Small businesses and the American economy, beware: Once again Washington politicians are conspiring to help you out. Apparently, Sens. Robert Casey (D., Pa.) and Thomas Carper (D., Del.) are planning to “save” you from the onerous rules regulating greenhouse gases being hatched at the EPA.

The basis of the EPA’s regulatory efforts is the agency’s finding that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” that supposedly “endangers” us by causing global warming. Once the EPA made this unprecedented and unsupported endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act, it put the enormous regulatory machinery of the federal government in gear to generate rules regulating CO2, rules that will damage every aspect of the U.S. economy. Thankfully, substantive legal challenges to the endangerment finding and the rules the EPA is generating have been filed.

One rule the agency has already issued, something known as the tailoring rule, seems, at first glance, different than its economy-stifling kin. The tailoring rule was supposedly designed to exempt smaller CO2 emitters from the new regulations until 2016. While the Clean Air Act itself states that pollutant emissions of 250 tons or more must be regulated, EPA’s tailoring regulation simply contradicts the law, stating that for now the agency will only regulate CO2 sources emitting 50,000 tons or more.

How, you may ask, can a federal agency just overturn a law by regulation? Good question. The reality is that the EPA is well aware that the tailoring regulation contradicts black-letter law; consequently, it knows legal challenges have high prospects for success. So why would an agency like the EPA that has no trouble flexing its regulatory muscles exempt tens of thousands of potential regulatory targets with such a rule? Quite simply, in addition to recognizing the regulation’s tenuous legal grounds, the EPA realizes that as the number of individuals aware of the pending regulatory burden grows, the stronger the backlash against its CO2 rules will be. Crafty bureaucrats also know that the biggest hurdle they now face is beginning the process of regulating CO2 - striking out against our national economy from the regulatory beachhead of the EPA’s very questionable endangerment finding.

The reality is that with or without the tailoring exemption, the Clean Air Act is already festooned with complex and expansive regulatory mechanisms. The EPA’s extension of its grip to CO2 will be another unparalleled regulatory bonanza for this government agency. Once done - like virtually every other federal regulatory effort - the scope of the agency’s CO2 powers will only continue to expand. While a small business, family farm, or ranch might escape the EPA’s direct regulatory burden and a particular permitting process with the tailoring rule (perhaps only temporarily), they will still suffer from this unlawful aggregation of power by a federal agency. At the end of the day, the enormous economic costs of job losses, reduced GDP, and dramatically higher energy prices from the impact of the EPA’s rules will punish all of us.

Enter Senators Carper and Casey. The word is that they will be introducing legislation to codify the EPA’s tailoring rule - that is, make it law. Their likely public spin will be that they “saved” small businesses - read voters 0 by cementing the 50,000-tons tailoring rule. But that’s not all they would cement. By legally carving out an exemption for smaller CO2 emission sources, such a law could be legally interpreted as Congress’s implicit stamp of approval of all of the EPA’s other CO2 regulatory efforts and specifically the endangerment finding itself, which means that we would all end up paying more. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Ala.) has a different resolution (S.J. Res. 26), introduced on January 21, which would simply (but effectively) disapprove and void the EPA’s endangerment finding. The danger is that if her resolution, which may be considered early next week, fails to pass, some supporters of vitiating the EPA’s regulatory aggrandizement may be tempted to support legislating the EPA’s tailoring rule.

As of now, there are numerous legal challenges to the endangerment finding and CO2 regulations that have reasonable prospects of prevailing. Senators Casey and Carper’s effort could be seen as a self-interested effort to politically insulate themselves from economically destructive CO2 regulations, and Majority Leader Harry Reid has signaled that he intends to take up their effort. If successful, they may effectively kill legal challenges to the endangerment finding, handing radical greens inside and outside the administration something that otherwise would have likely eluded them, Majority Leader Reid, and even Speaker Pelosi - their biggest global “warming” regulatory win ever, to the detriment of the entire American economy, including small businesses.

