Harming the economy, degrading the U.S. grid: another day at the EPA.
At an unusual gala ceremony on the release of a major new Environmental Protection Agency rule yesterday, chief Lisa Jackson called it “historic” and “a great victory.” And she’s right: The rule may be the most expensive the agency has ever issued, and it represents the triumph of the Obama Administration’s green agenda over economic growth and job creation. Congratulations.
The so-called utility rule requires power plants to install “maximum achievable control technology” to reduce mercury emissions and other trace gases. But the true goal of the rule’s 1,117 pages is to harm coal-fired power plants and force large parts of the fleet—the U.S. power system workhorse—to shut down in the name of climate change. The EPA figures the rule will cost $9.6 billion, which is a gross, deliberate underestimate.
In return Ms. Jackson says the public will get billions of dollars of health benefits like less asthma if not a cure for cancer. Those credulous enough to believe her should understand that the total benefits of mercury reduction amount to all of $6 million. That’s total present value, not benefits per year—oh, and that’s an -illion with an “m,” which is not normally how things work out in President Obama’s Washington.
The rest of the purported benefits—to be precise, 99.99%—come by double-counting pollution reductions like soot that the EPA regulates through separate programs and therefore most will happen anyway. Using such “co-benefits” is an abuse of the cost-benefit process and shows that Cass Sunstein’s team at the White House regulatory office—many of whom opposed the rule—got steamrolled.
As baseload coal power is retired or idled, the reliability of the electrical grid will be compromised, as every neutral analyst expects. Some utilities like Calpine Corp. and PSEG have claimed in these pages that the reliability concerns are overblown, but the Alfred E. Newman crowd has a vested interest in profiting from the higher wholesale electricity clearing prices that the EPA wants to cause.
Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is charged with protecting reliability, abnegated its statutory responsibilities as the rule was being written.
One FERC economist wrote in a March email that “I don’t think there is any value in continuing to engage EPA on the issues. EPA has indicated that these are their assumptions and have made it clear that are not changed [sic] anything on reliability . . . [EPA] does not directly answer anything associated with local reliability.” The EPA repeatedly told Congress that it had “very frequent substantive contact and consultation with FERC.”
The EPA also took the extraordinary step of issuing a pre-emptive “enforcement memorandum,” which is typically issued only after the EPA determines its rules are being broken. The memo tells utilities that they must admit to violating clean air laws if they can’t retrofit their plants within the EPA’s timeframe at any cost or if shutting down a plant will lead to regional blackouts. Such legal admissions force companies into a de facto EPA receivership and expose them to lawsuits and other liabilities.
Original column here.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
WSJ: The EPA's Fracking Scare
Breaking down the facts in that Wyoming drinking water study.
The shale gas boom has been a rare bright spot in the U.S. economy, so much of the country let out a shudder two weeks ago when the Environmental Protection Agency issued a "draft" report that the drilling process of hydraulic fracturing may have contaminated ground water in Pavillion, Wyoming. The good news is that the study is neither definitive nor applicable to the rest of the country.
"When considered together with other lines of evidence, the data indicates likely impact to ground water that can be explained by hydraulic fracking," said the EPA report, referring to the drilling process that blasts water and chemicals into shale rock to release oil and natural gas. The news caused elation among environmentalists and many in the media who want to shut down fracking.
More than one-third of all natural gas drilling now uses fracking, and that percentage is rising. If the EPA Wyoming study holds up under scrutiny, an industry that employs tens of thousands could be in peril.
But does it stand up? This is the first major study to have detected linkage between fracking and ground-water pollution, and the EPA draft hasn't been peer reviewed by independent scientific analysts. Critics are already picking apart the study, which Wyoming Governor Matt Mead called "scientifically questionable."
The EPA says it launched the study in response to complaints "regarding objectionable taste and odor problems in well water." What it doesn't say is that the U.S. Geological Survey has detected organic chemicals in the well water in Pavillion (population 175) for at least 50 years—long before fracking was employed. There are other problems with the study that either the EPA failed to disclose or the press has given little attention to:
• The EPA study concedes that "detections in drinking water wells are generally below [i.e., in compliance with] established health and safety standards." The dangerous compound EPA says it found in the drinking wells was 2-butoxyethyl phosphate. The Petroleum Association of Wyoming says that 2-BE isn't an oil and gas chemical but is a common fire retardant used in association with plastics and plastic components used in drinking wells.
• The pollution detected by the EPA and alleged to be linked to fracking was found in deep-water "monitoring wells"—not the shallower drinking wells. It's far from certain that pollution in these deeper wells caused the pollution in drinking wells. The deep-water wells that EPA drilled are located near a natural gas reservoir. Encana Corp., which owns more than 100 wells around Pavillion, says it didn't "put the natural gas at the bottom of the EPA's deep monitoring wells. Nature did."
• To the extent that drilling chemicals have been detected in monitoring wells, the EPA admits this may result from "legacy pits," which are old wells that were drilled many years before fracking was employed. The EPA also concedes that the inferior design of Pavillion's old wells allows seepage into the water supply. Safer well construction of the kind normally practiced today might have prevented any contaminants from leaking into the water supply.
• The fracking in Pavillion takes place in unusually shallow wells of fewer than 1,000 to 1,500 feet deep. Most fracking today occurs 10,000 feet deep or more, far below drinking water wells, which are normally less than 500 feet. Even the EPA report acknowledges that Pavillion's drilling conditions are far different from other areas of the country, such as the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania. This calls into question the relevance of the Wyoming finding to newer and more sophisticated fracking operations in more than 20 states.
***
The safety of America's drinking water needs to be protected, as the fracking industry itself well knows. Nothing would shut down drilling faster, and destroy billions of dollars of investment, than media interviews with mothers afraid to let their kids brush their teeth with polluted water. So the EPA study needs to be carefully reviewed.
But the EPA's credibility is also open to review. The agency is dominated by anticarbon true believers, and the Obama Administration has waged a campaign to raise the price and limit the production of fossil fuels.
Natural gas carries a smaller carbon footprint than coal or oil, and greens once endorsed it as an alternative to coal and nuclear power. But as the shale gas revolution has advanced, greens are worried that plentiful natural gas will price wind and solar even further out of the market. This could mean many more of the White House's subsidized investments will go belly up like Solyndra.
The other big issue is regulatory control. Hydraulic fracturing isn't regulated by the EPA, and in 2005 Congress reaffirmed that it did not want the EPA to do so under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The states regulate gas drilling, and by and large they have done the job well. Texas and Florida adopted rules last week that followed other states in requiring companies to disclose their fracking chemicals.
