Clean Energy
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Published July 10, 2009 @ 08:01AM PT
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Boxer, Jackson Blast Sen. Barrasso's "Suppressed EPA Memo" Meme
Published July 07, 2009 @ 10:57AM PT
Did you hear the one about how the Obama administration is fostering a "culture of secrecy and suppression" of science?
That was the claim made by Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy.). At this morning's hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Barrasso spent most of his time projecting onto the Obama administration a phenomenon he didn't seem to mind when it was actually practiced by the Bush-Cheney administration: censorship of scientific data on climate change, and suppression of the words and works of federal employees.
While Democratic and some of his GOP colleagues spent the morning discussing how to take action on clean energy and global warming with four members of the Obama cabinet, Sen. Barrasso tried to hamstring the hearing. He charged that an EPA economist was squelched from above when he disagreed with the agency's endangerment finding on carbon dioxide.
"What I've seen so far is an administration that is saying, yes we can hide the truth, yes we can hide the facts, and yes we can intimidate career government employees," said Sen. Barrasso.
Calling the accusation of censoring science "a brutal charge to levy," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee chair, addressed it to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.
"I will be brief, because I think this committee has more important and substantive issues to deal with," said Ms. Jackson.
Citing materials released by the free-market advocacy think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, including an exchange of emails between the EPA staffer at the creamy center of this story and his managers, Jackson stated that the "facts do not justify the CEI release."
The EPA employee, economist Alan Carlin, was given permission and encouraged to speak his mind, and find peer-reviewed work to back up his disagreement to the EPA's finding, she said. "I personally instructed staff that Carlin should feel free to circulate [his] memo to anyone he wished," Jackson said, adding, "I don't believe process debates like this are serving the American people" by finding solutions to clean energy generation and ways to stop global warming.
As Grist reporter Jonathan Hiskes has written, there's nothing to speak of to this conspiracy allegation by Sen. Barrasso and others on the right. "EPA Press Secretary Adora Andy noted that Carlin’s education and work expertise are largely in economics, not climatology," says Hiskes. "That’s why his comments on climate science were not included" in the endangerment finding.
Carlin's own report does not back up CEI's allegations, says Hiskes, and recycles several well-debunked global warming hoaxes: that the science is so rapidly evolving that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports cannot be trusted; that the globe is really cooling; that the mass of Greenland's ice cap is stable; and others.
The science in the document doesn't hold up. NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt wrote on RealClimate (and Hiskes reposted to Grist, as I'm reposting here):
...what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we've discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc.
I'm not quite sure how this is supposed to compete with the four rounds of international scientific and governmental review of the IPCC or the rounds of review of the CCSP reports ...
...Finally, they end up with the oddest claim in the submission: That because human welfare has increased over the twentieth century at a time when CO2 was increasing, this somehow implies that no amount of CO2 increases can ever cause a danger to human society. This is just boneheadly stupid.
So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that's the best they can do, the EPA's ruling is on pretty safe ground.
There are many really substantive critiques to make of the House clean energy and climate legislation, and whatever version the Senate will eventually take up. These policies warrant serious discussion and consideration in Congress.
Instead, Sen. Barrasso is falling down on the job. He is using falsehoods to try and block much-needed debates of and advancements on energy and climate policy, instead of engaging on the real issues. It's a mystery why his constituents don't demand better.
Green Economy Rising: EV Charging worth $200M by 2015
Published July 03, 2009 @ 05:25AM PT
Don't let anyone kid you that going green will wreck the economy. Take electric cars, where there's money to be made not just on the vehicles themselves, but in providing the infrastructure to power them up.
"Electric Vehicles and the Grid," a recent market research report foresees a rich return, only five years from now, for the EV charging market:
- Utilities in the U.S. will slowly see revenue from vehicle charging increase from $3 million in 2010 to more than $200 million in 2015.
- By 2015, access to vehicle charging will be available at more than one million charge points in the United States alone.
- Early adopters will prefer the convenience of charging at home.
- China, which has mandated the production of electric vehicles, will be the world leader in charging stations by 2015, selling nearly half of the global total of 1.5 million units that year.
- In the US, charging equipment sales will initially be driven by government funding for public stations.
