By Shikha Dalmia, Fortune
The Reid energy bill abandons cap-and-trade, dooming the cause.
Future historians will pinpoint Democratic Sen. Harry Reid’s energy legislation, released Tuesday, as the moment that the political movement of global warming entered an irreversible death spiral. It is kaput! Finito! Done!
This is not just my read of the situation; it is also that of Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate-turned-Democratic-apparatchik. In his latest column for The New York Times, Krugman laments that “all hope for action to limit climate change died” in 2010. Democrats had a brief window of opportunity before the politics of global warming changed forever in November to ram something through Congress. But the Reid bill chose not to do so for the excellent reason that Democrats want to avoid an even bigger beating than the one they already face at the polls.
Not only does the bill avoid all mention of an economy-wide emission cap through a cap-and-tax--oops, cap-and-trade--scheme, it even avoids capping emissions or imposing renewable electricity standards on utility companies, the minimum that enviros had hoped for. Beyond stricter regulations on off-shore drilling, it offers subsidies to both homeowners to encourage them to make their homes more energy efficient and the nation’s fleet of trucks to use cleaner burning natural gas. This is not costless, but it is a bargain compared with the “comprehensive” action on energy and climate change that President Barack Obama had been threatening.
Krugman blames this outcome on--you’ll never guess this!--greedy energy companies and cowardly Republicans who sold out. But the fault, Dear Paul, lies not in them, but in your own weakling theories.
The truth is that there never has been an environmental issue that has enjoyed greater corporate support. Early in the global warming crusade, a coalition of corporations called United States Climate Action Partnership was formed with the express purpose of lobbying Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It included major utilities (Duke Energy ( DUK - news - people )) and gas companies (BP ( BP - news - people )) that stood to gain by hobbling the coal industry through a cap-and-trade scheme. Meanwhile, the Breakthrough Institute, a highly respected liberal outfit whose mission is to rejuvenate the progressive movement in this country, points out that environmental groups spent at least $100 million over the past two years executing what was arguably the best mobilization campaign in history. Despite all of this, notes Breakthrough, there is little evidence to suggest that cap-and-trade would have mustered more than 43 votes in the Senate.
This means that lucre is not the only motivating force in politics. Indeed, lobbyists are effective generally when they represent causes that coincide with the will of constituents, which is far from the case here. Voters are reluctant to accept economic pain to address remote causes with an uncertain upside. Heck, they are dubious even when the cause is not so remote and has a demonstrable upside. Take Social Security and Medicare. It is a mathematical certainty that, without reform, these programs will go bankrupt, jeopardizing the health care and retirement benefits of tens of millions Americans. Even though the cost of action is far smaller compared with the cost of inaction, persuading voters to do something is an uphill battle.
Yet even in the heyday of the consensus on global warming there was never this kind of certainty. The ClimateGate scandal--in which prominent climatologists were caught manipulating data to exaggerate the observed warming--has significantly weakened this consensus. But even if it hadn’t, climate change is too complex an issue to ever be established with anything approaching iron-clad certainty. Hence, it was inevitable that it would run into a political dead-end.
This is exactly what the Reid bill represents. Indeed, if Democrats backed-off from their grand designs to cut carbon emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 with sizable majorities in Congress and a “celestial healer” in the White House there is little chance that they will ever be able to accomplish anything better at a later date. And if America--the richest country in the world and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases--won’t act, there is a snowball’s chance in Mumbai that India or China will.
Of course, authoritarian countries have a little bit more leeway than democracies to push unpalatable remedies. But it is not within the power of even China’s autocrats to shove an energy diet down the throat of their people on the theory that the pain from it will be short-lived because it will trigger a search for better and cleaner energy alternatives--the totality of the green pitch for action.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few more whimpers left in the global warming movement before it finally passes. On the international front, the buzz is that the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change currently in the works will be even more alarmist than the previous one. However, thanks to ClimateGate, it will give greater play to alternative voices. ‘Going forward, the general perception won’t be one of consensus,’ notes Cato Institute Senior Fellow Jerry Taylor, an expert on energy issues, “but one of increasing appreciation of disagreement on the issue.”
