Probably Not the "Hottest Year"

The off-shore drilling moratorium, the proposed cap & trade taxes, (or shall we say the energy penalty for being American?), and the continued, unsubstantiated claims of man-made global warming...we Americans need to know the truth about what all this will cost each and every one of us every day.

With more than 14 million Americans unemployed today, can you imagine what $7 per gallon gas will do to the economy?

We're not lucky enough to travel on Air Force One (or Two for a luxury vacation in Spain), or chopper six miles on Marine One to speak about how the economy continues to crash...we just pay for those flights. That's in addition to filling our own gas tanks to get to work if we HAVE a job. You get the drift.

If you had any questions about the existence of global warming, and whether it's YOUR fault, take a look at THIS...

It’s a Desperate Time for the Global Warming Campaigners
James Hansen of NASA, an ardent believer in man-made warming, announced recently that “The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Space Institute analysis has reached a new record in 2010 . . . NASA, June 3, 2010. The main factor is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.” The GISS figures show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees C warmer than the long-term mean.

Should we be alarmed? Probably not very.

My esteemed colleague Art Horn, at the Energy Tribune blog, has blown the whistle on Hansen and GISS. He points out that GISS has no thermometers in the Arctic! It has hardly any thermometers that are even near the Arctic Circle. GISS estimates its arctic temperatures from land-based thermometers that supposedly each represent the temperatures over 1200 square kilometers. That’s a pretty heroic assumption.

Meanwhile, the Danish Meteorological Institute is publishing sea-surface temperatures from the Arctic showing a cooling trend in the Arctic oceans during melt season since about 1993. Clearly, we have no accurate measure of the real temperatures and trends in the Arctic at this moment. Probably that’s not very important. The Russians say that the Arctic has its own 70-year climate cycle. The files of the New York Times, in fact, are filled with stories from the 1920s and 1930s, clearly showing that the Arctic was as warm then as now.

But this is the moment when proposed energy taxes would start to scuttle 85 percent of the energy which powers the modern world and its lifestyles. Global climate alarmists, Hansen among them, are playing a desperate and short-sighted game of “pass the energy taxes.”

President Obama says energy taxes are a high priority—perhaps high enough to ramp up his “health care reform” strategy. In a lame-duck Congressional session, after the November elections, Congress persons who had already lost their seats, would vote to saddle America with energy taxes that would triple our electric bills and, according to a Harvard study, drive gas prices to $7 per gallon.

The energy taxes are intended to make fossil fuels expensive! The idea is to deliberately drive fossil fuel prices high enough to force us to stop using them. Then we’re supposed to depend on costly and erratic solar and wind power. (Biomass can never produce much energy: biofuel crops would take too much land, and we can’t make ethanol out of cellulose sources.)

The man-made global warming believers have invested 20 years in their campaign to convince us of CO2-driven climate calamity. To their chagrin, the earth’s temperatures started to trend downward in 2007.

The sunspot index, which has a much stronger correlation with our thermometer record than CO2 (79% versus 22%) started predicting the cooling in 2000. The sun is still in a long cold-predicting minimum.

In 2008, NASA itself told us that Pacific had shifted into its cooling mode. The history of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation indicates a 30-year cooling phase, the opposite of the 1976–1998 warming trend.

They’re panicked about losing the whole ball game. They feel they must get an energy tax on the books before the earth has a chance to resume the recent-and-predicted cooling trend. They imagine that if the law gets on the books, a restart of the cooling wouldn’t push the next Congress to repeal the energy tax!

They might even be right, though it seems a stretch given the American people’s already-massive Obama-debt and the demonstrated history that tax cuts grow the economy and tax increases strangle it.

It’s a desperate time, not for the earth, but for the global warming campaigners.

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net.

What is the Murkowski Resolution?

Through CARE’s Monthly Newsletter, The PowerLine, and through special e-mail alerts, we have been encouraging people to contact their Senators asking them to support the Murkowski Resolution. The Debate on the floor has been postponed until June 10. There is still time to push for approval of the “Resolution of disapproval.”

It is a complicated legislative process that is hard to fully comprehend. This posting by our friend from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Marlo Lewis and Former Senator and Governor of Virginia, George Allen, offers the best overview we’ve seen. Please give it a read. If the EPA’s power grab alarms you, pass this link on to everyone you know and ask them to contact their senators too! Here’s a link to make sending your Senator a note asking him or her to support the Murkowski Resolution!

The EPA's Shocking Power Grab
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is carrying out one of the biggest power grabs in American history. The agency has positioned itself to regulate fuel economy, set climate policy for the nation and amend the Clean Air Act—powers never delegated to it by Congress. It has done this by declaring greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare, in a proceeding known as the "endangerment finding."

On June 10 the U.S. Senate is scheduled to debate and vote on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's resolution of disapproval to overturn the endangerment finding. The resolution is absolutely necessary to restore democratic accountability in climate policymaking.