But the EPA wants to muscle in, and its Wyoming study will help in that campaign. The agency is already preparing to promulgate new rules regulating fracking next year. North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple says that new EPA rules restricting fracking "would have a huge economic impact on our state's energy development. We believe strongly this should be regulated by the states." Some 3,000 wells in the vast Bakken shale in North Dakota use fracking.
By all means take threats to drinking water seriously. But we also need to be sure that regulators aren't spreading needless fears so they can enhance their own power while pursuing an ideological agenda.
Original column here.
The shale gas boom has been a rare bright spot in the U.S. economy, so much of the country let out a shudder two weeks ago when the Environmental Protection Agency issued a "draft" report that the drilling process of hydraulic fracturing may have contaminated ground water in Pavillion, Wyoming. The good news is that the study is neither definitive nor applicable to the rest of the country.
"When considered together with other lines of evidence, the data indicates likely impact to ground water that can be explained by hydraulic fracking," said the EPA report, referring to the drilling process that blasts water and chemicals into shale rock to release oil and natural gas. The news caused elation among environmentalists and many in the media who want to shut down fracking.
More than one-third of all natural gas drilling now uses fracking, and that percentage is rising. If the EPA Wyoming study holds up under scrutiny, an industry that employs tens of thousands could be in peril.
But does it stand up? This is the first major study to have detected linkage between fracking and ground-water pollution, and the EPA draft hasn't been peer reviewed by independent scientific analysts. Critics are already picking apart the study, which Wyoming Governor Matt Mead called "scientifically questionable."
The EPA says it launched the study in response to complaints "regarding objectionable taste and odor problems in well water." What it doesn't say is that the U.S. Geological Survey has detected organic chemicals in the well water in Pavillion (population 175) for at least 50 years—long before fracking was employed. There are other problems with the study that either the EPA failed to disclose or the press has given little attention to:
• The EPA study concedes that "detections in drinking water wells are generally below [i.e., in compliance with] established health and safety standards." The dangerous compound EPA says it found in the drinking wells was 2-butoxyethyl phosphate. The Petroleum Association of Wyoming says that 2-BE isn't an oil and gas chemical but is a common fire retardant used in association with plastics and plastic components used in drinking wells.
• The pollution detected by the EPA and alleged to be linked to fracking was found in deep-water "monitoring wells"—not the shallower drinking wells. It's far from certain that pollution in these deeper wells caused the pollution in drinking wells. The deep-water wells that EPA drilled are located near a natural gas reservoir. Encana Corp., which owns more than 100 wells around Pavillion, says it didn't "put the natural gas at the bottom of the EPA's deep monitoring wells. Nature did."
• To the extent that drilling chemicals have been detected in monitoring wells, the EPA admits this may result from "legacy pits," which are old wells that were drilled many years before fracking was employed. The EPA also concedes that the inferior design of Pavillion's old wells allows seepage into the water supply. Safer well construction of the kind normally practiced today might have prevented any contaminants from leaking into the water supply.
• The fracking in Pavillion takes place in unusually shallow wells of fewer than 1,000 to 1,500 feet deep. Most fracking today occurs 10,000 feet deep or more, far below drinking water wells, which are normally less than 500 feet. Even the EPA report acknowledges that Pavillion's drilling conditions are far different from other areas of the country, such as the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania. This calls into question the relevance of the Wyoming finding to newer and more sophisticated fracking operations in more than 20 states.
***
The safety of America's drinking water needs to be protected, as the fracking industry itself well knows. Nothing would shut down drilling faster, and destroy billions of dollars of investment, than media interviews with mothers afraid to let their kids brush their teeth with polluted water. So the EPA study needs to be carefully reviewed.
But the EPA's credibility is also open to review. The agency is dominated by anticarbon true believers, and the Obama Administration has waged a campaign to raise the price and limit the production of fossil fuels.
Natural gas carries a smaller carbon footprint than coal or oil, and greens once endorsed it as an alternative to coal and nuclear power. But as the shale gas revolution has advanced, greens are worried that plentiful natural gas will price wind and solar even further out of the market. This could mean many more of the White House's subsidized investments will go belly up like Solyndra.
The other big issue is regulatory control. Hydraulic fracturing isn't regulated by the EPA, and in 2005 Congress reaffirmed that it did not want the EPA to do so under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The states regulate gas drilling, and by and large they have done the job well. Texas and Florida adopted rules last week that followed other states in requiring companies to disclose their fracking chemicals.
But the EPA wants to muscle in, and its Wyoming study will help in that campaign. The agency is already preparing to promulgate new rules regulating fracking next year. North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple says that new EPA rules restricting fracking "would have a huge economic impact on our state's energy development. We believe strongly this should be regulated by the states." Some 3,000 wells in the vast Bakken shale in North Dakota use fracking.
By all means take threats to drinking water seriously. But we also need to be sure that regulators aren't spreading needless fears so they can enhance their own power while pursuing an ideological agenda.
Original column here.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Today's Reading
The Green Agenda is Green With Envy
Senator Inhofe Dances On the Climate Change Grave (Includes Video)
A farewell to alarms.
Senator Inhofe Dances On the Climate Change Grave (Includes Video)
A farewell to alarms.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Forbes: Watching The Wheels Come Off The Green Machine
Watching The Wheels Come Off The Green Machine - Forbes http://t.co/hUgOJqFl— aardvark (@dau1776) December 1, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Left Big Green Agenda Abuses Working Poor
Left Big Green Agenda Abuses Working Poor http://t.co/u1SnElFd via @townhallcom— Ruth Rants (@ruthsias) November 20, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Wind Farms Disrupting Radar, Scientists Say
Rainstorm or wind farm? The circled area contains a wind farm, making it unclear whether it is also raining there.
The full story here.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Cult of Global Warming Is Losing Influence
A Commentary By Michael Barone
Original article found here.
Religious faith is a source of strength in many people's lives. But religious faith when taken too far can prove ludicrous -- or disastrous.
Original article found here.
Religious faith is a source of strength in many people's lives. But religious faith when taken too far can prove ludicrous -- or disastrous.
On Oct. 22, 1844, thousand of Millerites, having sold all their possessions, climbed to the top of hills in Upstate New York to await the return of Jesus and the end of the world. They suffered "the great disappointment" when it didn't happen.
In 1212, or so the legends go, thousands of Children's Crusaders set off from France and Germany expecting the sea to part so they could march peaceably and convert Muslims in the Holy Land. It didn't, and many were shipwrecked or sold into slavery.
In 1898, the cavalrymen of the Madhi, ruler of Sudan for 13 years, went into the Battle of Omdurman armed with swords, believing that they were impervious to bullets. They weren't, and they were mowed down by British Maxim guns.
A similar but more peaceable fate is befalling believers in what I think can be called the religion of the global warming alarmists.