Domestically, green groups will prod the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions more aggressively. But this will be harder to do when Republicans inevitably make gains in Congress in November. Indeed, they will likely revive a Senate resolution floated by Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, banning the EPA from regulating emissions from stationary sources, which lost by just four votes last month. Global warming warriors are also talking about fighting the battle for emission cuts state-by-state. But they will lose on that front too. California, which embraced such cuts four years ago, is already facing a ballot initiative in November to scrap the law, as it loses business and jobs to other states. Indeed, the same collective action problems that prevent global action on climate change will inevitably bedevil state-level action too.
The global warming warriors will likely have to go through the five stages of grief before accepting that their moment has passed and the movement is dead. Thinkers more sophisticated than Krugman will no doubt point to many proximate causes for its demise beyond evil Republicans such as lack of engagement by President Obama, bad economic timing, filibuster rules, what have you.
The reality is, however, that the crusade was doomed from the start because of its own inherent weaknesses. RIP.
Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and a biweekly Forbes columnist. Robert Soave of University of Michigan provided valuable research assistance for this column.
OKLAHOMA CITY—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering a crackdown on farm dust, so senators have signed a letter addressing their concerns on the possible regulations.
The letter dated July 23 to the EPA states, “If approved, would establish the most stringent and unparalleled regulation of dust in our nation’s history.” It further states, “We respect efforts for a clean and healthy environment, but not at the expense of common sense. These identified levels will be extremely burdensome for farmers and livestock producers to attain. Whether its livestock kicking up dust, soybeans being combined on a dry day in the fall, or driving a car down the gravel road, dust is a naturally occurring event.”
Read the letter to EPA signed by 21 senators including Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn
Many in the Oklahoma farming industry are opposed to the EPA’s consideration. One farmer said the possible regulations are ridiculous.
“It’s plain common sense, we don’t want to do anything detrimental,” said farmer Curtis Roberts. “If the dust is detrimental to us, it’s going to be to everybody. We’re not going to do anything to hurt ourselves or our farm.”
Roberts, a fourth generation farmer and rancher in Arcadia, said regulating dust in rural areas will hurt farmers’ harvest, cultivation and livelihood.
“Anytime you work ground, you’re going to have dust. I don’t know how they’ll regulate it,” Roberts said. “The regulations are going to put us down and keep us from doing things we need to be doing because of the EPA.”
Oklahoma Farm Bureau President Mike Spradling said the rules could be detrimental to farmers across the Sooner State.
“We as an organization do not feel dust is a pollutant,” Spradling said. “It would almost be impossible to comply with what’s being addressed now from the EPA as in agriculture. We’re doing everything we possibly can.”
“It’s just common sense, we don’t like dust in the morning but it’s something we got to live with,” Roberts said.
By Brian Sussman
This past weekend, while addressing the Netroots convention in Las Vegas, Senator Harry Reid gave the gathering of lefties a promise regarding U.S. health care. “We’re going to have a public option,” Reid said. “It’s just a question of when.”
The same thing can be said of a cap-and-trade energy bill: the Democrats are determined to get cap-and-trade. It’s just a question of when. There’s too much money to be made for Democrat cronies to let this opportunity pass.
Nancy Pelosi pushed the original 1,200-page cap-and-trade bill though the House of Representatives a year ago. I have written extensively about innards of the legislation both my book, Climategate, and upon the pages of the American Thinker. Given the mood of the people, it’s unlikely a similar monster of a bill could pass the Senate this session. However a scaled down version with some so-called compromises just might.
The compromises will be creative and designed to lure enough Republicans and voter-sensitive Democrats on to the dark side. One such deal might include allowing more domestic drilling for oil and natural gas, or perhaps the expansion/construction of oil refineries. Any giveaways to the oil industry would be a lucrative trade off, especially since these entities will be financially reamed by cap-and-trade.
Once deals are cut, it will be like a Three Card Monte street hustle. Whatever the Senate passes will be craftily conjoined with the gargantuan House bill in committee, and then sent back to the two chambers for a final vote. Before you know it, the new legislation will wind up on the desk of the man who wants to transform America.
And, even if it’s only the proverbial “nose of the camel” that’s allowed under tent, some form of cap-and-trade will be in the bill. Recall, cap-and-trade works like this: members of President Obama’s team will look at every industry sector in America and determine how much carbon dioxide individual businesses and companies are allowed to emit—that’s the cap. If an entity surpasses its defined annual cap it must purchase carbon credits from a government approved exchange. If that same business were to see its carbon emissions remain below the imposed cap, it would gain credits.