If allowed to stand, the EPA's endangerment finding will trigger a regulatory cascade through multiple provisions of the Act. America could be burdened with a regulatory regime more costly than any climate bill Congress has rejected or declined to pass, yet without the people's representatives ever voting on it.

Consider how the endangerment finding will expand the EPA's power beyond any plausible congressional mandate.

To begin with, the finding compels the EPA to establish greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles. About 95% of all vehicular greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from motor fuel combustion. Because there is no commercially proven technology to capture CO2 tailpipe emissions, the principal way to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted per mile is to reduce the amount of fuel consumed per mile. In other words, greenhouse gas emission standards for automobiles are basically fuel economy standards by another name. By empowering the EPA to set greenhouse gas emission standards, the endangerment finding also empowers the EPA to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards, even though the Clean Air Act gives the EPA no such authority.

Once the greenhouse gas emission standards go into effect, CO2 becomes a "regulated air pollutant" and, thus, automatically subject to additional regulation under the Act's Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program. Under the Act, a firm must obtain a PSD permit before it can build or modify a "major stationary source" of regulated air pollutants, and obtain a Title V permit before it can operate such a source. The problem is that an immense number and variety of previously non-regulated entities—big box stores, office buildings, apartment complexes, small manufacturers, even commercial kitchens—emit enough CO2 to qualify as "major" sources.

By the EPA's own admission, applying PSD and Title V to CO2 leads to "absurd results." The EPA and its state counterparts will have to process approximately 41,000 PSD permit applications per year (instead of 280), and 6.1 million Title V permit applications per year (instead of 14,700). Agencies' administrative resources will be overwhelmed, producing ever-growing backlogs that slam the brakes on new construction and force millions of firms to operate in legal limbo. A more potent anti-stimulus package would be hard to imagine.

To avert a red ink nightmare, the EPA proposes to "tailor" the permitting programs so that they exempt for six years all sources emitting less than 50,000 tons per year (TPY) of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases. But the Act plainly states that a source is subject to PSD if it has the potential to emit 250 TPY of a regulated air pollutant and Title V if it has a potential to emit 100 TPY. In reality, the EPA proposes to amend the statute. This breach of the separation of powers only compounds the constitutional crisis inherent in the EPA's bid to hijack fuel economy regulation and climate policymaking.

Even if courts uphold EPA's tailoring rule, it's anybody's guess how many smaller sources EPA will try to regulate after 2016. Government burdens have a habit of ratcheting up over time.

The tailoring rule also provides no protection from the endangerment finding's most absurd result—rulemakings to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), set below current atmospheric concentrations, for greenhouse gases. Environmental litigation groups are only acting on the obvious implication of the EPA's assertion that the root cause of endangerment is the "elevated concentration" of greenhouse gases when they demand that the EPA initiate such rulemakings.
The economic consequences would be devastating. Even a global depression lasting several decades would not be enough to lower CO2 concentrations from today's level—roughly 390 parts per million—to 350 ppm, the new politically correct "stabilization" target advocated by former Vice President Al Gore, the Center for Biological Diversity and numerous other environmental groups. Yet under the Clean Air Act, states are obligated to attain NAAQS within five years or, at most, 10 years. The endangerment finding thus sets the stage for environmental activists to transform the Act into a deindustrialization mandate via litigation. The Murkowski resolution would nip all this mischief in the bud.

A strong case can be made that the EPA's endangerment finding is scientifically flawed. However, the Murkowski resolution is a referendum not about climate science but about the constitutional propriety of the EPA exercising powers not delegated by Congress. The resolution would overturn the "legal force and effect" of the EPA's endangerment finding, not the EPA's scientific reasoning or conclusions.

Who should make climate policy—the people's representatives or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers and unelected activist judges appointed for life? That is the sole question raised by the Murkowski resolution. The U.S. Constitution permits only one answer.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., warns that if the public has to wait for Congress to pass legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions, "that might not happen, in a year or two, or five or six or eight or 10." Yes, but that is representative democracy. And the democratic process is more valuable than any result that the EPA might obtain by doing an end run around it. Of all people, U.S. senators should understand this basic precept of our constitutional system.


George Allen is a former U.S. senator and governor from Virginia. He is also chairman of the American Energy Freedom Center. Marlo Lewis is a senior fellow in environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Climate Change: Another Option

CARE would like to call your attention to an alternative approach that addresses rising greenhouse gas levels. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute has proposed that instead of adopting economically damaging policies like cap and trade, that the United States take a serious look at geoengineering. What is geoengineering and why should you care? (No pun intended!) Geoengineering is a cost effective approach to reducing greenhouse gas emission levels whose "techniques include injecting fine sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere to slow down the warming process from the sun, and spraying clouds with salt water to make them reflect more solar radiation away from earth. Similar cooling effects -- as well as some adverse consequences -- have been observed after volcanic eruptions." In a nutshell, those among us that want to take an objective look at the science behind global warming have an affordable and scientifically compelling alternative to economically ruinous proposals like cap-and-trade and empowering the EPA to declare greenhouse gases a threat to human health and welfare.