They have an unshakeable faith that manmade carbon emissions will produce a hotter climate, causing multiple natural disasters. Their insistence that we can be absolutely certain this will come to pass is based not on science -- which is never fully settled, witness the recent experiments that may undermine Albert Einstein's theory of relativity -- but on something very much like religious faith.
All the trappings of religion are there. Original sin: Mankind is responsible for these prophesied disasters, especially those slobs who live on suburban cul-de-sacs and drive their SUVs to strip malls and tacky chain restaurants.
The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which will increase the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.
Ritual, from the annual Earth Day to weekly recycling.
Indulgences, like those Martin Luther railed against: private jet-fliers like Al Gore and sitcom heiress Laurie David can buy carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon-emitting sins.
Corporate elitists, like General Electric's Jeff Immelt, profess to share this faith, just as cynical Venetian merchants and prim Victorian bankers gave lip service to the religious enthusiasms of their days. Bad for business not to. And if you're clever, you can figure out how to make money off it.
Believers in this religion have flocked to conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto and Copenhagen, just as Catholic bishops flocked to councils in Constance, Ferrara and Trent, to codify dogma and set new rules.
But like the Millerites, the global warming clergy has preached apocalyptic doom -- and is now facing an increasingly skeptical public. The idea that we can be so completely certain of climate change 70 to 90 years hence that we must inflict serious economic damage on ourselves in the meantime seems increasingly absurd.
If carbon emissions were the only thing affecting climate, the global-warming alarmists would be right. But it's obvious that climate is affected by many things, many not yet fully understood, and implausible that SUVs will affect it more than variations in the enormous energy produced by the sun.
Skepticism has been increased by the actions of believers. Passage of the House cap-and-trade bill in June 2009 focused politicians and voters on the costs of global-warming religion. And disclosure of the Climategate emails in November 2009 showed how the clerisy was willing to distort evidence and suppress dissenting views in the interest of propagation of the faith.
We have seen how the United Nations agency whose authority we are supposed to respect took an item from an environmental activist group predicting that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in 2350 and predicted that the melting would take place in 2035. No sensible society would stake its economic future on the word of folks capable of such an error.
In recent years, we have seen how negative to 2 percent growth hurts many, many people, as compared to what happens with 3 to 7 percent growth. So we're much less willing to adopt policies that will slow down growth not just for a few years but for the indefinite future.
Media, university and corporate elites still profess belief in global warming alarmism, but moves toward policies limiting carbon emissions have fizzled out, here and abroad. It looks like we'll dodge the fate of the Millerites, the children's crusaders and the Mahdi's cavalrymen.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner (www.washingtonexaminer.com), is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
COPYRIGHT 2011 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
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Wednesday, September 7, 2011
The Coalition and the Environment
Professor Roger Scruton's contribution to "Changing the Debate: The New Ideas Redefining Britain"
In opposition David Cameron made encouraging remarks about environmental protection and its place in conservative political thinking. He acknowledged the fundamental truth, that conservatism and conservation are connected not merely etymologically but also politically. For a long time we have been bullied by left-wingers into thinking that conservatism is another name for the interests of big business, and that big business puts present profit before the long-term good. And in opposition David Cameron seemed determined to show that those statements are nonsense. Conservatism, he rightly perceived, denotes the attitude that we all share, which is the desire to look after what we know and love, and to ensure its survival.
However, the Coalition’s programme for government addresses environmental issues that have been placed on the agenda largely by the left. Matters that trouble conservatives – the local food economy, Green belts, town planning, the countryside and the architectural heritage – are not widely seen as environmentally significant, since they are dismissed by left-leaning Greens as concerns of the ‘middle classes’. But it is the middle classes – in other words, those with a home and commitment to home – who have the greatest stake in a shared and sustainable environment, and what matters to them matters to all of us.
David Cameron promised, in opposition, to rescue planning procedures from the ‘regional’ bodies set up by New Labour, and to return them to local communities. But the recent budget proposes to streamline the procedures and simplify them in favour of the applicant. This is surely a step backwards – another example of the surrender to economic interests that is the main obstacle to a coherent environmental policy. There are few success stories in environmental politics, but one of them is the 1946 Town and Country Planning Act, which saved our countryside from destruction by ribbon development, and helped to prevent the suburbanisation that has blighted the towns of America and made it impossible to manage an ordinary life without driving for two hours a day. There are conservatives who are suspicious of planning controls – planning, they think, is a dirty word, signifying government interference in matters that ought to be the citizen’s concern. But there are two kinds of planning – that favoured by the left, in which government initiates and controls the process, and that favoured by conservatives, which encourages enterprise but which constrains and limits what can be done. The Coalition rightly recoils from the first kind of planning; but it does not seem sufficiently to recognise that this increases the need for the second kind.
The Coalition has taken a firm stand against airport expansion, and I thoroughly commend its attitude, since there is a real political cost attached to penalising any form of transport. Travel has to become harder, more expensive and more unpleasant if the world is to regain its equilibrium. However, the Coalition also promises a high-speed rail network, and remains silent about roads – which have surely proved far more devastating in their environmental impact than any other form of transport. Since taking office the government has been unswerving in its support for the high-speed rail link between Birmingham and London, and ministers have even used the derogatory ‘nimby’ word to dismiss those who oppose the scheme. Ever since Ruskin the point has been made that we destroy our environment not by living in it but by speeding through it; but that is an unpopular thing to say, and I suppose the Coalition can hardly be blamed for not saying it.
The bulk of the government’s proposals relating to the environment concern energy and the threat of climate change. There is an important question of balance here, which I am hoping the government will one day address. The panic over global warming (whether or not founded in scientific truth) has been used to divert all attention towards the search for ‘clean energy’, and towards global treaties, the main effect of which would be to punish the West for sins that can no longer be rectified. Not surprisingly the treaties remain unsigned or ineffective, and meanwhile the local, soluble problems go unaddressed. As things stand there is no hope of reducing emissions without recourse to nuclear energy, and the Liberal Democrats have, for whatever reason, made opposition to nuclear energy one of their defining policies. (I suppose they have to define themselves in some way.) All other solutions seem to me to be fraught with insurmountable difficulties, or to be phony, in the manner of wind farms, which are neither clean nor efficient, and which are in any case a form of aesthetic pollution.
People on the left don’t on the whole mind aesthetic pollution: this too is a blow against the middle classes. But it is the most serious of all impediments to a conservative environmental policy. By undermining people’s love of country and their sense of peaceful settlement, aesthetic pollution destroys the motive from which real stewardship springs. It brings about a transfer of environmental problems from the people to the government, which then confiscates the solution and makes a mess of it. And while on this topic, what is the government proposing to do about light pollution? The adverse effect of this on wildlife, on sleep, on the charm of both town and country, is widely known. Since the Coalition’s programme rightly emphasizes the importance of wildlife corridors, habitats and bio-diversity, it would be a natural step to recognize that our native species are in need of darkness too.