At the end of each year, the government will auction off new permits to carbon producers. Businesses with leftover credits from the prior year will be able to hold them for a specified period of time, and then, depending on demand, sell them later for a greater profit. Long sales, short sales, speculation, and loaning credits for cash—it will all be possible with cap-and-trade. Even derivatives trading is allowed. Well-placed investment bankers and brokers are eyeing cap-and-trade as their biggest opportunity since the Internet bubble—and big government liberals are excited too. With each transaction on the exchange, the brokers will get a commission, investors will get an easy “vig” (as they arrogantly say behind the scenes in the investment world) and the feds will take an even easier skim. According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2015 the federal government will be hauling in at least $104 billion a year from cap-and-trade. Investors are anticipating even more.
The officially recognized carbon exchange will likely be awarded to a privately held company called the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). As mysterious as the inner workings of the Federal Reserve, CCX was created as the first voluntary cap-and-trade system established in the U.S.
And, as conspiratorial as it may sound, Barack Obama has been in on this for many years. In fact, before Obama was ever elected to public office he was recruited to the board of the radical, non-profit, Joyce Foundation, where he served from 1994-2001. Joyce gave over $1 million in two separate grants that were instrumental in developing and launching the privately owned Chicago Climate Exchange.
When the foundation made its first grant to the Climate Exchange, Joyce’s president was Paula DiPerna. DiPerna left the organization in 2001 to become a founding executive vice president of CCX. In 2009, Ed Barnes of Fox News interviewed DiPerna and asked about Obama’s role in the grants. She replied that, as a director, Obama “read the proposal and voted on the grant.”
And some of America’s biggest moneymakers are lined up and ready to drink the milk of this Chicago-based cash cow.
As I expose in my book, Climategate, foremost on the list are Al Gore and his former Goldman Sachs business buddies, including past Goldman CEO Hank Paulson (Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush) and Philip Murphy (once Chair of the Democratic Finance Committee). Together with Gore these chums founded Generation Investment Management (GIM) in London. GIM is a hedge fund that specializes in “green investments” and is worth over $1 billion. GIM is said to have a 20 percent stake in the Europe’s official carbon trading exchange, the European Climate Exchange (ECX), as well as a significant stake in the Chicago Exchange.
Goldman Sachs also owns ten percent of CCX. Indeed, in 2009 Goldman’s website boasted:
“Goldman Sachs is active in the markets for carbon emissions.... Additionally, we have created new financial products to help our clients manage the risks posed by climate change. In September 2006, we made a minority equity investment in Climate Exchange PLC, which owns several European and US trading platforms that facilitate trading in environmental financial instruments: the European Climate Exchange (ECX), [and] the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).”
Another player set to cash in on carbon is the Silicon Valley’s most prestigious venture capital firm, Kleiner-Perkins (KP). And guess who’s a partner at KP? Al Gore. And guess who has an investment in the Chicago Climate Exchange? KP.
Together these well-connected characters stand to make billions of dollars off cap-and-trade.
But now an additional element of cronyism has surfaced: former Clinton and Obama advisor—and former Fannie Mae CEO—Franklin Raines has positioned the government-sponsored mortgage giant Fannie Mae to make big bucks in the carbon trading marketplace, by selling carbon credits straight off the backs of the American homeowner.
Raines is listed as one of several “co-inventors” for U.S. patent numbers 6904336 and 7133750, both of which are titled “System and Method for Residential Emissions Trading.” The patents give Fannie Mae the exclusive rights for identifying and measuring energy savings in homes that can then be packaged and sold as credits on the carbon exchange. The patents speak of “replacing older appliances with more energy-efficient appliances; upgrading domestic hot-water heating systems; upgrading heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems; modifying lighting; fuel switching and renovating the entire home,” and speak of “installing insulating insulation in attics and exterior walls; installing more efficient windows; and reducing infiltration.”
The patents allow Fannie to establish an energy baseline on a home, (likely through the installation of the new Smart Meters which calculate and record energy usage on a minute by minute basis), and by “onsite” inspectors conducting “visual inspection.”
