To meet the Obama administration’s targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.
To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving would simply have to increase, according to a report released Thursday by researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The research also appears in the March edition of the journal Energy Policy.
The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for fiscal 2010.
In their study, the researchers devised several combinations of steps that United States policymakers might take in trying to address the heat-trapping emissions by the nation’s transportation sector, which consumes 70 percent of the oil used in the United States.
Most of their models assumed an economy-wide carbon dioxide tax starting at $30 a ton in 2010 and escalating to $60 a ton in 2030. In some cases researchers also factored in tax credits for electric and hybrid vehicles, taxes on fuel or both.
In the modeling, it turned out that issuing tax credits could backfire, while taxes on fuel proved beneficial.
“Tax credits don’t address how much people use their cars,†said Ross Morrow, one of the report’s authors. “In reverse, they can make people drive more.â€
Editor’s note: It seems it’s not really about carbon dioxide or fossil fuel. It’s about making the unwashed masses drive less – even if it’s an electric car. Elitists to peasants: “Get in the trains and stay out of my way!”
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) are scheduled to formally unveil on Wednesday a compromise U.S. climate change bill they want passed this year.
Besides bringing down emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, it would expand offshore oil drilling and nuclear-power production in a move to appeal to a broader number of senators.
Here are highlights of the bill, called the “American Power Act,” according to a summary of the legislation being circulated to senators and obtained by Reuters:
Carbon emissions reductions
By 2020, carbon pollution would be cut by 17 percent from 2005 levels. By 2050, a reduction of more than 80 percent would be achieved. These are the same goals included in the climate bill passed by the House of Representatives in June. The short-term goal is slightly less than the 20 percent cut approved in November by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The summary did not specify, but sources have said the carbon-reduction requirements on utilities would begin in 2013.
Carbon price collar
Carbon prices would rise at a fixed rate over inflation. Initially, floor and ceiling prices for carbon pollution permits required of electric utilities would be set at $12-$25. The floor would increase at 3 percent annually over inflation and the ceiling at 5 percent annually over inflation.
In the event of unusually high carbon prices, a strategic reserve would ensure the availability of “price-certain allowances.”
Backers aren’t calling it “cap and trade,” but in practice, that is what it appears to be.
Corruption: The carbon trading system being pushed here has spawned crime and fraud across the pond. Cap-and-trade is not about saving the planet. It’s about money and power, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.
All across Europe authorities have been conducting raids, rounding up individuals involved in a new version of Climate-gate. This time the data aren’t corrupted. Europe’s Emissions Trading System is. The system is so sick, it’s turned out to be a scam built upon a scam.
Twenty-five people have been arrested in raids by British and German authorities as part of a pan-European crackdown on carbon credit VAT tax fraud.
U.K. officials announced raids on 81 offices and homes, nabbing 13 people in England and eight in Scotland. The operation involved 450 investigators from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs office.
German authorities raided 230 locations, including the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and the offices of RWE, one of the largest energy firms in Europe. The German operation involved 1,000 investigators targeting 50 companies and 150 suspects.
The amount of money involved in carbon trading is huge and the temptations vast. While our Congress demagogues about banks and their “complex financial instruments,” they are simple compared to cap-and-trade, which as we have noted involves essentially the buying and selling of air. Throw in an oppressive value-added tax and you have a recipe for corruption and fraud.
Last December, Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trading System fraud had resulted in about 5 billion euros in lost revenues as Europe’s carbon traders schemed to avoid paying Europe’s VAT and pocket the difference. In announcing the raids, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.
Cap-And-Trade: While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House.
Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore’s appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation’s philanthropic leaders.
“Time’s running out (on climate change),” Gore told them. “We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together.”
Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the climate scam alive as evidence of outright climate fraud grows, just as they were critical in the beginning when the Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, essentially, air. More specifically perhaps, hot air.
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) advertises itself as “North America’s only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.” Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 when the CCX startup grants were issued. As president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities. Now isn’t that special?
In November last year a file appeared on the internet containing thousands of emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain. How this file got into the public domain is still uncertain, but the emails, whose authenticity is no longer in question, provided a startling view into the world of climate research.
In what has become known as Climategate, one could see unambiguous evidence of the unethical suppression of information and opposing viewpoints, and even data manipulation.
Moreover, the emails showed collusion with other prominent researchers in the US and elsewhere. The CRU supplies many of the authors for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
One might have thought the revelations would discredit the science underlying proposed global warming policy. Indeed, the revelations may have played some role in the failure of last December’s Copenhagen climate conference to agree on new carbon emissions limits.
But with the political momentum behind policy proposals and billions in research funding at stake, the effect of the emails appears to have been small.
