Political Climate Articles
Boehner Spouts Anti-Intellectualism Screed: 'I Don't Need To See GDP Numbers Or Listen To Economists'
This morning on Fox News Sunday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who has waffled on the impact of the stimulus, argued against the need for more stimulus funding. He claimed that he doesn't need to listen to economists when putting together his policy agenda:
WALLACE: Congressman - a number of top economists say what we need is more economic stimulus.
BOEHNER: Well, I don't need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists. All I need to do is listen to the American people, because they've been asking the question now for 18 months, "where are the jobs?"
Later, the interview grew a bit more hostile as Wallace tried to press Boehner on the deficit-impact of his call for extending the Bush tax cuts. "Chris, you've been in Washington too long because that's all a bunch of Washington talk," Boehner said dismissively. "I'm just asking a question, sir," Wallace persisted, noting the exorbitant cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. "This is the whole Washington mindset, all these CBO numbers," Boehner responded. Watch it:
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Hockey Stick fight at the RC Corral
Schmidt to Curry: "In future I will simply assume you are a conduit for untrue statements rather than their originator."
As a general rule for scientists, one shouldn't hitch one's wagon to long-debunked purveyors of disinformation. Because then you might end up circling the wagons with the wrong … tribe (see "The curious incident of Judith Curry with the fringe").
I'm on a plane today, so I commend to you an outstanding Real Climate post, "The Montford Delusion," by Tamino - and the stunning comments section. NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt and Tamino are in the role of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and company. Judith Curry (and Peter Webster) have apparently thrown in with the Clantons. Like all analogies, this one isn't perfect, but I'm afraid the outcome is pretty much the same.
Tamino deconstructs and eviscerates A. W. Montford's book The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science.
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How the States and EPA Can Save Climate Policy
The Senate has basically given up on passing a climate bill. So where does that leave us? Yesterday, I noted on Twitter that the action is going to shift to the states and federal agencies. Remember, the EPA is obligated to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and Lisa Jackson is moving ahead with those rules. (Here's my primer on that.) Meanwhile, as I've reported before, plenty of states are moving ahead with their own climate policies. There's already a (modest) cap-and-trade system for utilities in the Northeast called RGGI. California is planning to cut emissions 80 percent by 2050. And more than half the states have their own renewable-energy laws.
But what do all these efforts really add up to? Numbers, we need hard numbers. Ah, here we go: Via Jonathan Hiskes, the World Resources Institute has released a report taking a stab at some answers. WRI first looked at the effects of federal regulations alone, and found that an aggressive crackdown on greenhouse gases could actually make a sizable dent in U.S. carbon emissions, although it wouldn't do nearly as much as, say, the House climate bill. Here's a graph:
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Researchers Calculate the Cost of CO2 Emissions, Call for Carbon Tax
ScienceDaily (July 25, 2010) - Two Rice University researchers are calling on policymakers to encourage the transition from coal-based electricity production to a system based on natural gas through a carbon tax.
Such a mechanism would help limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December, the United States pledged to reduce the 2005 levels of CO2 emissions by 17 percent by 2020.
Dagobert Brito, the George A. Peterkin Professor of Political Economy, and Robert Curl, the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry, made this recommendation in a paper published by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. A PDF of the paper can be viewed at
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Among House Democrats in Rust Belt, a sense of abandonment over energy bill
When Democratic Rep. John Boccieri went home to Ohio early this year to talk with voters in his Canton-based district, he figured he would have to do battle with at least some constituents over his support for health-care reform. And the economic stimulus. And the auto company bailouts.
But at a meeting with business leaders, he had to come up with fast answers on something completely different: Why, the businessmen wanted to know, had Boccieri voted for a bill last summer to cap carbon emissions, which they feared would drive up their energy bills in the middle of a recession?
Boccieri said he was tired of wars based on "petrol dictators and big oil."
"If I can take a tough vote today, I'm going to take that vote," said the freshman lawmaker, an Air Force reservist who flew C-130s over Iraq for more than a year.
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Who Killed the Climate Bill?
This is how a climate bill dies. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the bad news: "We don't have the votes." Without a single Republican backing the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, the Senate's version of a comprehensive energy bill, there was no point taking it to the floor, he explained. For now, there was no way to move forward.
Reid's announcement dealt a devastating blow to those hoping the United States would lead the way in aggressively curbing the greenhouse gases that scientists say are dangerously warming the planet. With time running out before 2012, when the current global climate treaty expires, negotiating a new agreement just got much harder.
So who's to blame? Was it just a poorly crafted bill? Was there ever a chance Republicans would sign on to cap and trade? Did Barack Obama's administration drop the ball? Or was it environmental groups themselves, who failed to persuade the public that now was the time to act?
