ICECAP UPDATE

Last year, in the senate EPW, Anthony and my paper for SPPI was introduced and took Boxer by surprise, who after retreating behind locked doors came out and announced our paper questioning the data appeared in an organization blog sponsored by big oil - Exxon Mobil and therefore could be ignored. SPPI responded back in a letter that they NEVER received a penny from Exxon, but Boxer etal had moved on. Never let facts muddy up a good story or endanger a chosen direction on public policy.

Hockey Schtick

‘Scientific’ American may regret taking their recent opinion poll on the state of climate science given the eye-opening results cast by their “scientifically literate” readership. With a total of 5190 respondents, a consensus of 81.3% think the IPCC is “a corrupt organization, prone to group-think, with a political agenda” and 75% think climate change is caused by solar variation or natural processes vs. 21% who think it is due to greenhouse gases from human activity. 65% think we should do nothing about climate change since “we are powerless to stop it,” and the same percentage think science should stay out of politics. When asked, “How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?,” 76.7% said “nothing.”

Poll results hidden here

Climate of Change?

1. Should climate scientists discuss scientific uncertainty in mainstream forums?
No, that would play into the hands of the fossil-fuel lobby. 3.0% 157
Yes, it would help engage the citizenry. 90.1% 4,673
Maybe - but only via serious venues like PBS’s the NewsHour and The New York Times. 6.9% 358
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

2. Judith Curry is:
a peacemaker. 69.1% 3,585
a dupe. 7.6% 392
both. 4.3% 224
I’ve never heard of her. 19.0% 987
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

3. What is causing climate change?
greenhouse gases from human activity 30.9% 1,602
solar variation 33.1% 1,718
natural processes 75.8% 3,934
There is no climate change. 6.2% 320
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

4. The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is:
an effective group of government representatives, scientists and other experts. 18.0% 932
a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda. 81.3% 4,220
something to do with Internet protocols. 0.7% 36
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

5. What should we do about climate change?
Nothing, we are powerless to stop it. 65.4% 3,394
Use more technology (geoengineering, carbon capture and storage). 16.7% 865
Use less technology (cars, intensive agriculture). 5.8% 303
Switch to carbon-free energy sources as much as possible and adapt to changes already underway. 29.5% 1,528
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

6. What is “climate sensitivity”?
the degree to which global temperature responds to concentrations of greenhouse gases 32.6% 1,692
an unknown variable that climate scientists still do not understand 52.2% 2,708
the phrase on which the fate of human civilization hangs 0.6% 30
all of the above 14.6% 758
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

7. Which policy options do you support?
a carbon tax 15.1% 781
cap and trade (a price on carbon via an overall limit on emissions paired with some form of market for such pollution permits) 8.5% 441
increased government funding of energy-related technology research and development 38.8% 2,015
cap and dividend, in which the proceeds of auctioning pollution permits are rebated to taxpayers 6.6% 343
keeping science out of the political process 65.1% 3,375
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

8. How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?
a 50 percent increase in electricity bills 3.8% 195
a doubling of gasoline prices 5.5% 286
nothing 76.7% 3,981
whatever it takes 14.0% 726
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

Check out the comments as well.

Matt Dempsey

Link to Inhofe EPW Press Blog

Link to S. 482, the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011

After Obamacare took effect, opponents realized that delaying Obamacare was not an option.  The same principle applies to the Rockefeller bill: EPA’s cap-and-trade agenda under the Clean Air Act is bad policy, which will raise energy prices and destroy jobs.  It should be repealed, not delayed. 

The choice, then, is clear: the Upton-Inhofe bill repeals EPA’s regulatory power grab, while the Rockefeller bill allows it to continue after only two years. In effect, Rockefeller implicitly endorses EPA’s cap-and-trade agenda under the Clean Air Act; thus a vote for Rockefeller is a vote for EPA’s cap-and-trade agenda.

Rockefeller also fails to provide certainty for business planning and investment.  Businesses typically plan on a 10- to 15- year time horizon.  A two-year delay does nothing to clarify the contours of the regulatory landscape, and would merely prolong the uncertainty currently plaguing the economy.

Rockefeller also has serious practical flaws:

1) It does not prevent EPA from issuing a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon dioxide and methane; nor does it bar the use of other existing CAA authorities to regulate stationary sources.

2) It does not prevent EPA from establishing new regulatory standards under Title II (which covers mobile sources), including low-carbon fuel standards, which will reduce domestic oil supplies and increase our dependence on foreign oil. 

3) It does nothing to prevent EPA from retroactively requiring GHG controls on covered sources. And even if sources were able to complete permit applications during the 2-year moratorium, the bill does not prevent EPA from holding those permits up until after the moratorium expires.

4) It applies to CO2 and methane gases only.  But pursuant to EPA’s endangerment finding, EPA is moving forward with regulations relating to four other (six total) GHGs.

5) It does not relieve states from enforcing federal requirements.  Most states (rather than EPA) administer CAA permitting programs. 

6) It leaves the endangerment finding in place, thereby providing a legal basis for climate change “nuisance suits” sponsored by environmental pressure groups hostile to energy development. In addition, it does not prevent citizen suits under the CAA to enforce greenhouse gas permitting requirements. 