The general approach of the scientific community (at least in the US and Britain) has been to see whether people will bother to look at the files in detail (they mostly have not) and to wait until time diffuses the initial impressions to reassert the original message of a climate catastrophe that must be fought with widespread carbon control. This reassertion, however, continues to be suffused by illogic, nastiness and outright dishonesty.
There were, of course, the inevitable investigations of individuals such as Penn State University’s Michael Mann (who manipulated data to create the famous “hockey stick” climate graph) and Phil Jones (director of the CRU).
The investigations were brief, lacked depth and were conducted mainly by individuals already publicly committed to the popular view of climate alarm. The results were whitewashes that are incredible given the data.
This video documents Chicken Little’s journey to Washington DC to see the king. Unlike the traditional children’s story, Chicken Little decided to make his trip once he discovered that the sky wasn’t falling after all and that claims of man-made global warming were untrue. Chicken Little went to Washington to stand-up for his friends at Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW), including Elmer-Welmer, Ducky Lucky, Henny Penny and other American patriots. His friends had recently come under attack by “warmers” like Michael Mann.
Last fall I alerted Spectator readers to the start-up nonprofit Alliance for Climate Education, which spreads the global warming alarmism gospel to students one school assembly at a time.
It turns out that the slick ACE lecturers are more than just preachers; they are recruiters too. After they dazzle teens with hip talk, animation and jokes, they work to sign them up for their anti-consumption (Americans are to blame) cause, often collecting cell phone numbers and email addresses without parents’ knowledge.
Earlier this month ACE visited Northampton (Mass.) High School, where a teacher persuaded colleagues to let students skip final period classes in order to attend their assembly. One student reported on the presentation by ACE’s Julian Rodriguez-Drix:
He dealt with issues of climate change in a positive and non-judgmental way by raising students’ awareness of the problem at hand and the methods by which they are actively polluting and contributing to global warming. The presentation explained how climate change has been caused and continued by social influence and our culture of consumption. Students learned how their seemingly minimal consumption is connected to huge companies, large usage of fossil fuels, and incredible amounts of waste. Julian clearly summarized his message in his statement, “We’re all wrapped up in [an] economic cycle that just leads to garbage.” He also discussed “super-sized” American living, excessive use of non-renewable resources, and the results of pollution in an urgent, but humorous, manner.
It all makes for one entertaining guilt trip — for students to lay on others. The Left is so clever in not offending their recruits: “It’s not your ‘minimal consumption’ that’s causing the problem — it’s those large corporations and fat Americans that are the problem!” And then they continue living their own privileged lives.
Of course, they pretend otherwise. ACE trainers like Rodriguez-Drix belch greenhouse gases driving across several state lines to give their talks, when a simple Webcast would deliver the message and serve as a good example of energy efficiency. But when asked how he would “Do One Thing” (an ACE campaign) to fight climate change, he came up with the innovative idea to turn off his lights (video). Wish I’d thought of that one.
We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.
But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
By Leo Hickman
When I recently interviewed James Lovelock for the G2 section of the Guardian, we spoke for nearly two hours about the various events of the past few months – a period in which he’d remained silent because he’d been over-wintering with his wife Sandy in her native Missouri. There was a lot to talk about: the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia, the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, the intense scrutiny placed on the IPCC, and the rather nippy winter experienced across much of the Northern Hemisphere. As is inevitable with an interview appearing in the newspaper, space was at a premium so the quotes used were tightly edited. But, just as I did with my interview with Al Gore last year, I have decided to publish a transcript of his key points here online for anyone interested in hearing in much more detail what Lovelock had to say on some of these controversial and much-discussed topics.Â
Lovelock’s reaction to first reading about the stolen CRU emails [he later clarified that he hadn't read the originals, saying: "Oddly, I felt reluctant to pry"]:Â
I was utterly disgusted. My second thought was that it was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn’t want to do anything else other than be a scientist. They’re not like that nowadays. They don’t give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced universities and churn them out. They say: “Science is a good career. You can get a job for life doing government work.” That’s no way to do science.
I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.
Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.
You can make mistakes; they’re helpful. In the old days, it was perfectly OK to make a mistake and say so. You often learned from it. Nowadays if you’re dependent on a grant – and 99% of them are – you can’t make mistakes as you won’t get another one if you do. It’s an awful moral climate and it was all set up for the best of reasons. I think it was felt there was far too much inequality in science and there was an enormous redress. Looking around the country [at the wider society] this was good on the whole, but in some special professions you want the best, the elite. Elitism is important in science. It is vital.
The main target may not be the rule itself, which came after painstaking negotiations with the auto industry, but what it portends.
“It will trigger other requirements under the Clean Air Act that other companies outside the auto industry don’t like,” said Columbia Law School professor Michael Gerrard, director of the school’s Center for Climate Change Law. “The Chamber of Commerce and other industry associations have been trying to fight this in every possible venue.”