But this leads to the real question concerning wildlife: who, in the past, maintained and protected the habitats and corridors, and who destroyed them? The answer goes to the heart of the conflict between socialists and conservatives in our country. Habitats, hedgerows and bio-diversity have been maintained by small-scale resident farmers, by country sports and by the associations of volunteers, such as the Anglers Conservation Association and the Game Conservancy Association. They have been destroyed by agribusiness and socialist planning, by the subsidies offered to absentee landlords by the Common Agricultural Policy and by the loss of the local food economy and the small farmers who depended on it – a loss accelerated by the favouritism bestowed by successive governments on the supermarket barons. Hedgerows and habitats don’t look after themselves: they are an obstacle to agribusiness and an offense to the utilitarian mind-set. Stewardship will only revive if those who reside in the countryside are once again given the motive to look after it, which is why the Coalition is right to put the repeal of the Hunting Act on the agenda, if only at the bottom of it. But that measure should be integrated into a wider agenda, which is to lift the burden imposed upon our environment by the subsidies and regulations which stand in the way of our natural desire to maintain it.
David Cameron is right to insist that conservatism is about rescuing society from the state. For state solutions are rotten with unintended consequences, are operated by bureaucrats who escape the net of accountability, and are in the long run simply ways of augmenting the growing list of state dependents. The ‘big society’ is another name for Burke’s ‘little platoons’; and if any problems admit of social solutions – solutions conceived and executed by volunteers, acting for the common good – environmental problems are first among them.
Conservatism therefore means trusting people to act for themselves, while creating the incentives that will permit them to do so. It means respecting small-scale local initiatives, facilitating the culture of volunteering, and lifting the burden of regulations that prevent people from taking responsibility for themselves and for those who matter to them. Many of our environmental problems are the direct result of the burden of health and safety regulations which impede every small scale initiative. I am glad to know that the Conservative Party contains people who murmur against these regulations. But it would be nice to know that someone was prepared to do something about them. For instance, the regulations that require so much of our food to be packaged at source, and which have so augmented the mountain of non-degradable packaging that there is not a corner of the kingdom where it isn’t accumulating in unsightly heaps.
The problem of plastic pollution is surely fundamental to environmental politics. The Coalition’s Initial Programme promises to ‘work towards’ a zero waste economy, and shows some awareness of the problem. But there is waste and waste. Some degrades and leaves the world undamaged. But some accumulates. The real problem is not waste as such, but the packaging that immortalises it. This problem can be overcome only if the supermarkets are confronted with another kind of regulation: not one that permits them to transfer their costs (in the form of immortal rubbish) to future generations, but one that compels them to meet the costs of their actions themselves, for example, by selling unpackaged products, or by using bio-degradable wrappings. Confronting the supermarkets is not something that politicians are very good at. New Labour sprinkled peerages and knighthoods on the supermarket bosses like confetti, in the hope of retaining their support. But to tackle the environmental destruction wrought by the modern food economy the supermarkets have to be opposed, not appeased. This means that they must be seen for what they are, as businesses which have no attachment or loyalty to the places where they operate, and whose primary interest is in externalising their costs. A real market economy is one in which costs are internalised by the participants. As things stand the supermarkets, which are the by-product of a massive regime of hidden subsidies and government sponsored externalities, are not sustainers of the market economy, but parasites upon it.
Ministers have yet to speak out against the kind of out-of-town development which favours the supermarkets over the local shops, and which can strike a town dead from one day to the next. They have yet to draw attention to the environmental degradation that results from regulations that impose disproportionate burdens on small shops and small farmers and which favour supermarkets and agribusinesses. I am confident that David Cameron is, at heart, a Tory of the Burkean school, who prefers small things to big things, personal relations to impersonal organisations, and honest accounting to the habit of passing on costs. But I hear none of this from the Ministry of the Environment – not yet, at least, but only pleas in favour of GM crops, and the usual protestations of commitment to ‘renewable energy’.
Of course, being in a coalition is not easy. But the Environment Ministry is a Conservative fiefdom and an opportunity has arisen to show that conservatism is about conserving, not destroying. I look forward to the time when Zac Goldsmith, now a conservative MP, and a leading light in the battle for the environment, is brought into the new government, even if only in a subsidiary r̫le. His courageous defence of conservatism as the right approach to environmental politics, his accumulation of knowledge and expertise during his years as editor of The Ecologist, and his learned and well-argued book (The Constant Economy) which entirely refutes the callow utopianism of the Left-leaning Greens Рall these have earned him an honourable place in the environmental movement, and in the hearts of conservatives of the younger generation.
One thing is certain (and Goldsmith has done much to argue the point) which is that the environmental agenda has to change. Of course we must reduce carbon emissions, and of course we must strive to obtain treaties that unite the nations around that goal. But the real need is for a rebirth in ordinary people of the motives that lead them to take care of things around them. This means freeing them from the bureaucrats, lowering the cost of private initiatives, and lending support to the volunteers. It means supporting those who wish to protect near and cherished assets from the global entropy. Above all it means taking a stand against those who would off-load their costs onto future generations, and whose actions erode the natural impulse to look after what is ours. I believe there is a growing awareness that the environmental agenda must be rescued from the global activists. People are more disposed to accept that comprehensive edicts imposed from above should be replaced by small scale local initiatives shaped from below. But without the help of government those initiatives will be impeded by the vested interests, and without a new approach to regulation the incentives will not be in place that encourage people to take on the task of stewardship for themselves.
One way to do this is for the government to search for citizens’ initiatives to which it can give indirect support, by changing the regime of regulations, or by encouraging local Members of Parliament to play their part and to report back to Parliament. Initiatives like the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England’s ‘Stop the Drop’, towards a proper deposit system for plastic bottles, or the ‘Pack it in’ campaign working to enforce existing laws on packaging, or the various volunteer groups under the aegis of the Wildlife Trusts – all such initiatives could benefit from government support. And by this I mean support offered in a conservative spirit, not with a view to controlling what is done, but with a view to channelling the activities of concerned and responsible volunteers into cogent legislation, when the need for it has been properly shown.
This column originally appeared at ResPublica.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Hugh Asks, I Answer: How to Talk About Climate Change on the Campaign Trail
This appeared at Power Line Blog, but I felt it was worth posting in its entirety here.
