantrill
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/new_hope_for_global_warming_de.html
July 12, 2008
American Thinker
Why would anyone be
a global warming denier? What's the point? You earn the scorn of Al Gore and
maybe Dr. James Hansen, NASA's pre-eminent climate scientist will call for you
to be put in jail. Of fossil fuel company CEOs, Hansen recently testified to
Congress: “In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against
humanity and nature.” If Dr. Hansen
turns out to be wrong about climate change should he be tried for high crimes
and misdemeanors too? Steve McIntyre and his collaborators at climateaudit.org
have already found one big error in Dr. Hansen's GISS global temperature data
series. How many mistakes add up to a felony?
But things are
looking up for the global warming skeptics. First of all there is the global
temperature. After holding constant since 1998 it has dropped markedly in the
last two years. You can see the latest numbers at Dr. Roy Spencer's home page.
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm#satellite-temps
Recently the Germans prudently declared a ten-year hold on non-stop global
warming. What with a flip in the Gulf Stream they realized that the numbers
weren't going to look too good for the alarmists in the next few years.
"There is a long-periodic oscillation that will probably lead to a lower
temperature increase than we would expect from the current trend during the
next years," they wrote. Clearly, more research is needed.
The World Bank in a
"secret" report has found most of the recent increase in food prices
was due to biofuels production. Writes Aditya Chakrabortty in the lefty
Guardian: Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than
previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained
by the Guardian. Apparently, according to Chakrabortty, the World Bank
refrained from publishing the report to avoid embarrassing President Bush! The
US recently issued a report blaming China and India for the food price
increases and this new report "emphatically contradicts" it. I say to
heck with President Bush and the evil biofuels program that he rammed through
Congress with the help of Halliburton in the teeth of opposition from
sensitive, caring environmentalists and advocates for the global poor. Let's
teach President Bush a lesson and stop biofuel subsidies now! What do you say,
Senator Obama? Here is an opportunity for real change.
But the most
fascinating and encouraging news for the deniers is from Australian
astrophysicists I.R.G. Wilson, B.D. Carter, and I.A. Waite. They have developed
a theory that the sunspot cycle and its intensity is driven by the
gravitational relationships between the Sun and the Jovian planets Jupiter and
Saturn. The Sun wobbles a bit around the center of the Solar System. Sometimes
the center of the Solar System lies outside the surface of the Sun, only 1,000
times heavier than Jupiter and 3,000 times heavier than Saturn. All that
wobbling seems to affect the behavior of the Sun. Here is the nub of the paper,
as explained by author Ian Wilson to Andrew Bolt. It supports the contention
that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in
the next decade and remain low for about 20 - 30 years. On each occasion that
the Sun has done this in the past the World's mean temperature has dropped by ~
1 - 2 C. Wilson and Co. should talk to the Germans who think that the cooling
will only last for 10-15 years and try to come up with a cooling consensus.
Either way, it adds up to a comfortable truth for Al Gore who can now feel
virtuous about warming up the planet with his mega-mansion and his compulsive
jet-travel habit.
It's all so
confusing. Liberals tell us that we mustn't develop energy resources because of
the impact on the polar bear -- even though polar bear numbers are on the
increase. We shouldn't develop oil resources in ANWR because it is a pristine
wilderness. We shouldn't develop offshore oil resources because 40 years ago
there was an oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel. Anyway there's no point in
developing oil and gas resources because it won't make any difference to the
price of gasoline. Anyway we are running out of oil and gas so there isn't any
point in developing any more oil and gas resources. We shouldn't mine coal because
coal creates global warming. We shouldn't develop nuclear power because Jane
Fonda once made a scary movie about it. We should develop solar and wind power,
"renewables," even though both are extremely expensive right now. But
we shouldn't build wind farms where Ted Kennedy could see the wind turbines
from his window.
And now with a straight face liberals say we'll have to starve the people in order to save the planet. Now who's in denial?