The rules announced today establish increasingly strict fuel economy standards and greenhouse gas emission standards for 2012 to 2016 model year vehicles. By 2016, new cars and trucks will average 35.5 miles per gallon. Carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by about 960 million metric tons over the lifetime of the vehicles regulated.
“The standards themselves are noncontroversial, and EPA has done a strong job building consensus with other states, the auto industry, and environmental groups on those standards. Thus, it is unlikely industry would seek to challenge those standards themselves,” said Roger Martella Jr., a partner in Sidley Austin‘s environmental practice group and former general counsel of the EPA, in an email. “The determining factor likely will be how EPA decides an upcoming rule, called the PSD tailoring rule, to mitigate the impacts on stationary sources.”
Stationary sources of air pollution include facilities like factories and power plants.
2010 will be remembered as the year Global Warming died. Global Warming was Mann made using clever computer ‘tricks’ and ‘massaged’ data. After slowly developing in the womb of junk science for several years, the primary birth announcement and christening occurred when Al Gore published Earth in the Balance in 1992. Gore, the self proclaimed genius who had “created the internet” , eagerly adopted Global Warming and put his new baby in the public spotlight.
 Global Warming was a very good earner who attracteded billions of investor’s dollars to Gore’s for-profit corporation called Generation Investment Management. From day one Global Warming was all about making money. His detractors dared to call him a fraudster and a control freak who wanted to tell everyone how to live.
Gore’s book was really quite boring and it failed to get Global Warming the attention (and money) Gore felt his baby deserved, so Gore followed up with An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. The movie will go down in history as an excellent example of what happens when one person, with a hidden financial agenda, tells one side of a story.
Despite it’s success, the wildly popular movie was the beginning of the end for Global Warming. It triggered a quick and lethal downward spiral. The movie galvanized scientists who recognized a bogus pseuo-scientific scam when they saw one. Powerful opposition groups formed around the world. Books were written by scholars that destroyed the credibility of Al Gore’s pride and joy.
Global Warming was a cash cow, and his opposition had no money, but the opposition (“skeptics”) had something more powerful than money: The Truth.
It is becoming difficult to keep pace with the speed at which the global warming scam is now unravelling. The latest reversal of scientific “consensus†is on livestock and the meat trade as a major cause of global warming – one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to eco-vegetarian cranks. Now a scientific report delivered to the American Chemical Society says it is nonsense. The Washington Times has called it “Cowgateâ€.
The cow-burp hysteria reached a crescendo in 2006 when a United Nations report ominously entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow†claimed: “The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). This is a higher share than transport.†This led to demands in America for a “cow tax†and a campaign in Europe at the time of the Copenhagen car crash last December called Less Meat=Less Heat.
Now a report to the American Chemical Society by Frank Mitloehner, an air quality expert at the University of California at Davis, has denounced such scare-mongering as “scientifically inaccurateâ€. He reveals that the UN report lumped together digestive emissions from livestock, gases produced by growing animal feed and meat and milk processing, to get the highest possible result, whereas the traffic comparison only covered fossil fuel emissions from cars. The true ratio, he concludes, is just 3 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in America are attributable to rearing of cattle and pigs, compared with 26 per cent from transport.
Mitloehner also makes the deadly serious point: “Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries.†Precisely. The demonising of cows and pigs is just another example of global warmists’ callous indifference to starvation in the developing world, as in the case of the unbelievably immoral and reckless drive for biofuels – pouring Third World resources for subsistence into Western liberals’ fuel tanks – and, notoriously, carbon trading.
Week by week the AGW collapse intensifies. Himalayan glaciers, polar bears, Arctic ice, Amazon rainforests, all discredited. Now it turns out the great cow-burp scare is bovine excrement too. The global warming scam is, to the majority of people, an object of derision. The scientific community has also at last wakened up. They are smelling the coffee in more and more institutions these days.
Governors of 18 U.S. states on Wednesday urged Congress to stop “harmful” Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions, saying the agency isn’t equipped to deal with “the very real potential for economic harm.”
The governors, led by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, made their request in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and their Republican counterparts. The letter was also signed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who has been cited as a possible contender in the 2012 presidential election.
“We feel compelled to guard against a regulatory approach that would increase the cost of electricity and gasoline prices, manufactured products, and ultimately harm the competitiveness of the U.S. economy,” the governors wrote. “We strongly urge Congress to stop harmful EPA regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions that could damage those vital interests.”
The Obama administration’s EPA fired back that it “rejects the premise that addressing greenhouse gases threatens the economy,” saying that other EPA actions “have led to innovations and the creation of new markets that can spur economic growth.” The EPA “will continue to follow the law and the science, which overwhelmingly indicates climate change is a real and growing threat to the American people,” spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said in a statement.