Readers to American Thinker know these onsite inspectors are what I call “the green goon squad.”
Buried in the House version of cap-and-trade are federally mandated energy-efficient building regulations, which supersede all local and state codes. These new building codes will be enforced by a federal green goon squad, funded in part by revenues from energy taxes, as well as by an annual $25 million from the Department of Energy “to provide necessary enforcement of a national energy efficiency building code....”
Each time a home is built, remodeled, or preparing to be sold, a G-man wearing a federal badge and armed with a clipboard will show up at your house to make sure you have proper insulation, efficient windows, Energy Star appliances, and are in compliance with the components necessary to adapt to the coming Smart Grid. The costs associated with the upgrades will either be partially offset with a tax credit or rolled into the new loan, or both. However, it’s pretty clear that atr least some of the money generated from the sale of the home’s carbon credits will be awarded to Fannie Mae.
Once your house is up to code, you will receive a certificate—or label—of compliance. Without the certificate your home essentially will be blacklisted.
Section 204 of the House bill states that the goal of this certification, or “Energy Performance Labeling Program” is to see ninety percent of the homes in America labeled within five years. The EPA will get $50 million each year to enforce the labeling program. The Secretary of the Department of Energy will get an additional $20M each year to help the EPA.
One way to get rich in America is to have patent on a popular product, and the patents on this green scheme will rake in the cash. Usually a business patent royalty is one percent. Multiply that times the 100 million homes in the U.S. (and who knows how many carbon credits will be attached to each house or what the credits will be worth?) and you have a handful of people who will can go on a five-star tropical vacation for the rest of their lives. Specifically, those associates are:
The aforementioned Clinton and Obama crony, Franklin Raines.
Scott Lesmes, former Fannie Mae Deputy General Counsel.
Robert Sahadi, former Fannie Mae Vice President who now runs GreenSpace Investment Financial Services.
Kenneth Berlin, an environmental attorney who has worked for Fannie Mae, and also a Barack Obama fundraiser.
Michelle Desiderio, she developed an associated scheme for Fannie Mae called the Energy Efficient Mortgage. Desiderio is now director of the National Green Building Certification program, which will likely train the green goon squad.
Elizabeth Arner Cavey, wife of Democratic apparatchik Brian Cavey of the Stanton Park Group, which received $200,000 last year to lobby on climate change legislation.
Jane Bartels, widow of Carlton Bartels—who some refer to as inventor of carbon credit trading.
Interestingly, Smart Meters have already been installed on millions of homes in America. These devices will make Raines-patented methodologies easier to carry out. The meters were mandated via the Federal Energy Act of 2005 and will eventually be connected to the coming Smart Grid that was announced in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Funding for the Grid came through the “stimulus” bill in 2009. Construction will ensue if the pending energy legislation becomes law.
The kicker is, the two Fannie Mae patents were approved just months before the 2005 Energy Act was signed into law.
Coincidence? No.
We’ve got to prevent cap-and-trade from passing—in any form.
Brian Sussman is an award-winning meteorologist who hosts a popular morning radio talk show on KSFO in San Francisco. His highly acclaimed book, Climategate: a veteran meteorologist exposes the global warming scam is published by WND Books.
By Neil Reynolds, Toronto Globe and Mail
Stanford University physicist Robert Laughlin says governments - and people generally - should proceed with more humility in dealing with climate change. The Earth, he says, is very old and has suffered grievously: volcanic explosions, floods, meteor impacts, mountain formation “and all manner of other abuses greater than anything people could inflict.” Yet, the Earth is still here. “It’s a survivor.”
Writing in the summer issue of the magazine The American Scholar, Prof. Laughlin offers a profoundly different perspective on climate change. “Common sense tells us that damaging a thing as old as [Earth] is somewhat easier to imagine than it is to accomplish - like invading Russia.” For planet Earth, he says, the crisis of climate change, if crisis it be, will be a walk in the park.
Relax, Prof. Laughlin advises. Let it be. “The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we gaze into the future,” he says, “not because it’s unimportant but because it’s beyond our power to control.” Whatever humans throw at it, in other words, Earth will fix things in its own time and its own way.