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Overturning EPA’s Endangerment Finding Is a Constitutional Imperative
by Marlo Lewis, Pajamas Media

This week, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a “resolution of disapproval,” sponsored by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from “enacting” controversial global warming policies through the regulatory back door.

The importance of this vote is difficult to exaggerate. Nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability hangs in the balance.

Who Shall Make Climate Policy?

The Murkowski resolution would overturn the EPA’s “endangerment finding,” a December 2009 rulemaking in which the agency concluded that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The endangerment finding is both trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes that Congress never approved. America could end up with a regulatory regime more costly and intrusive than any climate bill or treaty the Senate has declined to pass or ratify, yet without people’s representatives ever voting on it.

Unless stopped, the EPA will be in a position to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards for the auto industry, set climate policy for the nation, and even amend the Clean Air Act - powers never delegated to the agency by Congress.

The Murkowski resolution puts a simple question squarely before the Senate: Who shall make climate policy - lawmakers who must answer to the people at the ballot box or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges appointed for life?

It might seem amazing that any senator would oppose such a measure. After all, senators take an oath to “support and defend” the Constitution, which vests “all legislative powers” in Congress (i.e., not in administrative agencies or courts). However, regulatory zealotry has a long history of trampling on constitutional principle, and many lawmakers would simply prefer to let the non-elected bureaucrats at the EPA take the heat for “enacting” costly climate policies.

Power Grab

Let’s examine in somewhat more detail the unauthorized powers the EPA will amass unless the endangerment finding is overturned.

For starters, the endangerment finding compels the EPA to establish greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. About 95% of vehicular GHGs are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from gasoline combustion. Because no commercial technologies exist to filter CO2 emissions from automobile tailpipes, automakers can significantly reduce the quantity of CO2 emitted per mile only by reducing the quantity of gasoline combusted per mile.

Thus, by setting GHG emission standards, the EPA can largely determine the stringency of new-car fuel economy standards. Congress should object, because the Clean Air Act gives EPA no authority to regulate fuel economy. Congress delegated that power to another agency (the Department of Transportation) under another statute (the Energy Policy and Conservation Act).

Once the EPA’s motor vehicle GHG standards take effect, CO2 by definition becomes a “regulated air pollutant.” That, in turn, makes any “major stationary source” of CO2 emissions subject to additional regulation under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program. Firms will need to obtain PSD and Title V permits if they plan to build, modify, or operate “major” sources of CO2 emissions.

Similarly, the endangerment finding will empower the EPA to establish GHG “performance standards” for scores of industrial categories of emitters, such as power plants, refineries, and steel mills.

Thus, by issuing an endangerment finding, the EPA will deal itself into a position to control the economy - both mobile and stationary sources - for climate change purposes. Yet the Clean Air Act gives the EPA no such authority. Congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970, decades before global warming was even a topic of congressional debate. That is why phrases like “greenhouse gas,” “greenhouse effect,” and “global climate change” appear nowhere in the statute.

Absurd Results

Compelling evidence that Congress never intended to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act unwittingly comes from the EPA itself. As the EPA explains in its so-called “tailoring rule,” unless the EPA “tailors” - that is, amends - the Clean Air Act permitting programs, the endangerment finding leads inexorably to “absurd results.”

Here’s why. A stationary source is “major” if it has a potential to emit 250 tons per year of a “regulated air pollutant” under the PSD pre-construction permitting program and 100 tons per year under the Title V operating permits program. These “applicability thresholds” make sense when applied to bona fide air pollutants, such as particulate matter and smog-forming chemicals, which are emitted in the threshold amounts only by large industrial facilities.

In contrast, an immense number and variety of previously unregulated entities - office buildings, big box stores, apartment complexes, small manufacturers, commercial restaurants, hospitals, churches, and schools - emit 100-250 tons per year of CO2. All become vulnerable to new regulation, penalties, and litigation under the PSD and Title V provisions once CO2 becomes a “regulated air pollutant.”

