Washington - This morning, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will appear before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power to defend her agency’s attempted takeover of greenhouse gas regulation. In anticipation, the Institute for Energy Research puts forward its own quesitons for Ms. Jackson to consider.
1. The point of EPA regulating greenhouse gas regulations is to reduce global warming. The Waxman-Markey bill, which would have forced an 83 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 would have reduced global temperatures by 0.05C by 2050 and 0.112C by 2100. How many hundredths of a degree Celsius of warming will EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations avert?
2. You have called these carbon dioxide regulations “common sense” regulation. Is it common sense regulation to impose billions of dollars in costs on the American people when the benefits of the regulations are a few hundredths of a degree less temperature increase?
3. The United States is the world’s third largest oil producer, the world’s largest natural gas producer, and the world’s second largest coal producer. EPA’s regulations will increase the prices and costs of using all of these resources. Why does EPA want to increase the prices of these key resources when the regulations won’t have a noticeable impact on global warming?
4. According to data from the Global Carbon Project, from 1999 to 2009, China’s CO2 emissions increased by 126%, India’s CO2 emissions increased by 63%, Brazil’s CO2 emissions increased 16%, and South Korea’s CO2 emissions increased by 30%. By contrast, America’s CO2 emissions decreased by 5%. What value does the administration see in reducing carbon dioxide emissions when our emissions have decreased while others countries’ emissions are dramatically increasing?
5. If EPA further regulates new sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, particulate, mercury, and other harmful emissions, it could cost $180 billion in compliance costs - and that’s before carbon dioxide regulations. What others steps has EPA taken to achieve the President’s goal of making electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket” in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions?
6. The recessions significantly contributed to a reduction in U.S. CO2 emissions. Your “common sense” plan is to reduce CO2 emissions. Does this mean that a recession is a common sense way to reduce our CO2 emissions?
7. How many additional deaths may occur in traffic accidents because EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations will force people to buy smaller, more fuel efficient cars?
8. Studies have found that increased energy prices harm human health because people are forced to spend money on higher energy bills instead of for better health. One study found that replacing 3/4 of U.S. coal-based electricity with higher priced electricity, such as that from renewables, will lead to 150,000 premature deaths. (See Harvey Brenner, Health Benefits of Low Cost Energy: An Econometric Case Study, Environmental Manager, and November 2005). How does EPA assess the harm to human health caused by higher energy prices and more regulations?
9. Are Americans just not smart enough to drive the “right” vehicles or use the “right” sources of energy? In 2010, SUV sales were up 21%, midsize car sales were up 7.8%, but EPA’s preferred high-mileage hybrids were down 8.1% and compact cars are up just 1.1%. See.
10. Who makes better decisions about how my family uses energy—EPA officials or my family?
Extra Credit Question:
In the documentation accompanying EPA’s vehicle greenhouse gas emission regulations, it states that EPA’s regulations will lead to a reduction in global temperature by “0.006 to 0.0015C by 2100” and “sea-level rise is projected to be reduced by approximately 0.06cm-0.14cm by 2100.” Will EPA’s regulation of large emitters of carbon dioxide result in global temperature reduction more or less than 0.0015C?
Institute for Energy Research | 1100 H Street, NW | Suite 400 | Washington, DC 20005
See also Senator Inhofe opening statement in committee on the EPA’s planned regulation.
See also Congressional Energy and Environmental Policy Leaders Filed an Amicus Brief with the supreme court.
We posted many stories explaining why the California masochistic policies were bit unnecessary and unwise but many downsides (unemployment, exported jobs, higher energy and other costs) and no discernible upside. It took an extremist enviro coalition appropriately called CRAP to put a halt to the bad deal because in their mind it was too corporation friendly.
By Adam Sparks
Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s legacy and a legal miscalculation by leftist environmentalists, this week a California judge stopped the implementation of California’s Cap and Trade law: better known as Cap and Tax. This is the same type of carbon trading that Al Gore has hawked for years, but failed to get through the most radical Democrat Congress in generations. That’s how bad it was. Of course, that didn’t stop whacked out California from passing a Draconian version of the same job killing scheme.
To add insult to injury, the so called “republican” Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law in 2006. It was opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and most sane taxpayers (admittedly, CA doesn’t have enough of those). The opponents claimed that the law would drive out business to other states and dramatically increase the cost of energy. Energy costs would, of course, be passed on, driving up the cost of everything else-in the midst of the nation’s worst recession.
The voters of California even had an opportunity last year to put the brakes on it at the ballot box with Proposition 23, but the environmental left spent millions fighting the proposition. It wouldn’t even have scrapped the whole law, but only would have suspended the Cap and Tax until state unemployment dropped below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters. The proposition was defeated overwhelmingly. Considering our unemployment rate is well over 12% here, the California voters essentially supported assisted economic-suicide of their own state.
It took two forces working together to finally defeat Cap and Tax: a group of radical Lefties and Ronald Reagan to put the brakes on this law.
A challenge to the law, based on other environmental laws, specifically CEQA, (the California Environmental Quality Act), finally prompted a judge to halt the law’s implementation. CEQA says that legislation that has an impact on the economy or the environment has to be analyzed for less destructive alternatives. Such an analysis was not adequately done according to the judge. CEQA was signed by then Governor Ronald Reagan. (May he rest in peace.)
