Here’s the Kerry-Lieberman bill… almost 1,000 pages.
Kerry-Lieberman Bill (Full Text)
Here’s the Kerry-Lieberman bill… almost 1,000 pages.
Category: Climate & Energy
Tree Ring Circus
By Steve Milloy
May 12, 2010, Washington Times
Are academic scientists some special sub-species of humans who are beyond suspicion and above the law? That is the question now being played out in a drama between Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli and the dead-end defenders of global warming’s poster junk scientist, Michael Mann.
Cucinelli is under assault by global warming alarmist brigades and the American Civil Liberties Union for launching an investigation into whether any fraud against taxpayers occurred with respect to Mann’s hiring by the University of Virginia and his receipt of government grants. Cuccinelli recently sent UVA a civil investigative demand (CID) requesting e-mails and other documents pertaining to Mann.
Cuccinelli’s rationale is simple to understand: Mann’s claim-to-fame — the infamous “hockey stick” graph — is so bogus that one cannot help but wonder whether it is intentional fraud.
Developed in the late-1990s while Mann was at the University of Massachusetts, his hockey stick graph purports to show that average global temperature was fairly stable over the past millennium and up until the 20 the century, when it spiked up impliedly because of human activity. The hockey stick was latched onto by the alarmist community, incorporated into government and United Nations assessments of climate science and held out to the public (particularly by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”) as proof that humans were destroying the planet.
But by the mid-2000s the hockey stick graph began to be revealed for what it was — pure bunk.
Critics of the hockey stick graph first became suspicious because it failed to show two well-known periods of dramatic swings in global temperature — the so-called Medieval Optimum and the Little Ice Age. Mann’s indignant refusal to share his data and methods with critics only added fuel to the fire. Eventually, it was discovered that the computer model that produced the hockey stick would produce a hockey stick graph regardless of what data was input. But it gets worse.
Mann apparently created the hockey stick by cherry-picking data he liked and deleting data he didn’t like. While the vast majority of the hockey stick is based on temperature data extrapolated from tree rings going back hundreds of years, the tip of the blade (representing the late 20th century) was temperature data taken from thermometers. Past the obvious apples-and-oranges problem, as it turns out, Mann appended the thermometer data to the hockey stick at a point at which the tree ring data actually shows cooling. This cooling trend data was then deleted. This is what is referred to by the now-famous Climate-gate phrase “Mike’s Nature trick to … hide the decline.”
Mann’s defenders characterize this deletion of data as an elegant statistical technique. There is, however, nothing sophisticated, much less innocent about it. Contrary to Mann’s defenders, the hockey stick has never been vindicated by anyone. If nothing else, proof of its discredit lies in the fact that no one, not even the ethically challenged United Nations, relies on it anymore as evidence of manmade global warming.
Mann’s name-making hockey stick work occurred while he was at the University of Massachusetts, after which he was hired by the taxpayer-funded UVA. Did UVA hire Mann under the illusion that his hockey stick was a legitimate scientific achievement? Did Mann receive taxpayer-funded grants based on what amounts to scientific misconduct? These are legitimate inquiries — but not to everyone.
Left-wing academics, global warming alarmists, and the ACLU object to Cucinelli’s probe. They cast aspersions such as “witch hunt,” McCarthyism,” and “abuse of office.” In their less hysteric moments, they claim Cuccinelli threatens academic freedom. This is all so much rot.
Some scientists have actually been known to commit scientific misconduct tantamount to fraud. A Tulane researcher was found guilty of misconduct by the federal Office of Scientific Integrity in the late 1990s for fabricating data about pesticides being dangerous hormonal system disrupters. Don’t forget the South Korean researcher that was indicted for claiming false advances in stem cell research. Only political correctness saved a University of Pittsburgh researcher from conviction during the 1990s of manipulating data allegedly linking lead-based paint with lower IQs.
Believe it or not, scientists are just like the rest of the population — a mixture of good and bad. Mann’s hockey stick is such bad science that it compels the question, “Why?” Would UVA have hired Mann and would government grants have been awarded to him had the truth about the hockey stick been known by university and state decision-makers at the time? Were they intentionally deceived?
As the Climategate scandal has revealed, the climate alarmist mob is, at the very least, devious and unethical. It has conspired to silence its critics and to dispense with the normal give-and-take of the scientific process — all the while trumpeting the junkiest of science in trying to frighten the public and politicians into keeping the grant money flowing.
Have some of the climate mob’s members acted criminally as well? No one knows at this point. But through his hockey stick shenanigans, Mann has certainly provided Cuccinelli with “probable cause” to consider the possibility. A thorough investigation by someone not in cahoots with the climate mob is the only way to answer legitimate questions related to the expenditure of taxpayer money.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).
Leak of the day! Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill
Most of the world will learn tomorrow about the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill.
But you can check out the bill summary and section-by-section analysis today!
Who loves ya baby?
The President’s Oil Drilling Bait-N-Switch
By Steve Milloy
Investor’s Business Daily
So President Obama says he’s for more offshore oil drilling. Does he really mean it? Would it matter if he did?