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In Wreckage of Climate Bill, Some Clues for Moving Forward
Ample blame exists for the demise of climate legislation in the U.S. Senate, from President Obama's lack of political courage, to the environmental community's overly ambitious strategy, to Republican intransigence. A way forward exists, however, to build on the rubble of the Senate's failure to cap carbon emissions.
Following the rocky path of climate legislation in the U.S. Congress these past years brought me back to the 1980s, and my time as a crime reporter in New York City. After a shooting in those days, a homicide detective named Marty Davin would go to the hospital and intercept the gunshot victim on a gurney outside the emergency room. If the victim was conscious, Davin would lean over and ask, "Who killed you?"
That usually got the victim's attention, along with an I'm-not-dead-yet protest. Davin would reply, "You are going to die. You might as well tell me who did it."
As I interviewed the sponsor of whichever emissions-reduction bill had just been gunned down, I often thought of Davin. The politicians and climate campaigners would assure me that they were still alive - passage of a carbon cap was inevitable, they'd say - and I'd remind myself that they had survived countless near-death experiences.
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Cut the budget, save the environment
Green Scissors 2010 report shines the spotlight on government spending that is wasteful and harmful to the environment.
Cutting the federal budget by axing environmentally harmful subsidies and taxpayer-funded programs sounds great, right? The Green Scissors 2010 (PDF) report has identified more than $200 billion in government subsidy programs that are wasteful from a financial and an environmental perspective. The Green Scissors Campaign, which is led by several organizations including Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, is focused on generating bipartisan support for cutting federally funded programs that are harmful to the environment.
This year's report focuses on programs in four key areas: energy, agriculture and biofuels, infrastructure, and public lands. Energy, especially clean energy, is getting attention from the president as the Obama administration is helping push our country towards a green economy. The energy section of the Green Scissors 2010 report targets three main energy industries: oil and gas, coal, and nuclear.
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Report: U.S. energy policy a "serious threat" to economic, national security
The country's energy policy - particularly on climate change - poses a "serious threat" to economic and national security, a new report finds, but one group says that threat can be turned into an opportunity.
The report, released Tuesday by the nonprofit research firm CNA, says the predicted effects of climate change "have the potential to disrupt our way of life" and "create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today." That, in turn, will likely foster political instability both at home and abroad.
The result, the report argues: The country cannot afford business as usual when it comes to energy.
"The United States government should take bold and aggressive action to support clean energy technology innovation and significantly decrease the nation's dependence on fossil fuels," it says.
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NOAA Has 10 Answers to Allegations That 'Climategate' Disproves Warming
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report today on 2009's climate, which says the decade of the 2000s was the warmest since readings were first kept. In a phone interview with reporters today, Peter Stott of the U.K. Met Office, a contributor to the 224-page report, said the scientists who wrote it had sought, among other things, to draw attention to 10 variables he said "most intuitively" reflect temperature. He called that part of the report a "response" to allegations in recent months that scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia or NASA-or both-could jigger the record to fake warming, particularly by purportedly skewing records of land surface temperature. From the report:
"If the land surface records were systematically flawed and the globe had not really warmed, then it would be almost impossible to explain the concurrent changes in this wide range of indicators produced by many independent groups. "
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Analysis: Action on global climate may drift for years
(Reuters) - International action on climate change looks likely to drift over the next two years as politicians waver on tougher carbon caps in the wake of the financial crisis.
Recession in industrialized countries has focused attention on the cost of cutting emissions. And green motivations suffered a huge blow with the failure of U.N. negotiations to deliver a deal in Copenhagen in December.
Talks resume next week in Bonn, Germany, but a new draft text is as vague as ever on targets and a timetable to cut carbon emissions.
"I suspect that we're in for a fairly long period of slowdown, you're talking about a two to three years' timeframe before you restore the political momentum," said Tom Burke of Imperial College London.
The global renewable energy market is tipped to have a record year in 2010, thanks to existing support and subsidies, but a climate deal would boost investment above the current level of about $200 billion annually.
Global consensus would add pressure to introduce national carbon caps. The United States and Australia each confirmed last week legislative delays on industry carbon emissions caps.
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US inaction on climate troubles global talks
AMSTERDAM - The failure of a climate bill in the U.S. Senate is likely to weigh heavily on international negotiations that begin Monday on a new agreement to control global warming.
The decision to strike the bill from the Senate's immediate agenda has deepened the distrust among poor countries about the intentions of United States and other industrial countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions that power their wealthy economies but risk causing the Earth to dangerously overheat, say climate activists.
A split between rich and poor nations has characterized the talks since they began 2 1/2 years ago, but it widened after the disappointment of the Copenhagen climate summit last December that fell short of any binding agreement and produced only a brief document of political intentions.
The withdrawal of the bill to cap U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prominent gas blamed for global warming, "plays into the same old fault lines," said Kelly Dent, of Oxfam International. It has let down developing countries that had looked to President Barack Obama's administration to seize the leadership in climate negotiations, she said Sunday from Bonn, Germany.