Climate Change: Another Option
WASHINGTON--As world leaders meet in Copenhagen to discuss reducing greenhouse gas emissions, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has positioned herself, with President Obama's approval, to make an end run around Congress and impose regulatory limits on greenhouse gases, including the best known: carbon dioxide.

On Monday Ms. Jackson published a regulatory finding that greenhouse gases pose a danger to Americans' health and need to be controlled. She said that the finding was a required precondition to the agency's imposing caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases: methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.

The announcement by Ms. Jackson was laden with symbolic significance. It was Mr. Obama's signal to world leaders, whom he will join in Copenhagen later this month, that Washington is determined to take actions to reduce America's greenhouse emissions.

It was also a prod to Congress to pass legislation that would curtail those emissions. The administration -- and some Democrats in Congress -- would prefer a legislative approach because it would enable them to shape the law, and it might be less susceptible to challenge in the courts.

The House has passed its climate change bill, but in the Senate a measure sponsored by two Democratic committee heads, Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, has stalled.

This posturing diverts the public's attention from a larger truth: The Democrats' approach of slapping limits on emissions by power plants, factories, refineries, and motor vehicles, is fundamentally flawed, whether by statute or regulation.

The approach would raise energy prices and costs of production, suppress wage and employment growth, and drive up prices of houses, home heating and cooling, cars, and other manufactured goods by raising production costs. It is a recipe for economic drag.

The bill would require greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 to be no more than 17% of 2005 emissions. The target for the year 2050, four decades into the future, cannot be achieved with today's technology -- and illustrates the hubris of those who think they can fine-tune the American economy far beyond anyone's capacity to foresee events.

Whether from recognizing hubris or from sheer exhaustion, the Senate has failed to pass its bill. Republicans boycotted the committee vote to send it to the floor. No wonder. With unemployment at 10% and over 15 million Americans out of work, there is little public support for legislation to harm the economy.

Furthermore, with the revelation that scientists at the University of East Anglia in Britain destroyed original temperature data rather than turn it over to other scientists for examination, the science of global warming has acquired a tarnished reputation.

Enter Ms. Jackson. As EPA administrator, she claims the power to regulate greenhouse gases under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. In 2007 the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that greenhouse gases were pollutants, thus giving EPA the power to regulate them if the administrator found them harmful to human health. And so she did.

The EPA administrator may have the power to regulate, but she does not have to pay the resulting economic costs, nor even weigh costs against possible benefits. Costs could reach trillions of dollars, to be paid by ordinary Americans through more expensive products and lost jobs.

To many environmental activists at Copenhagen, regulation of greenhouse gases is worth any cost. The usual approach is to set tight limits on carbon emissions, but taking that approach in isolation, as the pending congressional bills and Copenhagen summit would do, would do substantial damage to the U.S. and global economies, especially since substitutes for fossil fuels will be expensive and limited for a number of years.

Let's suppose we all want to cool the earth. Some scientists, including Dutch Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, advise that altering features of the earth's environment, such as seeding clouds, would be far more effective against global warming, faster, and less costly. This is called "geoengineering."

Geoengineering techniques include injecting fine sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere to slow down the warming process from the sun, and spraying clouds with salt water to make them reflect more solar radiation away from earth. Similar cooling effects -- as well as some adverse consequences -- have been observed after volcanic eruptions.

Successful geoengineering would permit earth's population to make far smaller reductions in carbon use and still slow or reverse global warming, but at a vastly lower cost. Just as critically, it would also buy time until more information is known about the process of global warming. No responsible response to global warming should fail to consider geoengineering, and a 40-year plan needs decades to ramp up. Just ask Moses.

Further, if India and China don't also sign up to cut their carbon emissions -- and they haven't committed yet to approving reductions at Copenhagen -- cuts in American carbon emissions alone would not solve the problems of climate change. American emissions would likely be replaced by emissions from newly-industrialized countries.

Geoengineering needs to be considered both in Congress and in Copenhagen. Even if other countries did nothing, successful geoengineering could have global benefits at relatively low cost while postponing the burden of enforcing compliance with emissions limits until alternative technologies are discovered.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

How Environmentalists Are Killing American Energy

We've all seen it on television. America is in a deep recession. The national unemployment rate according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics has risen to 10.2%. People are losing their jobs, struggling to pay the bills, and what are environmentalists doing in response? They are systematically waging war against job-creating sources of affordable energy while promoting a fanatical religion known as "global warming".

CARE's most recent blog guest, Edwin X Berry, PhD, has been gracious enough to provide our readers with insights on how extreme environmentalist groups are Turning Off The Lights In America. He begins by telling us how an aluminum plant has recently shut down in Montana due to environmental regulations and outlines how the Environmental Protection Agency has been working diligently since 1988 to spread global warming propaganda. He tells us how credible scientists have been silenced for fear of losing their government jobs and updates us on how the EPA is trying to declare carbon dioxide as a pollutant. That's right! When you exhale as a human being the federal government wants to declare you a pollutant! He finishes off by building the case that global warming is a religion rather than a scientifically-based theory.