The EPA and its state counterparts will have to process an estimated 41,000 PSD permits annually (instead of 280) and 6.1 million Title V permits annually (instead of 14,700), the agency estimates. Such workloads vastly exceed agencies’ administrative resources. If EPA applies the Clean Air Act as written to CO2, permitting agencies will develop huge, ever-growing backlogs that will bog down environmental enforcement, block new construction, and thrust millions of firms into legal limbo. Needless to say, President Obama does not want this red ink nightmare unfolding on his watch.

Rather than argue on statutory grounds that it cannot issue an endangerment finding without producing absurd results destructive of congressional intent, the EPA plans to amend the Act. Specifically, the EPA intends for six years to exempt from PSD and Title V all sources emitting less than 50,000 tons per year of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases, even though, as noted, the statutory applicability thresholds are 250 and 100 tons per year.

In summary, the EPA is poised to breach the separation of powers in three ways - first, by determining fuel economy standards (a power Congress delegated to another agency), next by setting climate policy for the nation (a matter about which Congress is still deliberating), and finally by effectively amending the statutory definition of “major source.”

Smear Campaign

Sen. Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval would safeguard both the economy and the democratic process by nipping all this mischief in the bud.

Precisely because the resolution would restore constitutional discipline to climate policymaking, opponents are mounting a smear campaign against it.

Climate Progress calls the Murkowski resolution the “Dirty Air Act,” contending it is “polluter crafted.” Nice try, but that’s impossible. The form of the resolution is fixed by Section 802 of the Congressional Review Act. The only choices allowed are which agency and which final rule to insert in the blank spaces. There is no room for “crafting,” whether by “polluters” or anyone else. If there were an award for hypocritical sanctimony, Climate Progress would be a top contender. They support both the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bills, which are “polluter-crafted” from top to bottom.

MoveOn.org, in TV ads, warns that the Murkowski resolution will “roll back” the Clean Air Act, which supposedly is an outrage because “many Americans already smoke the equivalent of a pack a day just from breathing the air.” That is complete rubbish. The resolution will not affect any policy, program, or regulation the EPA administers to protect air quality. Moreover, one cigarette delivers 12-27 times the daily dose of particulate matter (PM2.5) that non-smokers get in cities with the highest PM2.5 levels. No Americans anywhere smoke a pack a day or even one cigarette a day just from breathing the air.

Environmental Defense Action Fund claims, in radio ads, the Murkowski resolution is a “polluter bailout bill.” For shame! EDAF cynically exploits taxpayers’ anger at wealth transfers to fat-cat corporations to advance a big-government agenda that many of those same taxpayers oppose.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) claims that overturning the endangerment finding is equivalent to overturning the Surgeon General’s report linking cigarette smoking to cancer. We’re supposed to be scandalized that Congress would try to repeal science and keep us in the dark about threats to our health and welfare. This too is nonsense, for two reasons.

First, the Surgeon General’s report was purely an assessment of the medical literature. It had no legal force or effect. It did not even offer policy recommendations. If the endangerment finding were simply one agency’s review of the science, Congress would have no business voting on it either. But, to repeat, unlike the Surgeon General’s report, the endangerment finding is both trigger and precedent for costly and complex policy changes Congress never approved.

Second, although some may oppose the endangerment finding on scientific grounds, the Murkowski resolution neither takes nor implies a position on climate science. The resolution would overturn the “legal force and effect” of the endangerment finding, not its reasoning or conclusions. The resolution is a referendum not on climate science but on the constitutional propriety of EPA making climate policy without new and specific statutory guidance from Congress.

Although you’d never guess from the attacks to which she has been subjected, Sen. Murkowski is not a climate skeptic, nor does she oppose greenhouse gas regulation in principle. Her position is simply that climate policy is too important to be made by non-elected bureaucrats. That ought to be a proposition on which all Senators can agree.