Upton-Inhofe removes all of these complications by simply repealing EPA’s cap-and-trade agenda.  Rockefeller leaves them in place.  Again, the choice is clear. 

See also Marlo Lewis’s H.R. 910: Seizing the Moral High Ground (How to Foil Opponents’ Rhetorical Tricks).

Yesterday the House Energy & Commerce Committee approved H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, by 34-19. Reps. Waxman, Markey, Inslee and others offered hostile amendments, none of which had any chance of passing, but that was not their purpose.  All the hostile amendments were designed to trick H.R. 910 supporters into abandoning their moral high ground. All were designed to suck supporters into affirming controversial positions that H.R. 910 neither presupposes nor implies.

Opponents’ strategy was to change the subject so that H.R. 910 supporters would end up debating climate science, climate change risk, or oil dependence rather than the real issue: the constitutional impropriety of EPA ‘legislating’ climate and energy policy through the regulatory backdoor. More than a few Republicans took the bait, allowing the other team to define, and thereby occupy, the moral high ground.

When the bill finally gets to the House floor - and is voted on today in the Senate—supporters need to do a better job of anticipating and foiling opponents’ rhetorical tricks.

Today in the Daily Caller, my colleague Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity writes:

Article I, Section 1 says: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” But in the Age of Obama, it’s a different story. The legislative powers are being exercised by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. Now the Senate will be put to the test of whether each senator is OK with that state of affairs, or whether they actually want to take responsibility for writing the laws. That’s the fundamental question at stake as the Senate considers the McConnell Amendment to stop the EPA’[s global warming power grab.

Exactly! Read Phil’s column here.

By Alan Caruba

Have you noticed that you rarely hear “global warming” mentioned on radio or television and the term rarely occurs any more in the print media?

One reason is that it has been replaced with “climate change” and the other reason is that the only people talking about climate change seem to be leaders of governments like the United States or Australia.

To borrow a line from Shakespeare, I come to bury global warming, not to praise it.

An early and unrelenting skeptic from the days it first debuted in the late 1980s, I rather instinctively knew that the only warming occurring was the same natural warming that always follows a cooling cycle; in this case the warming that began in 1850 after the Little Ice Age that began around 1300.

It never made sense to me that “industry” should be blamed for pumping massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when the amount of CO2 was a minuscule 0.038 percent with far greater amounts of hydrogen and oxygen that protect the Earth from becoming the galactic equivalent of a toasted marshmallow.

Then, too, like oxygen, all life on Planet Earth is dependent on CO2, a gas that the Environmental Protection Agency is actually calling a “pollutant.” That is so absurd that I was confident people would laugh the whole “theory” out the door when it was first proposed. But that was over two decades ago.

The end didn’t begin until November 2009 and the release of thousands of “Climategate” emails between the meteorologists supplying the bogus data that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used to generate the greatest hoax of the modern era.

Not since the discovery of the “Piltdown Man” had so many scientists allowed themselves to be taken in by a complete fabrication; one based entirely on falsified computer model data. Worse still, many climbed on board the global warming bandwagon to reap some of the billions in grant money involved.

The fact that “global warming” was generated by the United Nations should have been the red flag that something was not just wrong about it, but that it hid an agenda aimed at Western industrialized nations.

I think global warming gained credibility as much from the support of the leaders of Western nations as from the great difficulty skeptical scientists encountered in gaining any traction against it. To this day President Obama still prattles on about the need for solar and wind power to replace fossil fuels in order to avoid “climate change” from their use.

The current Prime Minister of Australia is busy trying to impose a carbon tax on that nation. The British have dug themselves a deep hole by embracing windmills instead of coal mines. Billions have been wasted by Spain and Germany on alternative energy sources.

The anti-energy agenda will have devastating affects on life in the West. Electricity consumers in the United Kingdom were recently told by the CEO of the country’s grid operation that, by 2020, they will have to get used to having no electricity for periods during the day and night. This will put the U.K. on par with North Korea. And the U.S. is not far behind if it does not quickly reverse current energy policies.

In the U.S., the leading voice for “global warming” became the former Vice President Al Gore who, following his defeat for the presidency, set about becoming a multimillionaire with all manner of “global warming” projects and enterprises. He would eventually win an Oscar for his documentary and a Nobel Peace Prize that was shared by the IPCC. Today, however, Al Gore is a joke.

The legacy of “global warming” has been the decades-long attack on U.S. energy sources until today our vast resources of coal and oil remain in the ground instead of being available as the price of oil increases due to troubles in the Middle East and the cost of electricity increases due to laws mandating that utilities must buy from wind and solar electricity producers who would be out of business by next week without those government mandates.

The public acceptance of the “global warming” hoax has waned even as the mainstream media has tried to hide the truth. The rise of the Internet has seen to that and other more pressing, real challenges are shoveling dirt onto its grave. 9/11 refocused public attention on a real threat. The 2008 financial crisis still holds the nation in its grip.

And a President whose first two years have generated massive resistance now only occasionally references “climate change.”

The global warming corpse is not quite dead, but dead enough for now. The question is what new fraud will the United Nations and environmental organizations perpetrate? The “acidification” of the world’s oceans? “Species extinction” or “Invasive species”? Be assured, the UN mafia is at work on something.