His writing is provocative, his determination is admirable, and his writings are credible as Doctor Berry is a respected atmospheric scientist. We at CARE strongly believe that this piece will help change your view of the global warming debate in America. Please read on!

How they are turning off the lights in America
On October 31,2009, the once largest aluminum plant in the world will shut down. With it goes another American industry and more American jobs. The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company in Montana will shut down its aluminum production because it cannot purchase the necessary electrical power to continue its operations.

How did this happen in America? America was once the envy of the world in its industrial capability. America's industrial capacity built America into the most productive nation the world had ever known. Its standard of living rose to levels never before accomplished. Its currency became valuable and powerful, allowing Americans to purchase imported goods at relatively cheap prices.

America grew because of innovation and hard work by the pioneers of the industrial revolution, and because America has vast natural resources. A great economy, as America once was, is founded on the ability to produce electrical energy at low cost. This ability has been extinguished. Why?

Columbia Falls Aluminum negotiated a contract with Bonneville Power Administration in 2006 for Bonneville to supply electrical power until September 30, 2011. But, responding to lawsuits, the 9th US Circuit Court ruled the contract was invalid because it was incompatible with the Northwest Power Act. Therefore, the combination of the Northwest Power Act and a US Circuit Court were the final villains that caused the shutdown of Columbia Falls Aluminum.

But the real reasons are much more complicated. Why was it not possible for Columbia Falls Aluminum to find sources of electricity other than Bonneville?

We need to look no further than the many environmental groups like the Sierra Club and to America's elected officials who turned their backs on American citizens and in essence themselves, for they too are citizens of this country. These officials bought into the green agenda promoted by the heavily funded environmental groups. Caving to pressure, they passed laws and the environmental groups filed lawsuits that began turning off the lights in America. The dominos started to fall.

They began stopping nuclear power plants in the 1970's. They locked up much of our coal and oil resources with land laws. They passed tax credits, which forces taxpayers to foot the bill for billionaire investors to save taxes by investing in less productive wind and solar energy projects.

In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency called a meeting of atmospheric scientists and others with environmental interests. I remember well the meeting I attended in the San Francisco Bay Area. The meeting was in a theater-like lecture room with the seating curved to face the center stage and rising rapidly toward the back of the room. Attending were many atmospheric scientists whom I knew from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Stanford Research Institute and some local colleges.

The room became silent when a man walked up to the lectern. He told us that the next big national problem was global warming. He explained how human carbon dioxide emissions were trapping the earth's radiation like a greenhouse and causing the atmosphere to heat beyond its normal temperature. He said this will lead to environmental disasters. He finished by saying the EPA will now concentrate its research funding toward quantifying the disasters that would be caused by our carbon dioxide.

The room was silent. I was the first to raise my hand to ask a question, "How can you defend your global warming hypothesis when you have omitted the effects of clouds which affect heat balance far more than carbon dioxide, and when your hypothesis contradicts the paper by Lee * in the Journal of Applied Meteorology in 1973 that shows the atmosphere does not behave like a greenhouse?"

He answered me by saying, "You do not know what you are talking about. I know more about how the atmosphere works than you do."

Not being one to drop out of a fight, I responded, "I know many of the atmospheric scientists in this room, and many others who are not present but I do not know you. What is your background and what makes you know so much more than me?"

He answered, "I know more than you because I am a lawyer and I work for the EPA."

After the meeting, many of my atmospheric science friends who worked for public agencies thanked me for what I said, saying they would have liked to say the same thing but they feared for their jobs.

And that, my dear readers, is my recollection of that great day when a lawyer, acting as a scientist, working for the federal government, announced global warming.

Fast forward to today. The federal government is spending 1000 times more money to promote the global warming charade than is available to those scientists who are arguing against it. Never before in history has it taken a massive publicity campaign to convince the public of a scientific truth. The only reason half the public thinks global warming may be true is the massive amount of money put into global warming propaganda.

The green eco-groups have their umbilical cords in the government's tax funds. Aside from a few honest but duped scientists living on government money, the majority of the alarms about global warming - now called "climate change" because it's no longer warming - come from those who have no professional training in atmospheric science. They are the environmentalists, the ecologists, the lawyers and the politicians. They are not the reliable atmospheric scientists whom I know.

Nevertheless, our politicians have passed laws stating that carbon dioxide is bad. See California's AB32 which is based upon science fiction. (For readers who take issue with me, I will be happy to destroy your arguments in another place. In this paper, we focus on the damage to America that is being caused by those promoting the global warming fraud.)

In the year 2000, America planned 150 new coal-electric power plants. These power plants would have been "clean" by real standards but the Greens managed to have carbon dioxide defined legally as "dirty" and this new definition makes all emitters of carbon dioxide, including you, a threat to the planet. Therefore, using legal illogic, the Sierra Club stopped 82 of these planned power plants under Bush II and they expect it will be a slam dunk to stop the rest under Obama.