Addressing the latter question first, consider President George W. Bush called for offshore drilling in June 2008, when gasoline prices hit $4 per gallon and Congress was less Democrat-controlled than today.
Nothing happened — well, that’s not exactly true.
Offshore drilling advocates were ecstatic in July 2008 when they thought a deal had been reached with green groups to permit drilling off Santa Barbara, Calif. — the first since the January 1969 oil spill there.
New Hampshire Union Leader editor Andrew Cline gushed in a July 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed: “When an environmental group formed for the sole purpose of opposing offshore oil drilling warmly embraces a plan to drill off its own coast, you know something important has changed in our culture; Americans have recognized that offshore drilling is largely safe.”
But less than a week later, the greens wrote the Journal to correct the record: “(T)o be accurate, the (op-ed’s) title should have read ‘Environmentalists Secure End to Oil Development’ … The agreement struck … is remarkable because it sets a fixed date for the termination of existing offshore and onshore oil production facilities in Santa Barbara County. We see this agreement as a direct complement to our support for the federal oil moratorium. Just as we need to say ‘no’ to new oil development, we must put an end to existing development if we are to protect our coast from the risks of offshore oil and gas development, and protect society from climate change.”
Despite the “agreement” and approval of offshore drilling by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, the greens subsequently got the California State Lands Commission to deny the offshore leases and then, in July 2009, got the California Assembly to block Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to revive offshore drilling.
Last December, the Obama administration actually granted Shell Oil leases to drill three exploratory wells in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. But claiming a shoddy approval process, the leases are being challenged by green groups in the enviro-friendly 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Without wondering whether the Obama administration set Shell up for frustration, my money is on the greens in that venue.
The lesson here is that the greens oppose, and will use every tactic possible on the local, state and federal level to prevent, offshore drilling, regardless of what emanates from the Oval Office.
But then, there are many reasons to question the sincerity of Obama’s rhetoric in the first place.
Despite campaign rhetoric about supporting more drilling, last fall the Obama administration canceled drilling leases in Utah previously granted by President Bush.
The leases were denied for the flimsiest reasons, including possible damage to the habitat of the sage grouse and avoiding the dust and noise pollution from drilling.
Next, and most important, President Obama needs both Republican and moderate Democrat support to get a much sought after cap-and-trade bill through the Senate.
Right now, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is the only Republican interested in cap-and-trade. He wants to include increased oil and gas production and nuclear power.
President Obama no doubt hopes pro-oil drilling rhetoric will also help him win the support of other Senate swing votes, including Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mary “Louisiana Purchase” Landrieu, D-La.
Finally, while announcing his drilling proposal, Obama spent the bulk of his time talking about how we need to use less oil and wean ourselves off oil altogether.
He spent little time talking about producing more oil. He limited his remarks to a proposal merely for more oil “exploration” — not to increasing production and supply.
Talk is cheap and President Obama knows that. Let’s hope Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats know that too.
False promises about supporting oil drilling are bad enough, but it would be a travesty if they brought cap-and-trade.
• Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”
Obama's National Climate Disservice
By Steve Milloy
February 11, 2010, PajamasMedia.com
There’s good news for those who like to watch paint dry and grass grow. Now you can log on to www.climate.gov and watch the climate change. Continue reading Obama's National Climate Disservice
Cold freezes wind turbines in Minnesota
From KSTP-TV:
“Wind turbines placed in cities across Minnesota to generate power aren’t working because of the cold temperatures.
The Minnesota Municipal Power Association bought 11 turbines for $300,000 each from a company in Palm Springs, Calif.
Special hydraulic fluid designed for colder temperatures was used in the turbines, but it’s not working, so neither are the turbines.
There is a plan to heat the fluid, but officials must find a contractor to do the work.”
Feinstein to kill solar projects in CA desert
…as predicted in Green Hell and as reported in today’s New York Times:
Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region.
So much for “clean energy”…
Boxer resorts to ‘nuclear option’ to ram climate bill through committee
What would it take to replace coal in the U.S?
From today’s Financial Times, here’s what it would take to replace coal as a fuel for generating electricity:
It would take a massive effort to replace coal production. Peabody Energy, which owns North Antelope and is the world’s largest private sector coal company, says replacing coal would be a gargantuan task. It would require 2,400 times more solar generation, 40 times more wind power, 250 new nuclear plants, almost double the US production of natural gas, 500 hydro plants the size of the Hoover Dam or halving electricity consumption. Even then, the US would have to find a way to meet new demand, given growth forecasts.
The greens’ choice, of course, is the “halving electricity consumption” option. But never in the history of mankind has reduced energy use been associated with social and economic advancement.
Energy sprawl?
Watch for the greens to oppose wind, solar and biofuels projects because of the size of the projects’ geographic footprints. The greens call it “energy sprawl.”
The greens prefer energy rationing to renewables. They may use the term “efficiency,” but like “sustainable,” it’s merely a euphemism for “no growth.”
Click here for a Nature Conservancy study entitled “Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America.”