Marlo Lewis is a senior fellow in environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

Well of course I would write a headline like that having just spent the last three days in Chicago at the Heartland Institute’s 4th International Conference on Climate Change. This is the event the cackling, cloak-wearing, befanged AGW-denying community attends every year to glorify in their own evil. And naturally, in the wake of Climategate, a mood of uproarious triumphalism has prevailed as distinguished skeptical scientists, economists, and policymakers from around the world - Pat Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Ian Plimer, Bob Carter, Fred Singer.. you name them, they’re here - have gathered to dance on the smouldering ashes of the mythical beast ManBearPig.

Except we shouldn’t use that word “sceptic” any more. Richard Lindzen - Godfather of Climate Realism = told us so in one of the keynote addresses.

“Scepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition,” he said. “Current global warming alarmism hardly represents a plausible proposition.” Not least, he pointed out, because the various activist scientists, greenies and government institutions pushing AGW theory have failed to “improve their case over 20 years.” So paper thin are the AGW movement’s arguments that pretty much the only defences left to them are desperate techniques like the appeal to authority ("the Royal Society believes in AGW and the Royal Society is, like, really old and distinguished, so AGW must be true") and cheap slurs.

Consider, as examples of the latter technique, how this conference has been reported in the liberal media. Both the BBC and the Huffington Post have decided to write off the expertise of the dozens of PhDs and professors speaking at this event to concentrate on the issue that really matters: it was funded by Big Oil. (Except it isn’t. Unfortunately Big Oil stopped funding the skeptical side of the argument a long time ago. The Heartland Institute is a conservative leaning think tank funded by a number of business donors, and the main funder of the conference is a local libertarian millionaire who just happens to want a bit of openness and honesty in the debate on AGW. But hey, never let the facts get in the way of a libtard story).

The other main objection I heard - from the BBC’s Roger Harrabin - is how utterly ridiculous it was that a total know-nothing like James Delingpole was speaking on a “Science” panel with meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, climate expert Fred Singer, and economist Ross McKitrick (co-destroyer - with Steve McIntyre - of Michael Mann’s hockey stick). Indeed, when I introduced myself to him, he snapped back “I’m not sure whether I should shake your hand. I want to punch you.” He sounded jolly cross indeed and ranted that I was utterly irresponsible and had disseminated lots of lies - though he later apologized to me saying he was jet-lagged and had confused me with Christopher Booker. Hmm.

Anyway, I agree with him. As I said when I gave my speech, it was entirely inappropriate that a humble hack like me should be on a panel with such great men - like a lowly swineherd suddenly finding himself translated to Mount Olympus. Then again, I said, it wasn’t such a bad idea that I was there to inject a note of reality to the proceedings. The truth is, I said, that the scientific debate is over. The scientists on our side of the argument have won (which is why no Warmist will dare debate Richard Lindzen, and while Al Gore won’t debate anyone at all: they know they’d lose). Problem is, I went on, this debate was never really about science anyway. AGW is and always have been a political process. It’s the political war that were fighting now and it’s going to be much much harder to win.

Especially when you look at the results of our recent General Election which I still find so monumentally depressing I’m not altogether sure I can bring myself to fly home. See post here.

A thoroughly delightful gentleman. A bright light among the many curmudgeons and closed minded scientifically illiterate elitists in the mainstream media here and in most places abroad who simply regurgitate all the lies the corrupt IPCC, NOAA, NAS, NASA, EPA, CRU, UKMO, local government weather services and the NGO environmental advocacy groups pump out like BP oil from the Gulf spill.

"Global warming” may become one of those quaint cocktail party conversations of the past if three key climate drivers - cooling North Pacific sea surface temperatures, extremely low solar activity and increased volcanic eruptions - converge to form a “perfect storm” of plummeting temperatures that send our planet into a long-term cool-down lasting 20 or 30 years or longer.

“There are some wild cards that are different from what we saw when we came out of the last warm PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation] and entered its cool phase [1947 to 1976]. Now we have a very weak solar cycle and the possibility of increased volcanic activity. Together, they would create what I call the ‘Triple Crown of Cooling,’” says Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi.