Prof. Laughlin is the co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize for physics. Brilliantly imagined, incisively expressed and vastly entertaining, Prof. Laughlin’s essay on climate change (What the Earth Knows) has been adapted from his forthcoming book on the future of fossil fuels. (His 2008 book, The Crime of Reason, documented pervasive government and corporate “sequestering” of scientific knowledge.)
You can’t discuss climate change, Prof. Laughlin says, without looking backward across geologic time. He puts ordinary rainfall into perspective to illustrate the point. The rain that now falls on the world in a normal year measures a metre - “about the height of a golden retriever.” The rain that has fallen since the beginning of the Industrial Age measures 200 metres. The rain that has fallen since the age of dinosaurs would fill Earth’s oceans 20,000 times. The rain that has fallen since oxygen formed would fill the entire world 100 times.
Yet, the amount of water in Earth’s oceans hasn’t changed significantly in all of this time. In Earth’s most recent glacial melting, 15,000 years ago, the sea level rose by one centimetre a year for 10,000 years - and then abruptly stopped. The heat required to produce this melting was 10 times the total energy consumption of all human civilization.
Excess carbon in the atmosphere? It happens all the time. And Earth deals with it. Anything that humans do to mitigate it will be a waste of time. Governments and citizens delude themselves when they think they can make a difference. “The Earth doesn’t care about any of these governments or their
legislation,” Prof. Laughlin writes. “It doesn’t care whether you turn off your air conditioner, refrigerator and television set. It doesn’t notice when you turn down your thermostat and drive a hybrid car. “These actions simply spread the pain over a few centuries, the bat of an eyelash as far as the Earth is concerned, and leave the end result exactly the same: All the fossil fuel that used to be in the ground is now in the air and none is left to burn.”
The Earth will dissolve the bulk of this atmospheric carbon dioxide in its oceans, a process that will take roughly 1,000 years. (The oceans now hold 30 trillion tons of carbon - 30 times the world’s coal reserves.) Over tens of thousands of years, the Earth will transfer excess carbon dioxide into rocks, a process that will ultimately restore carbon dioxide concentrations to the same level that prevailed before humans existed.
How do we know the Earth will turn excess carbon dioxide into limestone? We know because the world’s carbon dioxide levels are determined “by a geologic regulatory process.” The proof is in Earth’s rocks. Prof. Laughlin concedes that excess carbon dioxide could - “in a handful of examples” - contribute to the extinction of species. He cites corals as an example. But he insists that keeping carbon in the ground for a little while longer won’t make much difference to animal or to organism. The real extinction problem, he says, is human population pressure: habitat destruction, pesticide abuse, overharvesting, species invasion.
This is a distinction of great importance because it might help direct environmental concern to goals that people can actually achieve: Forget Gaia, save a marsh; forget the planet, save a frog. The Earth regulates climate change in geologic time, Prof. Laughlin says, “without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself.” If the earth determines that Canada should freeze again, the best response would simply be to sell your Canadian real estate. The Earth moves on, Prof. Laughlin says. So should we.
The Hill
By a vote of 209-193, the House of Representatives this afternoon passed H.R. 3534, the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act (CLEAR). The legislation, ostensibly a response to the BP oil spill, would increase taxes on oil and natural gas, raising prices for all consumers at a time of recession and high unemployment. Its regulatory changes would also drive smaller operators out of business, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue at a time when many states are already considering taxes hikes to cover budget deficits.
The House passed an amendment to the bill, offered by Rep. Charles Melancon (D-Louisiana), which would lift the economically devastating moratorium on offshore drilling, but only under certain circumstances. Republicans objected to Melancon’s limited amendment, but their effort to send the bill back to committee with instructions for a more comprehensive end of the moratorium was defeated.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) plans on taking up a BP spill bill on Monday.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today denied 10 petitions challenging its 2009 determination that climate change is real, is occurring due to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities, and threatens human health and the environment.
The petitions to reconsider EPA’s Endangerment Finding claim that climate science cannot be trusted, and assert a conspiracy that invalidates the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. After months of serious consideration of the petitions and of the state of climate change science, EPA finds no evidence to support these claims. In contrast, EPA’s review shows that climate science is credible, compelling, and growing stronger.