And now you know the real reason the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company had to shut down. America stopped building new power plants a long time ago. There is now no other source where the company can buy energy. Our energy-producing capability is in a decline and it is taking America with it.

I used to belong to the Sierra Club in the 1960's. It used to be a nice hiking club. In the late 1960's the Sierra Club began turning its attention toward stopping nuclear power. Then I quit the Sierra Club. It continues to prosper from the many subscribers who think they are supporting a good cause. What they are really supporting is the destruction of America brick by brick. The Sierra Club and similar organizations are like watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside. They are telling us we have no right to our own natural resources, and in doing so they are sinking America.

Inherent in ecology are three assumptions: "natural" conditions are optimal, climate is fragile, and human influences are bad. Physics makes no such assumptions. By assuming climate is fragile, the global warming supporters have assumed their conclusion. In fact, the climate is not fragile. It is stable. The non-adherence to physical logic in the global warming camp is what makes many physical scientists say that global warming is a religion.

So we have a new age religion promoted by environmentalists, incorporated into our laws and brainwashed into our people that is now destroying America from the inside.

Like a vast ship, America is taking a long time to sink but each day it sinks a little further. The fearsome day awaits, when America, if not quickly recovered by its real citizens, will tilt its nose into the water to begin a rapid and final descent into oblivion ... her many resources saved for whom?

Edwin X Berry, Ph.D., is an atmospheric physicist affiliated with the American Meteorological Society.

References:

* R. Lee: "The 'greenhouse' effect" J. Appl. Meteor. 12, 556-557 (1973)

Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner: "Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics," Version 4.0 (January 6, 2009)

International Journal of Modern Physics B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275-364.

http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/23/2303/S02179792092303.html
Page 37: "Lee's paper is a milestone marking the day after which every serious scientist or science educator is no longer allowed to compare the greenhouse with the atmosphere."

Keeping Energy In The Discussion: Questions To Ask At Town Hall Meetings

We had a lively conversation with Paul Driessen during CARE’s July Conference Call. As we were discussing energy and policies in Washington DC, the conversation naturally went to cap and trade legislation. Paul began giving us some ideas and we asked if he would, from his background on the subject, please give us some comments/questions that we could ask our representatives when they are home for August Recess that would keep energy issues in the dialogue. He promised to give it some thought and the following is what he created.

It suggests a number of important, substantive questions that members of Congress need to address, before proceeding further on energy and climate legislation. It could help inspire and energize people to participate in those sessions--and exercise their First Amendment rights to be fully involved in an informed democratic process. Indeed, many are questions that people all over the world should be asking their elected officials.

Demand Answers From Your Senators And Congressman During Their August Recess
Americans are justifiably wary about Congress rushing to overhaul our healthcare system--17% of our economy--with little debate, analysis or bipartisan input. They worry that the legislation could affect their costs, free choice, doctor-patient relationships and access to quality care.

They should be even more concerned about complex, thousand-page legislation that would overhaul 100% of our economy--the energy system that powers and enables everything we eat, heat, cool, grow, make, transport, drive and do--to prevent hypothetical manmade catastrophic climate change.

Energy is the Master Resource that makes life possible. Without abundant, reliable, affordable energy, opportunity, progress, job creation, health and civil rights are hobbled and rolled back.

And yet, global warming bills are being rushed into law at warp speed, not just without debate, but with debate vilified as climate holocaust denial, criminal acts and treason against the planet.

Proponents insist a planetary crisis demands instant action. The truth is that President Obama wants to present a US commitment to draconian reductions in plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide at the December Copenhagen climate conference. He wants to pressure China, India and other nations to sacrifice their economic growth to the specter of alleged climate disasters. Copenhagen is the last chance for eco-activists to implement a UN-centered system of global governance, global taxes, and global control of energy, economies and living standards.

Open, robust, unfettered debate is absolutely essential. It is our inalienable right, the foundation of democracy and a free and prosperous America. A good place to start that debate is the town hall meetings that our elected representatives will be holding during their August recess. Here are a few questions that concerned citizens might want to ask.
1) Congressman John Conyers said he didn’t bother reading the bill, before he voted on it, because he would need two lawyers to explain the passages to him. Did you read and understand it? All of it? Then how can we be expected to do so? Why should we be expected to obey it? Why should we let congressmen who can’t understand their own bills control 100% of our economy?

2) Global temperatures are not increasing. Thousands of scientists say humans and carbon dioxide are not causing a climate disaster. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and heat waves are not increasing. Emissions from China and India will quickly replace any CO2 reductions the United States might achieve by taxing and restricting fossil fuel use, crippling our economy, and hurting seniors and poor families most. Why does Congress refuse to allow real debate? Why does it simply assume and decree that we have a global warming crisis and must enact legislation immediately?