Ironically, the group that brought the legal challenge to the law was not the coalition of businesses that would be directly affected. It was a group of racist, enviro-whackos calling themselves, the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, abbreviated CRAP. This group claims to defend minorities from the ravages of the environment. The reason that CRAP filed the lawsuit is that they thought the legislation was too business friendly!
The judges ruling is now an opening for the business community to permanently defeat this law. The California Air Resources Board, one of the state’s largest and most unaccountable agencies has to now study and find alternative solutions to reducing green house gases.
Here’s an idea for the Resources Board: how about if California just continue on with its other destructive economic policies? Policies like: spending taxes it doesn’t have, treasury-busting unfunded pensions, high corporate and individual taxes, promoting the trial lawyer paradise and all the other anti-business regulations? Then you’ll be on track for carbon emissions like you’ve had before the industrial revolution-without the need for the complex Cap and Tax.
See post.
By Dr. Anthony Lupo
As the evidence continues to mount against climate alarmists, their statements continue to become more outrageous. Those like Dr. John Holdren now call for the education of skeptical scientists [1] as if skepticism about human induced climate change equates with a lack of understanding about the climate change problem. Then, when former Vice President Al Gore [2] was challenged about the cold and snow gripping much of the United States, he explains how science has always held out that human induced climate change is leading to more snow. This is a new wrinkle in the climate change debate as many press releases from alarmists during the past ten years discussed how snow might become a thing of the past.
But could it be that the alarmists are the ones who need education about how the climate system works? Low pressures, like the one that brought record snows from the southern plains states to the Chicago area (February 1-2, 2011), draw their energy primarily from the strength of the equator-to-pole temperature differences. They are also driven by the stability of the atmosphere, or how quickly temperatures decrease with height. Finally, another key ingredient can be the addition of copious amounts of moisture. However, the moisture will not make storms stronger without the contributions of the other two processes.
Global warming alarmists continually argue that the warming is happening fastest in the arctic regions and that an upper tropospheric warming would be a key signature of human induced climate change [3]. Both of these factors would act to reduce the strength of storms, and also result in a jet stream that tends to be less “active” and with less robust waves.
Early last fall, it became apparent that the eastern United States would have a colder than normal winter [4]. The previous year’s El Nino had waned and La Nina was setting in during the early fall. Additionally, sea surface temperatures in the Northern Pacific were getting warmer. Both of these scenarios favor the occurrence of more winter season blocking [5] in the Pacific Sector. Blocking is a large-scale, mid-latitude, persistent ridging in the jet-stream which “blocks” the regular progression of storms [5]. Blocking in the Pacific is usually associated with cool weather in the central and eastern USA [6].The deepening La Nina has brought global temperatures down during December 2010 and January 2011 [7] (Fig. 1).
For the second straight year, snow is piling up across much of the country including the Missouri region. In our area, the recent storm was the second greatest snow producer in at least the last 60 years. For Columbia in central Missouri, the winter of 2010-2011 has produced already the 6th greatest winter seasonal snow total since 1890. And February has just begun. The snow totals here have been noteworthy in other ways as January 2011 was the 9th snowiest on record, February 2011 is already the 4th snowiest. This winter season is only the third one since 1949 to produce three events of 6-or-more inches at our location.
While snow has assaulted the record books in Missouri as well as nationwide, the cold temperatures have yet to become a big story. The winter temperatures in our region are on pace to be colder than last year, which was our 15th coldest on record (since 1890), and this year’s winter would rank at 10th if February does not change the winter average appreciably. So far February has been off to a cold start, and the narrative has been the same elsewhere.
None of these things are consistent with what we would expect in a warmer world as the alarmists see it [3], regardless of how they spin it [2].
Figure 1. The global temperature anomalies based on satellite measurements from the University of Alabama Huntsville. The abscissa shows years since 1979 and the ordinate is temperature anomalies in degrees centigrade. Adapted from [7].
[1] Holdren on Skeptics in the Blaze Posted: January 31, 2011.
[2] Al Gore: An Answer for Bill Posted: February 1, 2011
[3] Climate Change 2007: The Science of Basis, Contributions of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Edited by: S. Solomon, D. Qin, M. Manning, M. Marquis, K. Averyt, M.M.B. Tignor, H.L. Miller, Jr., and Z. Chen. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 996 pp. ISBN: 978 0521-70596-7
[4] See Our Long Range Forecast link.
[5] Wiedenmann, J.M., A.R. Lupo, I.I. Mokhov, and E. Tikhonova, 2002: The climatology of blocking anticyclones for the Northern and Southern Hemisphere: Block intensity as a diagnostic. Journal of Climate, 15, 3459-3473
[6] Lupo, A.R., E. P. Kelsey, D.K. Weitlich, N.A. Davis, and P.S. Market, 2008: Using the monthly classification of global SSTs and 500 hPa height anomalies to predict temperature and precipitation regimes one to two seasons in advance for the mid-Mississippi region. National Weather Digest, 32:1, 11-33.
[7] Spencer, R, 2011: Global temperatures in Freefall
Icecap Note: Here is the December 2010 - January 2011 anomaly of temperatures for the United States (NOAA CDC). Enlarged.