June 8, 2011 Posted by Steven Hayward at 7:11 AM
This is a long post; better get yourself a cup of coffee. Brother Hugh Hewitt takes note of one of Mitt Romney's potential tergiversations about climate change last Friday and made a shout out to me for guidance on how GOP candidates should think and talk about the issue on the stump (and suggesting I post the answer here). Hugh got a lot of e-mails attacking Mitt as a RINO for saying that the earth has warmed and that we should be looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I'm with Hugh in thinking people are mistaken about the first part of that criticism, but think Romney blew it in embracing climate orthodoxy of near-term fossil fuel suppression.
Climate change is a complex matter, not easily tackled in the short sound-byte format of modern campaigns and inch-deep political reporters. It is possible both to acknowledge the potential seriousness of the issue while going on the attack at the same time against the badly flawed conventional wisdom. Herewith a primer on the short answers candidates should give, along with supplemental commentary and additional facts. Even these answers are probably too long for the campaign trail, but is necessary for candidates to at least master this much of the outline of the issue, and have the confidence to speak with authority on it.
Question: Do you believe that climate change is taking place?
Answer: "Yes, the earth has clearly warmed since the end of the "Little Ice Age" roughly 200 years ago, by a little less than 1 degree Celsius. I accept the opinion of the large number of scientists who conclude that human activity has helped cause the warming we've experienced so far. The question for scientists is how much further warming might occur, and for policy makers the question is what should be done about it. Both scientists and the environmental community have done a poor job on both questions."
Comment: This last sentence could be put even stronger, such as "The climate science community and environmental advocates have approached this issue disastrously, wasting 20 years and leading the entire world to a dead end on climate policy." And add as a twist of the knife: "The environment is much too important to be left to environmentalists. They'll just make an even bigger mess of everything, like they have on climate change."
Analysis: To be sure, there are problems with the temperature record on which the finding of 0.8 degrees Celsius warming since the early 1800s is based, and as the "Climategate" scandal revealed, many scientists have abused the data or acted in bad faith, undermining their credibility. But too many of the visible signs of a warmer world, such as retreating arctic glaciers, shrinking arctic sea ice mass, and permafrost melting earlier in the spring, are apparent to deny that warming has taken place. This view has been affirmed by no less a certified non-RINO than Sarah Palin.
Can these changes be attributed to natural climatic changes, such as long-wave ocean current and temperature oscillations, solar activity, and the end of a long-wave climate cycle that gave us the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age? Yes, but the research on these potential explanations is incomplete, often purposely so (that is, the mainstream climate science community suppresses or ignores inquiries into these factors), to be sure. Moreover, the warming effect of changes in greenhouse gas concentrations can be demonstrated in a laboratory, though that is just the beginning of the matter. The effect of current and projected levels of greenhouse gases alone is quite modest--a doubling of carbon dioxide would give you about a 1.1 degree rise in temperature. That's about it. Not much to write home about. Most of the so-called climate "skeptics," such as Richard Lindzen and Pat Michaels, agree with this much of the so-called "consensus." All of the action in the catastrophic climate scenarios--the oft-heard projections of a 3 to 5 degree Celsius temperature increase over the next century--is in the "feedback" effects of warming oceans that greatly magnify warming, changing atmospheric moisture levels, melting ice caps, altered cloud and jet stream behavior, changes in land cover (deforestation), etc. All of these projections may have a plausible basis in theory, but for now must be produced by complicated computer models that assume many of the conditions they set out to prove. The empirical basis for the suite of "feedback" effects is woefully inadequate, and many real world observations so far do not match up with many of the climate models.
Question: So, you do agree that humans have caused climate change? [Most journalists will ask this thinking it's a "gotcha" question. Go on offense.]
Answer: "I just said that. The question is how much more warming might be expected. The late scientist Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this is even more true when politicians and advocacy groups are demanding a huge increase in government control of energy resources. The climate science community has badly bungled the entire effort to explore climate change, allowing the UN process to become wholly politicized and slave to a single misguided policy agenda. So far the "evidence" we're given is computer models trying to predict the entire planet's condition 100 years from now. The track record of this kind of computer forecasting is very very poor. In my own line of work [if this is Romney talking] I can recall back in the 1970s how a large number of expert economists, academic institutions, and private sector banks produced very complicated computer models of the economy that were utterly unable to predict interest rates or anything else just six months ahead. No one does this kind of economic forecasting any more, though I am sure if there were large government grants available people would still be fine tuning computer models that don't work. Just look at the Obama Administration's projections for how the Stimulus program would keep unemployment under 8 percent."
Comment and analysis: The theme that there is an iron-clad scientific "consensus" behind the idea of catastrophic global warming is the most pernicious aspect of this issue, and continues to do great damage to the scientific community. Numerous recent opinion surveys bear this out: the public is tuning out the whole subject, and increasingly skeptical of environmental alarms. Two of the more shrewd environmentalists, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, have coined a great phrase: "apocalypse fatique."
While most scientists may agree with the basic theory of climate change, that number drops considerably when the issue comes to whether climate change will be extreme or catastrophic. More importantly, there are contrarian or confounding findings published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature almost every week (despite attempts to suppress these findings by journal editors and highly politicized scientists) that challenge the main points of the alarmist narrative, but the media only reports the alarmist studies and seldom reports on the contrarian studies.
Question: If you agree that human activity have played a role in the recent warming of the planet, why don't you support cap and trade/emissions reductions/the UN agenda/putting a price on carbon/(pick your own form of this question)?
Answer: "The climate campaign's monomania for near-term suppression of greenhouse gas emissions through cap and trade or carbon taxes or similar means is the single largest environmental policy mistake of the last generation. The way to reduce carbon emissions is not to make carbon-based energy more expensive, but rather make low- and non-carbon energy cheaper at a large scale, so the whole world can adopt it, not just rich nations. This is a massive innovation problem, but you can't promote energy innovation by economically ruinous taxes and regulation. We didn't get the railroad by making horse-drawn wagons more expensive; we didn't get the automobile by taxing the railroads; we didn't get the desktop computer revolution by taxing typewriters, slide-rules, and file cabinets. It is time to stop ending the charade that we can enact shell game policies like cap and trade that will do nothing to actually solve the problem, but only increase the price of energy and slow down our already strangled economy. I support sensible efforts for government to promote energy technology breakthroughs, but am against subsidizing uncompetitive technologies."
Comment: If you really want to go on offense, you could use my opening statement from testimony two weeks ago to the House Foreign Affairs Committee's oversight subcommmittee:
Keep two basic facts of climate arithmetic in mind. First, the emissions targets for the year 2050 that climate policy orthodoxy requires--an 80 percent reduction by the year 2050--would require reducing fossil fuel use to a level last seen in the U.S. in the year 1910, and on a per capita basis (since the U.S. only had 92 million people in 1910, but will have over 400 million in 2050), would require taking us back to a level of fossil fuel use last seen in 1875. This. Is. Loony. Toons. It will not happen. Climate campaigners, who usually contest every tiny deviation from orthodoxy, simply change the subject or spout mindless clichés when presented with the arithmetic on this. (Or, more often, display their total innumeracy about the matter.) I have been presenting the arithmetic on this inconvenient truth for nearly four years now, and have not once had my math challenged on the subject. By anyone. Usually the climate campaigners will challenge every small point to the bitter end. But not this one.