3) House Speaker Pelosi recently said “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory,” so that America can slash energy use and emissions, and prevent dangerous climate change. This can only lead to a massive, intrusive Green Nanny State; the end of affordable, reliable energy; a coerced switch to expensive, unreliable wind and solar power; and skyrocketing energy costs that will hammer families and businesses and cost millions of jobs. Why would you support such legislation?

4) Cap-and-trade is a huge tax on the energy we use for everything we make and do. It’s a massive wealth transfer, from consumers to the government, to pay for unprecedented spending increases and more pork for favored businesses and voting blocs. It violates President Obama’s pledge not to tax anyone with incomes below $250,000. It will cost families $1000 to $4,600 per year in extra energy and living expenses. How can you justify voting for such punitive legislation?

5) The average annual temperature in Antarctica is minus 50. Temperatures would have to increase 85 degrees 24/7/365 for a century or more, to melt South Pole ice caps and raise sea levels 20-50 feet. Can you explain how a 0.02% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (from 285 ppm in 1850 to projected 485 ppm) can overturn basic laws of thermodynamics, replace the powerful natural forces that caused Ice Ages and other climate changes in the past, and produce ice-cap meltdowns?

6) Replacing hydrocarbons with “green” energy will require millions of acres of land for turbines, solar panels, geothermal facilities and transmission lines. Do you support relaxing environmental study, endangered species and other laws, to fast-track approval of these projects, despite their impacts on habitats? Or do you want them subjected to the same rules that have stymied thousands of other energy projects, so that renewable energy projects can’t be built, either--and we have a huge “energy gap”?

Do you support protecting the rights of land owners? Or do you favor eminent domain, so that government can seize people’s property and expedite construction of these projects?

7) Replacing hydrocarbons with “green” power will also require hundreds of millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete, fiberglass and rare earth minerals for turbines, solar panels and transmission lines. Do you support opening our lands for renewed exploration and development, so that we can produce these raw materials and create American jobs? Or do you intend to keep US lands off limits, allow eco-activists to file lawsuits to prevent development, and force us to depend on imports for renewable energy, too?

8) The United States spent $79 billion on global warming programs between 1989 and 2008. The vast majority went to scientists, bureaucrats, alarmist groups and propaganda campaigns that say we face a climate disaster. Do you support a law requiring that future spending be split 50:50 between researchers who think humans are causing a climate disaster, and those who believe climate change is mostly natural and cyclical--so that we can have honest, unbiased science … and sound public policy decisions?

9) Claims that we face a climate disaster are based on selected use of questionable temperature data, short-term temperature trends, and scary computer scenarios that even modelers don’t call predictions--but merely possible futures, if numerous assumptions about climate systems, energy generation, carbon dioxide and global economic growth 25-100 years from now turn out to be true. How can you justify transforming (and risking) America’s energy and economic future, based on computer models?

10) The White House and EPA suppressed a government report that said scientific evidence does not support claims that we face a global warming disaster--until after passage of a House bill that would send US carbon dioxide emissions back to 1868 levels. Why did you ignore this dictatorial and fraudulent action? Will you now demand a new debate and new vote? Demand that this report be reviewed and debated fully, before the Senate acts on similar legislation? Penalize EPA for suppressing free speech?

11) The economic pain, job losses and government intrusion into our lives under the House-passed global warming bill would reduce projected global average temperatures in 2050 by an imperceptible 0.1 degrees. That’s largely because 97% of the projected increase in CO2 emissions between now and 2030 will come from developing countries that are building new coal-fired power plants every week, according to the International Energy Agency. Why would you support legislation that is all pain, and no gain?

12) Over 1.5 billion people in China, India and Africa still do not have electricity, for even a light bulb or tiny refrigerator. Almost 2.5 billion people around the world live on less than $2 a day. Millions die every year from diseases that would be largely eradicated with electricity for refrigeration, sanitation, clinics, and industries that generate greater health and prosperity. How can you justify telling them global warming is the biggest threat they face, and they need to get by on wind and solar power, and give up their dreams of better lives, because you are worried about global warming? Doesn’t that violate their most basic human rights--including their right to improved living standards, and to life itself?

Exercise your constitutional rights. Write to your legislators. Attend town hall meetings. Ask questions. Demand answers. Demand debate. And safeguard your future, and your children’s future.


Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – black death.

Are Gasoline Taxes The “Transparent” Way To Reduce Consumption?

For the last two years, CARE has been watching CAFE Standards legislation since alerted to them by Sam Kazman’s June 2007 article entitled "First, Do No Harm to Motorists." Executive Director Marita Noon includes commentary in one of her speeches that touches on CAFE standards and we’ve posted previous comments here from Diana Furchtgott-Roth. Marita wrote a recent opinion editorial following Obama’s announcement about the increase in CAFE Standards. Within a short period of time, this piece from Diana Furchtgott-Roth arrived in CARE’s in box. While it addresses the same topic as the piece distributed through CARE, it takes a totally different--but compatible--angle. CAFE is just one of the onslaught of legislation hitting the American public that limits freedom. If you support private property rights, free-market principles and energy freedom, you’ll want to read on. If you do not support that short shopping list, you need to read on.