“The endangerment finding is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world. These petitions—based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy—provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy. A better solution would be to join the vast majority of the American people who want to see more green jobs, more clean energy innovation and an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security.”
The basic assertions by the petitioners and EPA responses follow.
Claim: Petitioners say that emails disclosed from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate global temperature data.
Response: EPA reviewed every e-mail and found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets. Four other independent reviews came to similar conclusions.
Claim: Petitioners say that errors in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report call the entire body of work into question.
Response: Of the alleged errors, EPA confirmed only two in a 3,000 page report. The first pertains to the rate of Himalayan glacier melt and second to the percentage of the Netherlands below sea level. IPCC issued correction statements for both of these errors. The errors have no bearing on Administrator Jackson’s decision. None of the errors undermines the basic facts that the climate is changing in ways that threaten our health and welfare.
Claim: Petitioners say that because certain studies were not included in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC itself is biased and cannot be trusted as a source of reliable information.
Response: These claims are incorrect. In fact, the studies in question were included in the IPCC report, which provided a comprehensive and balanced discussion of climate science.
Claim: Petitioners say that new scientific studies refute evidence supporting the Endangerment Finding.
Response: Petitioners misinterpreted the results of these studies. Contrary to their claims, many of the papers they submit as evidence are consistent with EPA’s Finding. Other studies submitted by the petitioners were based on unsound methodologies. Detailed discussion of these issues may be found in volume one of the response to petition documents, on EPA’s website.
Climate change is already happening, and human activity is a contributor. The global warming trend over the past 100 years is confirmed by three separate records of surface temperature, all of which are confirmed by satellite data. Beyond this, evidence of climate change is seen in melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, shifting precipitation patterns, and changing ecosystems and wildlife habitats.
“America’s Climate Choices,” a report from the National Academy of Sciences and the most recent assessment of the full body of scientific literature on climate change, along with the recently released “State of the Climate” report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration both fully support the conclusion that climate change is real and poses significant risk to human and natural systems. The consistency among these and previously issued assessments only serves to strengthen EPA’s conclusion.
See much more of this yet another example of misuse of power by our government run amuck here.
By Amy Harder, Congress Daily
Senate Majority Leader Reid on Thursday abandoned efforts to take up energy and climate legislation before the August recess, disappointing liberal members of his caucus, deflecting condemnation from moderate senators in both parties and setting the stage for a full-throttled battle over looming EPA regulations.
Reid refused to say whether he will devote floor time to an amendment Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has introduced that would delay EPA’s regulatory power over carbon emissions for two years.
“We’ll take a look at that,” Reid said. “We’ll have to see what works out here; a few other things to balance here.”
This is a notable shift from over the past several months when Reid said he was committed to giving Rockefeller floor time for his measure.
If Reid does not offer a vote on Rockefeller’s proposal before the beginning of next year when EPA’s regulations start to kick in, he likely will upset several moderate Democrats who last month voted against a stronger measure sponsored by Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Lisa Murkowski that would have stripped the agency of its regulatory power over carbon emissions entirely.
In mid-June when the Senate voted down Murkowski’s proposal, several Democrats voted no, anticipating they would get to vote on Rockefeller’s measure, as Reid had promised. Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri (who is co-sponsoring Rockefeller’s amendment) and Bryon Dorgan of North Dakota are among those moderate Democrats who voted against Murkowski’s proposal but have said they would vote for Rockefeller’s measure.
Allowing a vote on Rockefeller’s amendment would likely further upset liberals who have been urging Reid to push forward on cap-and-trade legislation.
Reid intends to bring legislation to the floor before the August recess that includes provisions to address the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and boost home-energy efficiency and fuel efficiency.
Yet even this vastly scaled-back proposal, which just a week ago Reid had said included a price on power plant carbon emissions and other robust energy measures, faces competition from a crowded lineup of items. The Senate is planning on acting on the small-business loans program, war supplemental and Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court in the two weeks it has left before recess. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who stood with Reid and Carol Browner, President Obama’s top climate and energy aide, following a Democratic caucus meeting on energy, said he will continue working to pass a cap-and-trade bill. But he was vague about when the full Senate would debate such a proposal. “The leader is committed to getting that comprehensive legislation to the floor as soon as possible, whenever that might turn out to be,” Kerry said.