Second, even if the U.S. did somehow achieve this target (by shutting down the whole country perhaps?), it would make no difference to future global warming projections, unless every other nation (especially China and India) achieved the same low level of emissions. This is also not going to happen. Let me put this more starkly: The United States could cease to exist, and it will make no difference in the projected warming 100 years from now for the simple reason that China's emissions growth alone in the next 25 years is going to be greater than U.S. emissions are today. In other words, if the U.S. disappeared, our emissions will be "replaced" by China's.
So the simple question is, why should we hobble our economy to the benefit of our competitors? When the Senate faced this question in 1997, it voted 97 - 0 against such a stupid climate policy. They would vote much the same way today if the question is put to them in the same way. GOP candidates should put the question exactly that way now, because the basic factors have not changed one bit.
Finally, while most environmental advocates are walking examples of Churchill's definition of a fanatic as someone who can't change their mind and won't change the subject, but here and there are a few environmentalists who are starting to face up to the ruinous and fruitless path they've been on. Dave Roberts of Grist.com, one of the original "climate hawks" as he calls himself, is a good example; see his recent article in The American Prospect, in which he admits that "After 20 years, it may be time to admit that the climate movement's fundamental strategy, not a deficit of personal courage or heroic striving, is behind the lack of progress."
So here, I think, you can see Romney's fundamental mistake last week: why offer aid and comfort to a dying agenda?
For further reading: On the subject of energy innovation as an alternative to carbon energy suppression, see the Post-Partisan Power report I collaborated on with the Brookings Institution and the Breakthrough Institute. Not perfect or without problems, but a good starting point for approaching this issue in a more sensible way. Second, if you haven't already done so, I'll repeat my recommendation made here before to see Roger Pielke Jr's book The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming. It is the most thorough treatment of the daunting arithmetic of the failing climate orthodoxy. Third, this post is already too long, but the alternative strategies in the event of warming are adaptation and resiliency. (As Japan's recent experience proves, there are other large threats to our well being; ask youself, who was better able to deal with this kind of disaster--Haiti, or Japan? Now you have some idea of what to do.) And maybe geoengineering, though I have my doubts about this. Romney and other candidates should get up to speed on all of this. In the meantime, may I recommend that Romney's team acquaint themselves with my Almanac of Environmental Trends, especially the climate change section starting on page 103, and the accompanying website environmentaltrends.org?
Now, a note to commenters: Everyone likes to split hairs on every fine point of this massive subject, highlight their favorite contrarian theory or study, attack the bad faith of environmentalists or corrupt scientists, or--if you incline to climate alarmism--stamp your feet and complain about the moral blindness of heretics like me. My own view, just to be clear, is that global warming is a real phenomenon, but almost certainly exaggerated like most prior environmental scares; I think Lindzen and Michaels will eventually be proven correct that we've seen most of the warming we're likely to see from greenhouse gas emissions. But even if it not exaggerated, it is no excuse for enabling the authoritarian agenda of the environmental movement. The salient question Hugh Hewitt poses is how the political fight on this issue is best fought and won. Refighting all the tired battles over the fine points of climate science is not especially helpful to this purpose.
June 8, 2011 Posted by Steven Hayward at 7:11 AM
This is a long post; better get yourself a cup of coffee. Brother Hugh Hewitt takes note of one of Mitt Romney's potential tergiversations about climate change last Friday and made a shout out to me for guidance on how GOP candidates should think and talk about the issue on the stump (and suggesting I post the answer here). Hugh got a lot of e-mails attacking Mitt as a RINO for saying that the earth has warmed and that we should be looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I'm with Hugh in thinking people are mistaken about the first part of that criticism, but think Romney blew it in embracing climate orthodoxy of near-term fossil fuel suppression.
Climate change is a complex matter, not easily tackled in the short sound-byte format of modern campaigns and inch-deep political reporters. It is possible both to acknowledge the potential seriousness of the issue while going on the attack at the same time against the badly flawed conventional wisdom. Herewith a primer on the short answers candidates should give, along with supplemental commentary and additional facts. Even these answers are probably too long for the campaign trail, but is necessary for candidates to at least master this much of the outline of the issue, and have the confidence to speak with authority on it.
Question: Do you believe that climate change is taking place?
Answer: "Yes, the earth has clearly warmed since the end of the "Little Ice Age" roughly 200 years ago, by a little less than 1 degree Celsius. I accept the opinion of the large number of scientists who conclude that human activity has helped cause the warming we've experienced so far. The question for scientists is how much further warming might occur, and for policy makers the question is what should be done about it. Both scientists and the environmental community have done a poor job on both questions."
Comment: This last sentence could be put even stronger, such as "The climate science community and environmental advocates have approached this issue disastrously, wasting 20 years and leading the entire world to a dead end on climate policy." And add as a twist of the knife: "The environment is much too important to be left to environmentalists. They'll just make an even bigger mess of everything, like they have on climate change."
Analysis: To be sure, there are problems with the temperature record on which the finding of 0.8 degrees Celsius warming since the early 1800s is based, and as the "Climategate" scandal revealed, many scientists have abused the data or acted in bad faith, undermining their credibility. But too many of the visible signs of a warmer world, such as retreating arctic glaciers, shrinking arctic sea ice mass, and permafrost melting earlier in the spring, are apparent to deny that warming has taken place. This view has been affirmed by no less a certified non-RINO than Sarah Palin.
Can these changes be attributed to natural climatic changes, such as long-wave ocean current and temperature oscillations, solar activity, and the end of a long-wave climate cycle that gave us the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age? Yes, but the research on these potential explanations is incomplete, often purposely so (that is, the mainstream climate science community suppresses or ignores inquiries into these factors), to be sure. Moreover, the warming effect of changes in greenhouse gas concentrations can be demonstrated in a laboratory, though that is just the beginning of the matter. The effect of current and projected levels of greenhouse gases alone is quite modest--a doubling of carbon dioxide would give you about a 1.1 degree rise in temperature. That's about it. Not much to write home about. Most of the so-called climate "skeptics," such as Richard Lindzen and Pat Michaels, agree with this much of the so-called "consensus." All of the action in the catastrophic climate scenarios--the oft-heard projections of a 3 to 5 degree Celsius temperature increase over the next century--is in the "feedback" effects of warming oceans that greatly magnify warming, changing atmospheric moisture levels, melting ice caps, altered cloud and jet stream behavior, changes in land cover (deforestation), etc. All of these projections may have a plausible basis in theory, but for now must be produced by complicated computer models that assume many of the conditions they set out to prove. The empirical basis for the suite of "feedback" effects is woefully inadequate, and many real world observations so far do not match up with many of the climate models.