The greater demand isn't likely to diminish the reliability of the electricity grid, says the firm. But utilities will likely track vehicle sales to determine where EV charging demand will increase, in order to avoid diminished performance in early-adopter neighborhoods, and create special billing programs.
How much of that energy will be generated by clean sources? Some analyses of the Waxman-Markey bill, as it was passed by the House, suggest that the compromises made to get the votes severely weakened its national renewable energy standard. But many states have adopted renewable energy goals, such as New York, which is aiming for 25% of total energy demand from clean sources by 2013.
Useful resource: Department of Energy's national map of green power purchasing options
From Stephen Colbert to Steve Doocy: 7 Videos to Watch This Week
Published July 01, 2009 @ 05:55PM PT
1. The Colbert Report, May 7, 2009: Smokin' Pole - The Fight for Arctic Riches
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Arctic nations rush to stake claims in polar territories, even though it clearly belongs to America -- Superman lives there.
2. Al Gore warns on latest climate trends
Al Gore presents updated slides from around the globe to make the case that worrying climate trends are even worse than scientists predicted, and to make clear his stance on "clean coal."
3. Bill McKibben: Fighting Climate Change in the Obama Era
Greenpeace UK has a chat over coffee with veteran US "environmental guru" Bill McKibben. McKibben has been agitating and organising to make governments take strong action on climate change for the past 20 years. Until there is a mass movement that both gives politicians the space to act, he believes, and forces them to do so, change will be halting.
4. Ray Zahab treks to the South Pole
Extreme runner Ray Zahab shares an enthusiastic account of his record-breaking trek on foot to the South Pole in January 2009 -- a 33-day sprint through the snow. Zahab broke the record for fastest unsupported trek across Antarctica, to raise awareness and money for kids' environmental education.
5. The American Denial of Global Warming
Why do some Americans still believe that there is "no solid" evidence of global warming, or that if warming is happening it can be attributed to natural variability? Or that scientists are still debating the point? Scientist and renowned historian Naomi Oreskes describes her investigation into the reasons for such widespread mistrust and misunderstanding of scientific consensus and probes the history of organized campaigns designed to create public doubt and confusion about science. Via University of California
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6. The Daily Show, June 1, 2009: Bob Woodruff chats with Jon Stewart about global warming
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Experts say over the next hundred years the "perfect storm" of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results. On the eve of the broadcast of ABC's "Earth 2100" special, Bob Woodruff lays out the worst-case scenario for the future of civilization, and how we can act now to set a different course.
7. Fox News reports global temperature decline falsehood as if it's true
Several Fox News figures have used a purportedly "suppressed" EPA document to advance the falsehood that, in Steve Doocy's words, "for the last 11 years, temperatures had been dropping." More at Media Matters for America.
#ACES Wrap-up: Decoding the House Vote, Looking Ahead to the Senate
Published June 29, 2009 @ 11:44AM PT
Above: Right-wing "hit list": the eight House Republicans who voted for the energy-climate bill.
Via Glenn Thrush on Politico (who asks, "Ever wonder why the GOP is losing moderates?" No.)
The White House did something pretty unusual Friday evening. It retracted President Obama's prepared weekend statement on health care reform, already being circulated, and replaced it with a new message exhorting the Senate to get climate/energy legislation passed as well.
Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times reported the move this way: "President Obama was planning to talk [in his regular weekend address] about the urgent need for Congress to begin coalescing around health care legislation, saying, 'If we don’t act, things will get worse.' But the urgency for health care suddenly turned out to be not so urgent after all."
I think Zeleny gets this wrong. Health care reform and curbing global warming are equally urgent -- and this White House knows it.
After years of inaction on these and other crises, it's like the nation has been in a slow-moving car crash. Now it's in the emergency room. The doctors and nurses have to decide: Which life-threatening injury is more important, the punctured lung or the cracked skull? There's no way to choose, so they surround the patient and try to fix them all at the same time. At least until one demands more attention than the others.
So, to overextend the analogy: The passage of the Waxman-Markey clean energy and climate bill on Friday moved global warming up on the critical injury list.
So President Obama took advantage the opportunity to apply his own uniquely powerful form of pressure where it would do the most good.