If all three climate-change ingredients come together, it would be a recipe for dangerously cold temperatures that would shorten the agricultural growing season in northern latitudes, crippling grain production in the wheat belts of the United States and Canada and triggering widespread food shortages and famine.

Cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation refers to cyclical variations in sea surface temperatures that occur in the North Pacific Ocean. (The PDO is often described as a long-lived El Nino-like pattern.) PDO events usually persist for 20 to 30 years, alternating between warm and cool phases. During these long periods there are sometimes short-interval phase switches that can last several years.

From 1977 to 1998, during the height of “global warming,” North America was in the midst of a warm PDO.  Since then, we have experienced several short-duration PDO fluctuations between cool and warm.

But the PDO has once again resumed its negative cool phase, and, as such, represents the first climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling. With the switch to a cool PDO, we’ve seen a change in the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which alternates between El Nino (warm phase) and La Nina (cool phase) every few years. The recent strong El Nino that began in July 2009 is now transitioning to a La Nina, a sign of cooler temperatures ahead.

“We’re definitely headed towards La Nina conditions before summer is over, and we’re looking at a moderate to strong La Nina by fall and winter, which, as these La Ninas tend to persist in the cold PDO for two years, should bring us cooler temperatures over the next few years,” predicts Joe D’Aleo, founder of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP) and the first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel.

He is not alone in his forecast. Bastardi also sees a La Nina just around the corner.

“I’’ve been saying since February that we’ll transition to La Nina by the middle of the hurricane season. I think we’re already seeing the atmosphere going into a La Nina state in advance of water temperatures. This will have interesting implications down the road. La Nina will dramatically cool off everything later this year and into next year, and it is a signal for strong hurricane activity,” Bastardi predicts.

The difference in sea surface temperature between positive and negative PDO phases is not more than 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, but the affected area is huge. So the temperature changes can have a big impact on the climate in North America.

In fact, as Dr. Roy Spencer points out, the warm-phase PDO lasting from 1977 to 1998 might explain most of the warming we experienced in the late 20th century.

“This is because a change in weather circulation patterns can cause a small change in global-average cloudiness. And since clouds represent the single largest internal control on global temperatures (through their ability to reflect sunlight), a change in cloudiness associated with the PDO might explain most of the climate change we’ve seen in the last 100 years or more,” he writes.

Declining solar activity

Another real concern - and the second climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling - is the continued stretch of weak solar activity Earth is experiencing. We recently exited the longest solar minimum - 12.7 years compared to the 11-year average - in 100 years. It was a historically inactive period in terms of sunspot numbers. During the minimum, which began in 2004, we have experienced 800 spotless days. A normal cycle averages 485 spotless days.

In 2008, we experienced 265 days without a sunspot, the fourth-highest number of spotless days since continuous daily observations began in 1849. In 2009, the trend continued, with 261 spotless days, ranking it among the top five blank-sun years. Only 1878, 1901 and 1913 (the record-holder with 311 days) recorded more spotless days.

In 2010, the sun continues to remain in a funk. There were 27 spotless days (according to Layman’s sunspot count) in April and, as of May 19, 12 days without a spot. Both months exhibited periods of inexplicably low solar activity during a time when the sun should be flexing its “solar muscle” and ramping up towards the next solar maximum.

Why are sunspot numbers important? Very simple: there is a strong correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature. During the Dalton Minimum (1790 - 1830) and Maunder Minimum (1645 -1715), two periods with very low sunspot activity, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere plummeted.

During the Dalton Minimum, the abnormally cold weather destroyed crops in northern Europe, the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. Historian John D. Post called it “the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world.” The record cold intensified after the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in more than 1,600 years (see details below).

During the 70-year Maunder Minimum, astronomers at the time counted only a few dozen sunspots per year, thousands fewer than usual. As sunspots vanished, temperatures fell. The River Thames in London froze, sea ice was reported along the coasts of southeast England, and ice floes blocked many harbors. Agricultural production nose-dived as growing seasons became shorter, leading to lower crop yields, food shortages and famine.