Many senators and experts doubt the Senate will have time to consider comprehensive climate and energy legislation that includes a price on carbon emissions between September and the start of next year. Senators will be focusing on the midterm elections, including Reid who is up for re-election in Nevada. Other agenda items are also on tap, including appropriations legislation and dealing with the findings of President Obama’s debt commission.
“If you look at the history of the energy bills around here, they take at least three weeks, maybe quite a bit longer,” Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said. He is seen as a moderate Democrat who could be a “yes” vote on legislation pricing carbon emissions.
Dorgan also said it’s “very unlikely to happen” before next year.
With action on carbon emissions unlikely before the federal regulations kick in, utility and environmental experts say the Rockefeller amendment will become a punching bag. Moderate and conservative senators and the utility industry will urge a vote on it while more liberal Democrats and environmental groups will counter that EPA action on carbon emissions must proceed precisely because it’s unclear when or if Congress will act before EPA does.
At the beginning of January, EPA will begin requiring new power plants, oil refineries and other industrial sources to include greenhouse gas emissions in the Clean Air Act permits they submit. The agency will expand what and how many sources it targets throughout the year and in subsequent years.
After the caucus Thursday, Browner said the White House will continue working to cut carbon emissions, reduce oil dependency and create green energy jobs. And, while not mentioning the EPA by name, the administration will seek to solve those problems through that agency’s regulations: “We will continue to use our existing tools to address these problems,” Browner said without elaboration.
By Paul Driessen
My article this week reflects on the increasingly politicized state of global warming science...and government-funded science generally at America’s universities and other research institutions. The steady flow of money, coupled with the dominant view that research results should advocate a particular point of view on energy and environmental issues, has created a tendency to skew results, manipulate data and peer reviews, and pressure journals to exclude professional papers that challenge politically favored positions.
Even worse, when cheating is discovered or alleged, the scientists and institutions tend to look the other way, circle the wagons, actively discount or even hide the transgressions, and conduct superficial investigations that whitewash the offenses and even penalize whistleblowers.
The latest example is Pennsylvania State University’s nearly complete exoneration of Dr. Michael Mann, following an “investigation” that did not even permit the introduction of contradictory evidence, statements by adverse witnesses, or cross-examination of Dr. Mann or anyone with knowledge of his alleged misconduct.
Yet another investigation makes Tom Sawyer proud - and promotes alarmist climate legislation.
Pennsylvania State University recently released a report summarizing its final “investigation” into whether one of its employees had committed scientific misconduct. The report exonerated Dr. Michael Mann of all charges, although he did receive a tap on the wrist - for sharing unpublished manuscripts with third parties without first getting the authors’ permission!
The result was hardly unexpected. Most experts who question climate disaster claims had assumed Penn State would produce a whitewash. PSU stood to lose significantly in reputation and dollars if it found that Dr. Mann had cheated on research and engaged in other conduct unbecoming of a university professor. What was surprising is the reason it gave for its “not guilty” finding.
Dr. Mann could not possibly be guilty, the report averred, because his “level of success in proposing research and obtaining funding” was possible only because he had “met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession.” Indeed, his research was consistently “judged to be outstanding by his peers.”
Mann’s innocence was further proven, said Penn State, by the awards and recognition he has received. For example, his “hockey stick” temperature graph for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change played a significant role in the IPCC receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Had his “conduct been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions,” the report argued.
Such a circular tautology would earn an “F” in introductory college reasoning courses. It is eerily similar to views taken by starry-eyed investors and SEC officials before they realized Bernie had Madoff with billions in client money. The Penn State report is akin to what Mrs. Madoff might issue following her “investigation” of his conduct, “investment” strategies, “standards,” accolades and awards.
Dr. Mann and many of his “peers” were implicated in the Climategate scandals, obstruction of legitimate FOIA requests via deletion of emails, manipulation of global warming temperature data and research, and the politicized funding system that kept them and their institutions awash in government/taxpayer dollars. They conferred awards and recognition on each other, excluded skeptical scientists from “peer reviews” of one another’s papers, and conspired to blackball editors who permitted the publication of professional papers by Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer and other climate experts whose work challenged the Mann-made global warming disaster thesis.