The governors’ letter, signed mostly by Republicans, intensifies a battle with the Obama administration’s EPA as it prepares to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles and stationary sources such as power plants. The rules are due to be finalized by the EPA later this month. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said the regulations for power plants, factories and oil refineries will be effective on a delayed basis, beginning in 2011, allowing companies extra time to plan ahead.
Coal, oil and manufacturing states have warned of the costs of complying, which could involve equipment purchases and other spending. In Congress, multiple measures are pending to hinder the EPA. One measure, from coal-state lawmakers including Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) would suspend EPA regulations for two years. Another measure, led by oil-state Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) would overturn the EPA regulations.
“A simple delay of EPA action will do nothing to provide relief to Americans looking for jobs or businesses looking to make new investments in our states,” the governors wrote in urging Congress to stop the EPA outright and to pass comprehensive energy legislation. “Furthermore, such delay of EPA action only creates more uncertainty in a difficult fiscal environment.”
The letter emboldened Republicans already at odds with the EPA. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, Okla.) said in a statement that the EPA should “stop this tax and the regulatory nightmare it will create, and work with Congress to pass an all-of-the-above energy plan that means more jobs, more energy, and more security for America.”
Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-WVa.) will introduce legislation Thursday to impose a two-year moratorium on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants and other stationary emitters, a move that could undermine the Obama administration’s plan to pursue a cap on carbon emissions in the face of congressional opposition.
Rockefeller’s bill, one of several recent congressional efforts to curb the EPA’s authority to address climate change under the Clean Air Act, highlights the resistance the administration will face if it attempts to limit carbon dioxide through regulation. Obama and his top deputies have repeatedly said they would prefer for Congress to set mandatory, nationwide limits on greenhouse gas emissions, but the EPA is moving ahead with plans to do so if legislation fails to pass this year.
“Today, we took important action to safeguard jobs, the coal industry, and the entire economy as we move toward clean coal technology,” Rockefeller said. “This legislation will issue a two-year suspension on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources–giving Congress the time it needs to address an issue as complicated and expansive as our energy future. Congress, not the EPA, must be the ideal decision-maker on such a challenging issue.”
Republicans, too, have repeatedly tried to rein in the EPA’s climate authority–Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has introduced a resolution of disapproval that would overturn the agency’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, and House Republicans introduced their own version of the resolution this week. But Rockefeller’s effort is especially significant because it points to growing unease among Democrats over the prospect of the administration tackling climate change without explicit congressional approval.
Three Senate Democrats–Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.)–are co-sponsoring Murkowksi’s resolution. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.) and Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) have introduced a similar measure, and House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-WVa), along with Democratic Reps. Alan Mollohan (WVa) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.), will introduce a companion bill to Rockefeller’s. In addition, Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) has introduced a measure that would strip the EPA of its authority to regulate pollution linked to global warming.
Insulated by an outer crust, the surface of the earth acquires nearly all of its heat from the sun. The only exit for this heat to take is through a door marked “Radiation.” And therein lies a tale…Â
Recently, I chanced upon an Atmospheric Science Educator Guide [PDF] published by NASA. Aimed at students in grades 5 through 8, it helps teachers explain how so-called “greenhouse gases” warm our planet Earth.
These guides are interesting on a number of levels, so I recommend that you look them over. But what caught my eye was this:
Question: Do all of the gases in our atmosphere absorb heat?
Answer: (Allow students to discuss their ideas. Don’t provide the answer at this time.)
Indeed, that’s a good one to think over yourself. Almost all of what we’re breathing is nitrogen and oxygen — do these gases absorb heat? Lakes and rocks absorb heat, after all, and thereby reach a higher temperature. So can nitrogen and oxygen molecules do the same?
Well, I won’t keep you hanging. After allowing students to discuss it, the instructor is instructed to give them the final verdict.Â
Answer: No. Only some gases have the unique property of being able to absorb heat.
These are the infrared-absorbing “greenhouse gases,” of course, substances like carbon dioxide water vapor, and not nitrogen and oxygen.Â
Now, is something wrong here? Most definitely, for NASA has a finger on the scale. Let’s review a few basics that NASA should have outlined.
Texas and several national industry groups on Tuesday filed separate petitions in federal court challenging the government’s authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Texas, which leads U.S. states in carbon dioxide emissions due to its heavy concentration of oil refining and other industries, will see a major impact if U.S. mandatory emissions reductions take effect.
In December, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide endanger human health, opening the door for the agency to issue mandatory regulations to reduce them.
Texas said it had filed a petition for review challenging the EPA’s “endangerment finding” with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Texas has also asked the EPA to reconsider its ruling.
“The EPA’s misguided plan paints a big target on the backs of Texas agriculture and energy producers and the hundreds of thousands of Texans they employ,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said.
The National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association also said on Tuesday they filed a petition challenging the EPA in federal appeals court.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S. iron and steel makers have also signaled they would file lawsuits.
By Sindya Bhanoo
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