If the low levels of solar activity during the past three years continue through the current solar cycle (Solar Cycle 24), which is expected to peak in 2013, we could be facing a severe temperature decline within the next five to eight years as Earth’s climate begins to respond to the drop-off in solar activity.

“The sun is behaving very quietly - like it did in the late 1700s during the transition from Solar Cycle 4 to Solar Cycle 5 - which was the start of the Dalton Minimum,” D’Aleo says. If the official sunspot number reaches only 40 or 50 - a low number indicating very weak solar energy levels - during the next solar maximum, we could be facing much lower global temperatures down the road.”

Even NASA solar physicist David Hathaway has said this is “the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century.” “Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high,” Hathaway told NASA Science News. “Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We’re just not used to this kind of deep calm.”

Volcanic eruptions

Although the eruption of Iceland’s Mount Eyjafjallajokull volcano continues to raise havoc with air travel, it remains a relatively minor event by volcanic standards. Much of its ash cloud has stayed out of the stratosphere, where it would reflect sunlight, bringing cooler temperatures to the northern hemisphere.

Unfortunately, there is a very real chance Eyjafjallajokull’s much larger neighbor, the Katla volcano, could blow its top, creating the third-climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling. If Katla does erupt, it would send global temperatures into a nosedive, with a big assist from the cool PDO and a slumbering sun.

The Katla caldera measures 42 square miles and has a magma chamber with a volume of around 2.4 cubic miles, enough to produce a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) level-six eruption - an event ten times larger than Mount St. Helens.

Katla erupts about every 70 years or so, most recently in 1918, often in tandem with neighboring Eyjafjallajokull, which is not a good sign. According to Bastardi, “The Katla volcano in Iceland is a game changer. If it erupts and sends plumes of ash and SO2 into the stratosphere, any cooling caused by the oceanic cycles would be strengthened and amplified.”

Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson says the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull volcano is only a “small rehearsal.” “The time for Katla to erupt is coming close . . . I don’t say if, but I say when Katla will erupt,” Grimsson predicts. And when Katla finally erupts it will “create for a long period, extraordinary damage to modern advanced society.”

Not a very encouraging outlook. Yet major eruptions throughout history bear witness to the deadly impact of volcanoes. The Tambora eruption in 1815, the largest in 1,600 years, sent the earth’s climate into a deep freeze, triggering “the year without a summer.” Columnist Art Horn, writing in the Energy Tribune, describes the impact: “During early June of 1815, a foot of snow fell on Quebec City. In July and August, lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania. Frost killed crops across New England with resulting famine. During the brutal winter of 1816/17, the temperature fell to -32 in New York City.”

And Katla, with its large magma chamber, would register high on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, if it were to erupt. When it unleashed its fury in the 1700s, the volcano sent temperatures into a tailspin in North America. As Gary Hufford, a scientist with the Alaska Region of the National Weather Service, observes: “The Mississippi River froze just north of New Orleans and the East Coast, especially New England, had an extremely cold winter.

“Katla could cause some serious weather changes. It depends on the duration of the eruption, and how high the ash gets blasted into the stratosphere.”

Global cooling: a life-threatening event

With the PDO now in its cool phase, solar activity the weakest in more than 100 years, and the prospect of a major climate-cooling volcanic eruption, actions to limit CO2 emissions should be shelved and preparations made for an extended period of global cooling that would pose far more danger to humankind than any real or imagined warming predicted by today’s climate models.

Says D’Aleo:  “Cold is far more threatening than the little extra warmth we experienced from 1977 to 1998 during the recent warm PDO. According to NASA, crop yields increased 30 percent, and there was a 10 percent increase in arable land during that period, which helped us feed many millions more of the earth’s population. A cooling down to Dalton Minimum temperatures or worse would lead to shortened growing seasons and large-scale crop failures. Food shortages would make worse the fact that more people die from cold than heat.”