Question: So, you do agree that humans have caused climate change? [Most journalists will ask this thinking it's a "gotcha" question. Go on offense.]
Answer: "I just said that. The question is how much more warming might be expected. The late scientist Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this is even more true when politicians and advocacy groups are demanding a huge increase in government control of energy resources. The climate science community has badly bungled the entire effort to explore climate change, allowing the UN process to become wholly politicized and slave to a single misguided policy agenda. So far the "evidence" we're given is computer models trying to predict the entire planet's condition 100 years from now. The track record of this kind of computer forecasting is very very poor. In my own line of work [if this is Romney talking] I can recall back in the 1970s how a large number of expert economists, academic institutions, and private sector banks produced very complicated computer models of the economy that were utterly unable to predict interest rates or anything else just six months ahead. No one does this kind of economic forecasting any more, though I am sure if there were large government grants available people would still be fine tuning computer models that don't work. Just look at the Obama Administration's projections for how the Stimulus program would keep unemployment under 8 percent."
Comment and analysis: The theme that there is an iron-clad scientific "consensus" behind the idea of catastrophic global warming is the most pernicious aspect of this issue, and continues to do great damage to the scientific community. Numerous recent opinion surveys bear this out: the public is tuning out the whole subject, and increasingly skeptical of environmental alarms. Two of the more shrewd environmentalists, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, have coined a great phrase: "apocalypse fatique."
While most scientists may agree with the basic theory of climate change, that number drops considerably when the issue comes to whether climate change will be extreme or catastrophic. More importantly, there are contrarian or confounding findings published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature almost every week (despite attempts to suppress these findings by journal editors and highly politicized scientists) that challenge the main points of the alarmist narrative, but the media only reports the alarmist studies and seldom reports on the contrarian studies.
Question: If you agree that human activity have played a role in the recent warming of the planet, why don't you support cap and trade/emissions reductions/the UN agenda/putting a price on carbon/(pick your own form of this question)?
Answer: "The climate campaign's monomania for near-term suppression of greenhouse gas emissions through cap and trade or carbon taxes or similar means is the single largest environmental policy mistake of the last generation. The way to reduce carbon emissions is not to make carbon-based energy more expensive, but rather make low- and non-carbon energy cheaper at a large scale, so the whole world can adopt it, not just rich nations. This is a massive innovation problem, but you can't promote energy innovation by economically ruinous taxes and regulation. We didn't get the railroad by making horse-drawn wagons more expensive; we didn't get the automobile by taxing the railroads; we didn't get the desktop computer revolution by taxing typewriters, slide-rules, and file cabinets. It is time to stop ending the charade that we can enact shell game policies like cap and trade that will do nothing to actually solve the problem, but only increase the price of energy and slow down our already strangled economy. I support sensible efforts for government to promote energy technology breakthroughs, but am against subsidizing uncompetitive technologies."
Comment: If you really want to go on offense, you could use my opening statement from testimony two weeks ago to the House Foreign Affairs Committee's oversight subcommmittee:
"The international diplomacy of climate change is the most implausible and unpromising initiative since the disarmament talks of the 1930s, and for many of the same reasons; the Kyoto Protocol and its progeny are the climate diplomacy equivalent of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 that promised to end war (a treaty that is still on the books, by the way), and finally, future historians are going to look back on this whole period as the climate policy equivalent of wage and price controls to fight inflation in the 1970s."Analysis: Forget about the argument over the science of global warming for a moment, because the Achilles' heel of the whole issue is the idiotic policy prescription of the climate campaign. As a thought experiment, consider this basic fact: if we could wave the proverbial magic wand and prove with absolute certainty that the earth was in store for 4 degrees of warming from greenhouse gases, it would not make the climate campaign's idiotic agenda any less idiotic. In other words, put bluntly, the scientific argument, interesting as it is, no longer matters very much for the politics and policy of the matter.
Keep two basic facts of climate arithmetic in mind. First, the emissions targets for the year 2050 that climate policy orthodoxy requires--an 80 percent reduction by the year 2050--would require reducing fossil fuel use to a level last seen in the U.S. in the year 1910, and on a per capita basis (since the U.S. only had 92 million people in 1910, but will have over 400 million in 2050), would require taking us back to a level of fossil fuel use last seen in 1875. This. Is. Loony. Toons. It will not happen. Climate campaigners, who usually contest every tiny deviation from orthodoxy, simply change the subject or spout mindless clichés when presented with the arithmetic on this. (Or, more often, display their total innumeracy about the matter.) I have been presenting the arithmetic on this inconvenient truth for nearly four years now, and have not once had my math challenged on the subject. By anyone. Usually the climate campaigners will challenge every small point to the bitter end. But not this one.
Second, even if the U.S. did somehow achieve this target (by shutting down the whole country perhaps?), it would make no difference to future global warming projections, unless every other nation (especially China and India) achieved the same low level of emissions. This is also not going to happen. Let me put this more starkly: The United States could cease to exist, and it will make no difference in the projected warming 100 years from now for the simple reason that China's emissions growth alone in the next 25 years is going to be greater than U.S. emissions are today. In other words, if the U.S. disappeared, our emissions will be "replaced" by China's.
So the simple question is, why should we hobble our economy to the benefit of our competitors? When the Senate faced this question in 1997, it voted 97 - 0 against such a stupid climate policy. They would vote much the same way today if the question is put to them in the same way. GOP candidates should put the question exactly that way now, because the basic factors have not changed one bit.
Finally, while most environmental advocates are walking examples of Churchill's definition of a fanatic as someone who can't change their mind and won't change the subject, but here and there are a few environmentalists who are starting to face up to the ruinous and fruitless path they've been on. Dave Roberts of Grist.com, one of the original "climate hawks" as he calls himself, is a good example; see his recent article in The American Prospect, in which he admits that "After 20 years, it may be time to admit that the climate movement's fundamental strategy, not a deficit of personal courage or heroic striving, is behind the lack of progress."
So here, I think, you can see Romney's fundamental mistake last week: why offer aid and comfort to a dying agenda?