Climate Bill Is Built On ‘Clean Coal’ Myths
By Steven Milloy
Investor’s Business Daily, August 26, 2009
The fate of the Waxman-Markey climate bill rests upon two myths about so-called “clean coal.” The first is that coal, as used today in the U.S., is a dirty fuel. The other is that coal can be made “clean” by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants and storing them underground in geologic repositories.
As to the first myth, if the chief concern about burning coal for electricity is limited to CO2 emissions, then coal is already clean. CO2 is a colorless, odorless, naturally occurring trace gas in the atmosphere that humans exhale and plants need to grow.
There is no direct evidence that humankind’s comparatively minuscule CO2 emissions predictably or discernibly affect the climate. Controversy surrounding the first myth has given rise to the second myth as a potential solution.
Some in the coal and electric-power industries are touting the second myth in hopes of being able to survive climate legislation with hard emission caps that may be enacted this fall.
These groups are looking for time and taxpayer money to develop CO2 capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies that would allow the continued use of coal in power plants. The Waxman-Markey bill that is now being considered in Congress would provide about $60 billion for CCS technologies.
The problem, though, is that even if $60 billion were enough money to implement CCS — and it’s not by a long shot — it would make no difference to the atmosphere and climate, regardless of whether you believe the first myth.
Atmospheric levels of CO2 are currently about 380 parts per million (ppm), as opposed to perhaps about 290 ppm around 1850. Based on this increase, we can reasonably estimate that about 40% of manmade CO2 emissions since 1850 remain in the atmosphere, while the other 60% is transferred to oceans and the terrestrial biosphere.
In 2007, U.S. coal-fired power plants emitted about 2.4 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, meaning that about one billion metric tons of CO2 remained in the atmosphere. Since each part per million of CO2 in the atmosphere weighs about 7.81 billion metric tons, the annual accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere resulting from U.S. power-plant emissions is on the order of 0.12 ppm.
So if CCS were commenced immediately and continued until, say, the year 2100, that would avoid accumulation of atmospheric CO2 by about 11 ppm — not exactly an earth-shaking amount. EPA scenarios forecast future CO2 levels to rise to 500 to 700 ppm.
Using the climate models relied on by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that attempt to project atmospheric warming caused by CO2, the theoretical amount of atmospheric warming avoided by CCS works out to between 0.045 to 0.15 degree Celsius avoided over the next 90 years.
Again, this is hardly significant compared with the 0.7-degree increase we seem to have experienced since 1850.
But then, CCS cannot be implemented immediately and is not affordable on any significant scale in the first place. The most ambitious plans put the first commercial-scale CCS projects 10 years or more into the future.
In a presentation to the Society of Petroleum Engineers last March, energy expert Michael Economides estimated that CO2 cuts on the order of the U.S.-shunned Kyoto Protocol would require the drilling of 161,429 injection wells by 2030 at a cost of $1.61 trillion.
That price tag doesn’t include the cost of capturing the CO2 at the point of generation, purchasing rights of way for pipelines, pipeline installation costs, and liability insurance. Power plants would have to use 30% more energy for CO2 capture, transport and storage.
Economides says the total cost may be as high as $1 trillion annually — without any guarantees that the CO2 would stay sequestered. Importantly, the Kyoto Protocol requirement of a 7% reduction in CO2 emissions from 1990 levels pales in comparison to that required by Waxman-Markey — an 83% reduction from 2005 levels.
For those who still hold dear the fantasy of CCS, it may serve to remember ill-fated Yucca Mountain, the almost 30-year-old project to develop a site for storing spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants one mile under the Nevada desert.
Despite tens of billions of dollars spent on site planning and engineering, Nevada NIMBY-ism and anti-nuclear power activists delayed the project long enough for the Obama administration to defund the project.
If the comparatively small Yucca Mountain project could not be made to happen, it’s doubtful that hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of pipelines carrying pressurized CO2 to much more uncertain underground entombment and possible environmental contamination will happen either.
The CCS myth has only served to derail the debate that needs to occur in Congress about the all-important first myth. Desperate coal and utility companies that rely on coal as fuel have advanced CCS in order to avoid a carbon-cap death penalty and to be perceived as environmentally progressive.
Energy-realistic politicians looking for an easy out on the climate issue are more than happy to dangle taxpayer money in front of the much-needed coal and utility industries to get them to the table for a quick-and-dirty deal.
Some environmentalists — Al Gore, for one — are willing to pay lip service to the CCS concept just to get a bill passed and establish a beachhead for their political power grab.
But few in the climate debate have stopped to seriously consider the realities of CCS. Now is the time for that consideration so that Congress can decide how seriously it believes in the first myth and whether it is worth its universally recognized economic pain.
Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery 2009).
Climate bill is built on 'clean coal' myths
By Steven Milloy
August 26, 2009, Investor’s Business Daily
The fate of the Waxman-Markey climate bill rests upon two myths about so-called “clean coal.” The first is that coal, as used today in the U.S., is a dirty fuel. The other is that coal can be made “clean” by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants and storing them underground in geologic repositories. Continue reading Climate bill is built on 'clean coal' myths