Beyond the news element to this story, it also answers a question you may have thought of, “What happened to the family station wagon?” or “When did the station wagon become the SUV?”

What do you think?

Obama Should Ditch Deadly CAFE Standards
Why does President Obama want to preclude Americans from buying bigger, safer, vehicles, mostly made by domestic auto companies, who need all the business they can get? Motorists should be allowed to pay the cost of cars and the fuel to run them, including taxes to reflect costs imposed on society.

Yet earlier this month, using authority granted in the 2007 Energy Act, Mr. Obama announced that automakers will be required to achieve a higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard, 35 miles a gallon by 2016, four years earlier than Congress had mandated, rising from 27 MPG now for cars and 22 MPG for light trucks. Enacted in 1975, CAFE requires automakers to calculate average fuel economy--miles per gallon--across their fleets.

Never mind that the 35 MPG CAFE standard, calculated by the Transportation Department, corresponds roughly to a 26 MPG Environmental Protection Agency standard, the measure that is found on window stickers of new cars. This is met already by 29 car models and 36 truck models. Half these trucks and one third of the cars are made by domestic automakers.

This discrepancy in MPG arises because for CAFE the Transportation Department tests the vehicle on a dynamometer, a machine designed to measure fuel intake in a repeatable pattern that is not the same as ordinary driving. This yields better “mileage” than would the EPA measure of driving over the road.

Hence, there was less to Mr. Obama’s announcement than met the eye--or made the headlines.

Whatever the true MPG measure, CAFE standards aren’t the best way to increase it. If Mr. Obama wants Americans to use less gasoline--a goal that many don’t share--he should propose a gasoline tax. Last summer, when the price of gasoline climbed above $4 a gallon, Americans cut back on their driving—with no extra CAFE standards.

Paradoxically, Mr. Obama’s increased CAFE standards may have the unintended effect of encouraging motorists to hold on to their older gas guzzling cars, as new models become more expensive. In contrast, a higher tax would create incentives to turn over the auto fleet more quickly, as drivers choose more fuel-efficient models.

Motorists should be allowed to choose between purchasing more safety with a larger car, or saving fuel by buying a smaller car. Other things being equal, heavier cars will be safer. Data show that fewer fatalities occur when large cars hit each other than when small cars do the same. In crashes between small and large cars, small cars’ occupants are at a disadvantage.

And poor people will be the most likely to get hurt under Mr. Obama’s new regulations. University of California (Santa Barbara) economics professor Stephen DeCanio in a telephone conversation yesterday declared, “CAFE standards are regressive. They put an undue burden on those who are low-income, who will buy cars that are smaller and less safe. Speaking as someone who is in favor of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, CAFE is not the way to go.”

The first CAFE standards, according to a 2002 National Research Council study, resulted in 1,300 to 2,600 more Americans killed on the roads in a typical year, because cars were lighter. If a toy manufacturer had killed that many children in a year the company would go out of business.

After dead motorists, the biggest losers from higher CAFE standards are Americans who prefer large vehicles to carry families, equipment, and pets on daily trips or long vacations.

One reason that Congress does not want to tax gasoline is that taxes are unpopular. People see taxes, whereas they do not observe the costs of CAFE directly. Despite Mr. Obama’s many calls for transparency in government, CAFE standards hide the costs of the regulation, contributing to poor governance.

Furthermore, CAFE regulations yield no revenue that the government could use to make infrastructure investments, engage in research and development, lower income taxes, or cushion the effects of the cost of the emissions reductions on low-income Americans. A gasoline tax, if accompanied by decreases in income taxes, could be revenue neutral. Low-income Americans who do not pay taxes could receive credits from the revenues to be used against the purchase of gasoline.

By yielding to Congress’s unwillingness to raise gasoline taxes and relying on regulations to increase gas mileage, Mr. Obama offers no incentive for manufacturers to exceed the CAFE standard or motorists to reduce their driving. A tax, on the other hand, would create a continuing incentive to improve vehicle MPG and reduce miles driven.

In fact, CAFE standards may have contributed to lowering the fuel efficiency of the personal transportation fleet because light trucks were not covered. Manufacturers developed a new kind of “light truck,” the Sport Utility Vehicle, built on a truck chassis. Many motorists who could not buy large sedans or station wagons due to CAFE turned to SUVs, some of which had lower fuel efficiency than the prohibited sedans.

Automotive fuel efficiency has been rising without stricter CAFE standards as older cars are replaced with newer ones. If Mr. Obama wants Americans to use less fuel, a tax would be simpler, fairer, and more effective.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow and director of Hudson Institute's Center for Employment Policy. She is the former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor.