For further reading: On the subject of energy innovation as an alternative to carbon energy suppression, see the Post-Partisan Power report I collaborated on with the Brookings Institution and the Breakthrough Institute. Not perfect or without problems, but a good starting point for approaching this issue in a more sensible way. Second, if you haven't already done so, I'll repeat my recommendation made here before to see Roger Pielke Jr's book The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming. It is the most thorough treatment of the daunting arithmetic of the failing climate orthodoxy. Third, this post is already too long, but the alternative strategies in the event of warming are adaptation and resiliency. (As Japan's recent experience proves, there are other large threats to our well being; ask youself, who was better able to deal with this kind of disaster--Haiti, or Japan? Now you have some idea of what to do.) And maybe geoengineering, though I have my doubts about this. Romney and other candidates should get up to speed on all of this. In the meantime, may I recommend that Romney's team acquaint themselves with my Almanac of Environmental Trends, especially the climate change section starting on page 103, and the accompanying website environmentaltrends.org?
Now, a note to commenters: Everyone likes to split hairs on every fine point of this massive subject, highlight their favorite contrarian theory or study, attack the bad faith of environmentalists or corrupt scientists, or--if you incline to climate alarmism--stamp your feet and complain about the moral blindness of heretics like me. My own view, just to be clear, is that global warming is a real phenomenon, but almost certainly exaggerated like most prior environmental scares; I think Lindzen and Michaels will eventually be proven correct that we've seen most of the warming we're likely to see from greenhouse gas emissions. But even if it not exaggerated, it is no excuse for enabling the authoritarian agenda of the environmental movement. The salient question Hugh Hewitt poses is how the political fight on this issue is best fought and won. Refighting all the tired battles over the fine points of climate science is not especially helpful to this purpose.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Newt Gingrich recalls 'global cooling'
 | |
| Newt Gingrich doesn't buy the established science of global warming, especially when there were warnings in the 1970s of a new Ice Age. "Now many of those scientists are still alive, and they were absolutely convinced," the GOP presidential contender said Wednesday during a campaign visit to Manchester, N.H. "I mean, if Al Gore had been able to in the 1970s, we would have been building huge furnaces to warm the planet against this inevitable coming Ice Age." The former House speaker warned of government overreaction to an issue that he suggested may just be a passing fad. "Now, if you were a left-wing intellectual, climate change is the newest excuse to take control of lives, and you want a new bureaucracy to run our lives on behalf of the newest thing," he said. Environmental groups say Gingrich is just carrying water for energy interests that have funded his 527 group American Solutions, including Peabody Energy, American Electric Power, Plains Exploration & Production and Arch Coal. Conservatives are also hounding Gingrich over a 2008 television commercial he appeared in with Nancy Pelosi — on behalf of Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection — where the two sit on a love seat in front of the Capitol urging action on the issue. Gingrich says the ad was his way of engaging in debate with Democrats on the issue, but global warming skeptics still want an apology. While that's not happened, Gingrich hasn't shied away from taking on climate science during his presidential tour of early primary states. In New Hampshire, he said he’d like to see hearings on this month’s newest National Academy of Sciences report that found "climate change is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems." "I’m not discrediting or disputing the National Academy of Sciences," Gingrich said. "I’m saying a topic large enough to change the behavior of the entire human race is a topic that is more than science and deserves public hearings with very tough-minded public questions, and we’ve had almost none of that on either side." "You have the people over here saying it’s not true," Gingrich added. "You have the people over here saying, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen Thursday.’ You have almost nobody saying in a practical, calm way, ‘Let’s walk through the material and find out what the facts are.’" Gingrich drew applause from the crowd in the room with his overall remarks, which were punctuated by what he said are his two lingering questions about climate change. "To what degree are we certain that we don’t have patterns we don’t understand yet, that may or may not involve human contributions?" he said. "And the second question I'd ask, are we better off to think through — and nobody in the scientific community would even think this — are we better off to think through how to cope with it than we are to think through how to avoid it?" he said. "It may well be that it is dramatically less expensive to adjust to a change in climate than it is to try to stop the entire planet from changing." "It was a little blip in a long trend of temperatures going up, and there are going to be those," Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said of the 1970s cooling period. "It's a trend line." Claussen, a former top State Department climate official from the Clinton administration, said Gingrich’s question about adaptation misses the mark. "We have to adapt, but if we don't reduce emissions, we're going to find it's too severe to adapt to," she said. "We have to do both." "You have the people over here saying it’s not true," Gingrich added. "You have the people over here saying, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen Thursday.’ You have almost nobody saying in a practical, calm way, ‘Let’s walk through the material and find out what the facts are.’" Gingrich drew applause from the crowd in the room with his overall remarks, which were punctuated by what he said are his two lingering questions about climate change. "To what degree are we certain that we don’t have patterns we don’t understand yet, that may or may not involve human contributions?" he said. "And the second question I'd ask, are we better off to think through — and nobody in the scientific community would even think this — are we better off to think through how to cope with it than we are to think through how to avoid it?" he said. "It may well be that it is dramatically less expensive to adjust to a change in climate than it is to try to stop the entire planet from changing." Climate scientists have long faced questions about how they reconcile the 70s-era warnings about a pending Ice Age. Those reports were based on a slight cooling trend from air pollution blocking sunlight. While media reports did hype the issue — Newsweek and Time put it on their covers — there also was nowhere near the onslaught of scientific reports and international response from world leaders to academics compared to the mounting evidence on global warming. "It was a little blip in a long trend of temperatures going up, and there are going to be those," Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said of the 1970s cooling period. "It's a trend line." Claussen, a former top State Department climate official from the Clinton administration, said Gingrich’s question about adaptation misses the mark. "We have to adapt, but if we don't reduce emissions, we're going to find it's too severe to adapt to," she said. "We have to do both." This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 2:42 p.m. on May 27, 2011. |
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Making Colorado less competitive
The Colorado Renewable Energy Standard requires that investor-owned power companies must produce 30 percent of their power from "renewable energy" in fewer than nine years. Not to be outdone, some "clean energy" advocates assert Boulder can have 80 percent renewable by 2025. Trying to legislate such fantasies has real world consequences: Renewable energy is expensive -- more than double the cost of using natural gas or coal. It is available only intermittently -- Germany, an aggressive wind energy jurisdiction, reports a capacity utilization rate of just 15.5 percent during 2010. Making energy more expensive and less reliable will hurt Colorado`s economy.
Read the rest of the column here.
Read the rest of the column here.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
This is Your World On Climate Appeasement
This is an interesting note from American Spectator:
Just because the lead option for skinning that cat cap-n-trade is defeated (for now) and climate science is in retreat, doesn't mean lots of money hasn't been thrown at rehabilitating it (it has) and that alarmism and all that comes with it won't make a run at a comeback (it will...nothing with the returns being banked on by the global warming industry will ever go away gracefully simply because of little things like being discredited and economically ruinous).
So, see the future, if the R candidate in the upcoming 2012 opportunity to draw contrasts decides it's better to sidestep the issue rather than risk (gasp) controversy. It's on full display Down Under (no, this isn't aimed only at you, Mitt).
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
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