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Cap-and-trade failure leaves utilities waiting on energy policy
Cap-and-trade has fallen from the Senate's agenda for now, but utilities, regulators and lawmakers are looking for direction from Washington on energy and climate issues.
"If we don't get a baseline energy policy, that could hurt the whole country," said Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk. "I still think there's room for a good energy bill to move forward."
Senate leaders acknowledged recently that they do not have the support to pass a comprehensive bill on energy and the environment that would include a cap-and-trade system aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. That means that Congress will not impose emissions restrictions that critics say would unfairly target coal-burning utilities. That still leaves the door open for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon gas without a new law, and it does not provide any new guidance on where carbon emissions standards should be and how utilities should get there.
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As Congress Delays the Energy Debate, Should Algae Green Up its Pitch?
If the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has a silver lining, it would have to be that it drew enormous attention to our dependence on fossil fuels and the lengths that our industry leaders will go to extract them from our planet. Environmental and renewable energy issues were brought to the forefront of daily news broadcasts for all to see and debate. Finally, there was a hint of momentum building for appropriate energy legislation to curtail harmful emissions and set standards to guide a safe transition to a new styled economy over the next two decades.
At least that was the consensus thinking over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, everyone forgot that this is an election year. Before the gusher in the gulf was capped, energy lobbyists were already singing the praises of the industry on national news, reminding everyone that 10% of the jobs in this country are energy related and that removal of precious subsidies will only be reflected at the pump in higher gasoline prices for the consumer.
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Bloomberg New Energy Finance: Subsidies for Renewables, Biofuels Dwarfed by Supports for Fossil Fuels.
New research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance reveals that despite many platitudes and pledges, governments of the world are spending substantially more on subsidizing dirty forms of energy than on renewables and biofuels. In fact, support for cleaner sources is dwarfed by the help the oil, coal, and other fossil fuel sectors receive.
In all, governments of the world provided approximately $43-46bn to renewable energy and biofuels technologies, projects, and companies in 2009, BNEF concludes in preliminary analysis. This total includes the cost of feed-in-tariffs (FiTs), renewable energy credits or certificates (RECs), tax credits, cash grants, and other direct subsidies. (It does not include more upstream support, such as subsidies to corn farmers to grow feedstock for use in US ethanol plants, nor does not include any value transfer due to carbon cap-and-trade schemes.)
The $43-46bn figure stands in stark contrast to the $557bn spent on subsidizing fossil fuels in 2008, as estimated by the International Energy Agency last month.
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EPA Rejects Claims of Flawed Climate Science.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today denied 10 petitions challenging its 2009 determination that climate change is real, is occurring due to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities, and threatens human health and the environment.
The petitions to reconsider EPA's Endangerment Finding claim that climate science cannot be trusted, and assert a conspiracy that invalidates the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. After months of serious consideration of the petitions and of the state of climate change science, EPA finds no evidence to support these claims. In contrast, EPA's review shows that climate science is credible, compelling, and growing stronger.
"The endangerment finding is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world. These petitions -- based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy -- provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy. A better solution would be to join the vast majority of the American people who want to see more green jobs, more clean energy innovation and an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security."
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George Shultz challenges California to lead
Voters should defeat Proposition 23 and fight global warming, the former secretary of State says.
Former U.S. secretary of State George P. Shultz believes it's crucial to fight global warming to protect national security.
Global warming is created by burning fossil fuel, he says, and payments for foreign oil sometimes wind up financing terrorism.
And Shultz, who's also a former Treasury secretary, thinks the nation suffers an "economic vulnerability" because of its oil addiction.
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"While we have benefited from low-priced energy," he says, "we've also suffered from periodic spikes in the price of oil. Usually recessions go along with it."
Moreover, continues the man who set up the Environmental Protection Agency four decades ago, "There's a climate problem connected with the burning of fossil fuels.... The basic facts are pretty clear."
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President Obama's climate 'Plan B' in hot water
President Barack Obama's 'Plan B' for tackling global warming is under attack in the courts and on Capitol Hill.
Through federal lawsuits, two conservative attorneys general, a major coal company and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are leading the charge to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to write its own climate rules.
Key coal-state Democrats and nearly all Republicans are also unified in their bid to slow down the EPA via legislation - and they're determined to force a series of votes on the issue before the next big suite of rules start kicking in next January.
"You attack it at all fronts," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a leading advocate for stopping the EPA, told POLITICO. "You go the judicial route. You go the legislative route. I think this is important to make sure we are looking at all avenues."
Bids to stop the EPA started even before the agency concluded last December that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health and welfare, issuing its all-important endangerment finding that essentially triggered a series of climate-themed rules under the Clean Air Act.
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