America: More Dependant on Foreign Oil

For those of us who spend the better part of everyday focused on energy issue--and especially what our elected officials are doing to thwart energy development, we tend think we have it all figured out. While it is true that we know more than the average person on the street (who still thinks CAFE Standards are about quality control at Starbucks), we do need each other. We thinkers and analysts sharpen each other’s expertise. Such is the case with Diana Furchtgott-Roth. Just when we at CARE think we have a good grasp on a particular issue, she sends us one of her articles that sheds new light on the topic. Such is the case with today’s posting.

Most of us who work in the energy arena are frustrated with the policies coming out of Washington, however Diana Furchtgott-Roth brings fresh insight to the policy issue. One of the fresh thoughts she presents here is this sentence: “Rather than leading towards energy independence, Mr. Obama’s proposals would drive oil and gas production abroad and make American oil and gas uncompetitive in a global market.” There are others too. Please give this a good read and comment on any new ideas you glean. If you think she is totally off-base, we’d love your comments on that too.

Watch for the next posting from Diana Furchtgott-Roth on CAFE Standard--especially if you think they are about Starbucks.

Obama's Upside-Down Energy Logic
Although President Obama has repeatedly called for America to achieve "energy independence," his proposals to raise taxes on domestic oil and gas producers would have precisely the opposite effect. They would, if approved by Congress, make the country more dependent, not less, on imported oil.

Prudently, the president might also acknowledge that achieving “independence” is both unlikely and undesirable, and that America’s economy benefits from all imports, including imported oil.
Days after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the new president declared, “It will be the policy of my administration to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs.”

Yet in the 2010 Budget that he sent to Congress earlier this month, Mr. Obama specifically seeks to raise taxes on domestic oil exploration by $31 billion over 10 years, a larger tax increase than on any other industry. In addition, oil and gas producers would bear a disproportionately heavy share of other tax increases on business, more than $320 billion.

The ostensible rationale for these tax hikes is that the current tax system “distorts markets by encouraging more investment in the oil and gas industry than would occur under a neutral system. To the extent expensing encourages overproduction of oil and gas, it is detrimental to long-term energy security…” This reasoning is repeated eight times in the Treasury Department’s Green Book, a description of proposed spending and revenue changes in the budget.

No mention anywhere in the Budget of the distortion of the $60 billion in expenditures in the stimulus bill to “reduce dependence on foreign oil and create long-term, sustainable economic growth in the green industries of the future.” Subsidies for renewable energy, only four percent of America’s energy supply, and more than would occur under a neutral system, are acceptable to President Obama. But a tax structure that encourages the production of oil, 39 percent of America’s energy share, is termed “detrimental.”

Mr. Obama’s proposals include increasing effective income tax rates on oil and gas to levels higher than for other manufacturing industries; disallowing “write-offs” for certain types of extraction equipment and exploration methods; levying a new excise tax on Gulf of Mexico oil and gas; and taxing carbon emissions through a “cap and trade” program.

If America is to reduce use of imported fuels, it needs to raise domestic production as well as to conserve. This increases our long-term energy security, rather than harming it. Every single additional barrel of oil produced in America is one barrel fewer that we need to import—and as we produce more at home, we employ American workers and produce revenues for all Americans.

No one knows the full extent of American oil and natural gas reserves, and to move towards energy independence, it pays to be looking. In 2007 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, equivalent to 33 billion barrels of oil, about 18 years of U.S. oil production, were found in the Haynesville Shale rock formation in northern Louisiana. Texas, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania are also home to new gas fields. New optimism about gas reserves and production has been pushing prices down. With the fuel there, why discourage production with new taxes?

Rather than leading towards energy independence, Mr. Obama’s proposals would drive oil and gas production abroad and make American oil and gas uncompetitive in a global market. The levies would punish domestic American companies and benefit countries with large reserves such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia. Does Mr. Obama really want these countries, all under fire for their neglect of human rights, to get richer at our expense?

Until America has technology to operate its 250 million motor vehicles without gasoline and natural gas, we need more domestic exploration, not less. At some point, maybe later this year, maybe in 2010, our economy is going to shift to post-recession recovery, and oil and gas consumption are going to rise. We want to avoid $5 gasoline and sky-high home heating bills.

Although Congress is spending billions of dollars to create jobs and promote energy independence, President Obama wants to deny access to development of our own oil and gas resources in some of the most geologically promising areas available, and to increase the tax costs of developing these resources.

This is upside down logic. If enacted by Congress, it would make us less secure. Congress might succeed in imposing draconian efficiency standards on automobiles and appliances; requiring electric utility output that comes from renewable sources—wind, solar, geothermal, biomass—to rise from 4 percent now to 25 percent in 2025; and mandating greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 that are 17 percent of 2005 levels. (Whether Congress could enforce such wildly optimistic goals is a question.)

Americans might become greater conservationists, prodded by guilt or by higher energy taxes. But even if they do, they will still need oil and natural gas for driving, home heating, and electricity generation for many years to come. If Mr. Obama is serious about pursuing energy independence, he should withdraw his proposals to increase taxes on domestic oil and gas production.


Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a frequent contributor to CARE’s Comments About Responsible Energy.