It looks like a canny decision, since, according to The National Journal, how a district voted in the November election -- that is, pure political calculation -- meant the most to a Democratic representative's yea or nay on the bill:
Of the 49 House Democrats who represent districts that McCain carried last year, fully 29 voted against the measure. By contrast, just 15 of the 207 Democrats from districts that Obama carried last year voted against the bill. (Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings, whose district backed Obama, did not vote, meaning "Obama Democrats" ended up splitting 191-15.) Put another way, while 59 percent of the Democrats from districts that McCain carried voted no, just 7 percent of Democrats in Obama-majority districts opposed the White House on the vote.
Similarly, seven of the eight Republicans who supported the measure represent districts that backed Obama last November. (The list included Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who's considering a bid for the president's former Senate seat, and Mike Castle of Delaware, who may run for the seat vacated by Vice President Joe Biden.)
... [Of the Republican representatives,] 27 of the 34 Republicans from Obama-districts held with their party and voted against the legislation. [In California], only Mary Bono Mack from Palm Springs supported the bill. Meanwhile, Republicans from districts that McCain carried voted against the bill by 141-1, with Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey the only supporter. (Two other "McCain Republicans" did not vote.)
The degree of a district's reliance on coal-fired electricity also figured into how a representative voted, per the TNJ team. Of the 121 reps whose districts depend on coal for at least 40 percent of their energy, 30 voted against Waxman-Markey, "about one-in-four of the coal state Democrats ... compared to only a little over one-in-10 of everyone else."
Simply flipping that analyis offers up a more encouraging picture, though. As Brad Plumer at The New Republic writes:
It's actually noteworthy, though, to see how many coal-state Democrats voted for the bill. That's mostly because Henry Waxman and Rick Boucher bent over backward to make concessions for the coal industry—for instance, giving allowances away to local electric-distribution outfits so as to cushion the blow for ratepayers that get much of their power from burning coal. Environmental groups decried these measures, and there's certainly much to grumble about, but given that only a thimbleful of Republicans were going to vote for the bill, it's hard to see how any climate bill ever passes without concessions to coal-staters.
Obama to Senate on Climate, Energy: "We cannot be afraid of the future"
Published June 29, 2009 @ 08:32AM PT
Above: President Obama used the whole of his latest weekly address to laud the passage of the House climate and clean energy bill. This video by AP left off the final, forward-looking words of his statement:
Now my call to every Senator, as well as to every American, is this: We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past. Don’t believe the misinformation out there that suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and economic growth. It’s just not true.
We have been talking about energy for decades. But there is no longer a disagreement over whether our dependence on foreign oil is endangering our security. It is. There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy. It’s happening. And there is no longer a question about whether the jobs and industries of the 21st century will be centered around clean, renewable energy.
The question is, which country will create these jobs and these industries? I want that answer to be the United States of America. And I believe that the American people and the men and women they sent to Congress share that view. So I want to congratulate the House for passing this bill, and I want to urge the Senate to take this opportunity to come together and meet our obligations – to our constituents, to our children, to God’s creation, and to future generations.
Full transcript on whitehouse.gov.
Clean Energy-Climate Action Bill Passes House 219-212
Published June 26, 2009 @ 05:23PM PT
The Waxman-Markey bill to expand clean energy and energy efficiency, and cap greenhouse gas pollution, has passed on a squeaky-close House of Representatives vote of 219 for, 212 against.
The Democrats managed to pull together enough members, despite sometimes stark differences of opinion on carbon caps, agricultural policy, continued use of coal, and other regionally-defined issues. One exception was Rep. Peter DeFazio, who (despite representing a largely liberal Oregon constituency) opposed the bill for creating, he said, a new way for speculators in financial derivatives (this time based on the price of carbon) to bring down the economy.
Meanwhile, eight Republicans bucked the party line to vote in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act: David Reichert (WA-8th), Mary Bono Mack (Calif-45th), Michael Castle (Del., At-large), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2nd), John McHugh (NY-23rd), Chris Smith (NJ-4th), Leonard Lance (NJ-7th), and Mark Kirk (Ill.-10th).
The House Clerk has posted the full record of the vote.
Thanks to everyone who followed or joined me, Grist's Kate Sheppard, and the other political journo-wonks as we covered the debate and vote via Twitter. Now I'm off to rest my digits.
Video, above: Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), blew the House down when he exhorted his fellow representatives to pass the bill.