In so doing, Mann and his colleagues promoted laws, treaties and regulatory schemes that imposed higher prices and greater government/activist control over energy use, economic growth, and virtually everything modern societies eat, drive, make, ship and do. They, their institutions, and a host of politicians, bureaucrats, bankers and corporate executives thus had a direct stake in the science, politics and “renewable energy future” supported by billions of dollars in annual research grants - and in ensuring that no investigation upset this convenient golden apple cart.
It is these “accepted practices” and “highest standards of the profession” that are being protected here. It is for this reason that the “investigation” was conducted solely by Penn State - which permitted no contradictory evidence, no adverse witnesses, and no cross-examination of Dr. Mann or anyone knowledgeable about his research, funding and alleged misconduct.
Penn State’s Tom Sawyeresque report says far more than the university could possibly have intended about the “highest standards” prevailing today in climate research arena, and the way universities circle the wagons, protect their “rainmakers” and continue taking our money, while throwing “manmade climate disaster” skeptics under the bus or shipping them off to academic Siberia.
One could accurately (and sadly) say there is nothing new under the sun.
A 1988 NOVA program on PBS investigated the causes and extent of cheating in academia. “Do Scientists Cheat?” interviewed several scientists who discussed how easy and tempting it was to lie and falsify research. Indeed, observed JAMA senior Editor Bruce Dan, while peer review “is a wonderful process for throwing out garbage, I can’t see that [it] can detect fraud, except in a few lucky chances.”
The show focused on two high-profile cases - John Darsee and Robert A. Slutsky, convicted perpetrators of scientific misconduct. Both researchers were well-funded, had numerous publications, won prestigious awards, and were on the fast-track to academic stardom. Both were brought down when other scientists suspected fraud in their work. Investigators concluded that most of their papers were either questionable or demonstrably fraudulent. Many of their co-authors were implicated and their reputations tarnished.
Ironically, one of the NOVA interviewees was Professor Rustum Roy, head of the Materials Research Lab at - Penn State University. He said cheating often occurs because researchers are under intense pressure to publish, win awards, and raise more money each year just to keep their labs going, employ research assistants and provide their academic institutions with 40-50% of each grant for “overhead.” Hard cheating, Roy explained, occurred when a scientist concludes he can get away with compromising or cutting corners a little bit, so why not take it a step further?
Thus, those who have big research fiefdoms, are prolific publishers and win many awards have the most to gain by misconduct. They are also most likely to get away with it, partly because of their reputation - and partly because academia has too many incentives to look the other way and avoid taking actions that could bring disrepute on the university and cut off the financial gravy train.
This translates into a high degree of moral apathy toward scientific misconduct, the PBS program argued. Academics are much less outraged than one might expect, even when confronted by obvious fraud. This, of course, undermines the integrity of science, and the ethics of its practitioners.
Perhaps more importantly, the program demonstrated that whistleblowers who exposed fraud were more likely to be the target of investigations than the alleged perpetrators. This sends a chilling message to anyone who might raise academic misconduct questions, and further insulates guilty parties.
The NOVA program also included excerpts from a House Committee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on academic misconduct. “Unfortunately, few universities, when confronted with the task of investigating misconduct, have conducted as thorough or candid a self-appraisal” as they should have, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI) noted.
In fact, universities that conduct investigations of their own scientists were like the “fox actively investigating the chicken coop. The university gets first crack at the data and witnesses, and gets to frame the issues. There is a natural tendency to limit the damage.”
The program ends with the question: “Does the scientific community really want to expose misconduct?”
Unfortunately, the answer seems to be, No. Worse, over the last 20 years, the problem has only gotten worse, while the stakes have become infinitely higher.
Vastly larger sums of money are involved: $9 billion in 2009 for climate change and renewable energy research alone. Phony studies of melting Himalayan glaciers, disappearing Amazon rainforests, etc etc etc continue to garner attention and praise in IPCC reports, news stories and congressional statements.
The bogus science is used to justify energy and environmental policies, laws, treaties, court decisions and subsidies that will enrich some, bankrupt others, control our lives, and send millions of jobs overseas. Meanwhile, the investigation by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is heatedly denounced by the very academics and institutions that refuse to conduct honest investigations of their own.
And you thought Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll and Jonathon Swift had good material to work with!?!
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.cfact.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.