See also paper by Don Easterbrook on this issue here. See Don’s response back to criticism on Tim Lambert’ Deltoid blog here. 

IN A rare instance of humans beating one of the impacts of climate change, measures to combat malaria appear to be neutralising the expected global increase of the disease driven by rising temperatures.

Peter Gething of the University of Oxford compared a map of the range of malaria in 2007 with one from 1900, when the world was 0.7 C cooler. He found the proportion of Earth’s landmass where malaria is endemic has fallen from 58 per cent to 30 per cent (Nature, vol 465, p 342). Malaria’s rate of transmission has also fallen almost everywhere.

This indicates that the incidence of malaria may not rise as a result of climate change. “The things acting to reduce malaria spread, like improved healthcare and disease control, are much more powerful than the weak effect of warming,” Gething says.

That doesn’t mean health authorities can rest on their laurels. Kevin Lafferty, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey, says the positive global picture hides shifting regional ones. Malaria is expected to move to different areas, even as its overall range decreases, he says.

EPA scientists say manmade carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are contributing to a warming of the global climate—and as such represent a threat to human welfare. But a leading climatologist says his research indicates that CO2 poses no threat to human welfare at all, and he says the EPA should revisit its findings.

CHICAGO—Carbon dioxide is hazardous to your health, the Environmental Protection Agency says. Oh really?

EPA scientists say manmade carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are contributing to a warming of the global climate—and as such represent a threat to human welfare. Officials went so far as to declare the gas a danger to mankind in early December. But a leading climatologist says his research indicates that CO2 poses no threat to human welfare at all, and he says the EPA should revisit its findings.

“There is an overestimation of the environment’s sensitivity to CO2,” said Dr. Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the CATO Institute and a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists.

Michaels spoke before a group of about 700 scientists and government officials at the fourth International Conference on Climate Change. The conference is presented annually in Chicago by the Heartland Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank that actively questions the theory of man’s role in global warming. Last year the Institute published Climate Change Reconsidered, a comprehensive reply to the United Nations’ latest report on climate change.

Michaels described how the U.N. gathers weather information for its computer models, on which the EPA based its ruling. He said data gathering at weather stations in some parts of the world is spotty, and U.N. scientists add new figures to compensate. But in doing so, he said, they also add errors to the final research product.

“There is a systemic bias in the computer models,” said Michaels, whose research suggests that the U.N.’s adjusted computer modeling data, rather than actual observed data, is what connects the rise in temperatures to manmade causes. When one takes away the computerized modeling enhancements, he said, mankind’s contribution to global warming is virtually nil, approximately .03 degrees, rather than .07 degrees, over the last 50 years.

Thus, he said, most of the planet’s warming is not from manmade sources. “This idea that most of the warming is due to greenhouse gases caused by man just isn’t right,” he said.

But Catherine C. Milbourn, a spokeswoman for the EPA in Washington, disagreed with Michaels’ conclusions. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled three years ago that greenhouse gas emissions constitute air pollution, and EPA set out to determine whether that pollution threatens the health and welfare of Americans,” she told FoxNews.com, explaining that the EPA ruling was based on a comprehensive review of available science from an array of peer-reviewed sources across the globe.

“The conclusion: The scientific evidence of climate change is overwhelming, and greenhouse gases pose a real threat to the American people. The question of the science is settled,” Milbourn said.

Greg Wiles, an associate professor of geology at The College of Wooster in Ohio, agreed with Milbourn. “Despite the recent attacks on the scientific community and large-scale buy-in by some of the public, the science behind the conclusion that contemporary warming is largely anthropogenic (manmade) still stands,” he told FoxNews.com.

But others disagree. Former Virginia Gov. George Allen, chairman of the American Energy Freedom Center think tank, said that the U.S. is “at a crossroads in energy policy,” but that the country “cannot stand with pompous elites.” He noted that a bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate to essentially veto the EPA’s “endangerment finding”—and he said that others, like the legislature of the state of Kansas, have also gone on record against implementing an energy policy based on EPA’s findings.  Read story here.