CO2

10:10 = Economic Illiteracy

by Alex Schibuola on October 7, 2010

in Economy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Zeitgeist

10:10 Video: Blowing Up Children (Viewer Discretion Advised)

What an inspiring film — people who refuse to cut their personal CO2 emissions are sentenced to death.

The economic illiteracy of these particular global warming alarmists is on fine display. Under the assumption that global warming alarmists are in favor of producing alternatives to fossil fuels; here’s the mistake in their plan to cut fossil fuel emissions:

If everyone decreases their use of fossil fuels the result is a decrease in demand for fossil fuels. The price of fossil fuels falls relative to alternative forms of energy. If fossil fuels become relatively cheaper than alternatives (read another way: alternatives become relatively more expensive), then alternative energies become less economically viable and we only end up prolonging our use of fossil fuels.

A better alternative if they do want to promote the use of alternatives would be this: Have everyone increase their consumption of fossil fuels by 10 percent per year, thus driving up the price of fossil fuels and making alternatives relatively cheaper.

So now, anyone who does not increase their consumption of fossil fuels should be summarily executed.

I wonder if the use of reason would warrant me being blown up.

Spinning the Defeat of Cap-and-Trade

by Marlo Lewis on August 11, 2010 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

Barring the trickery of a lame duck conference committee, cap-and-trade is dead in the 111th Congress. Some blame Obama for not taking a more hands-on role. Others blame environmental groups for waging a $100 million lobbying campaign without winning a single GOP convert to the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill. Others blame the allegedly “well-funded denial machine,” even though proponents, who include major corporations like British Petroleum, must have outspent CEI and its free-market brethren by more than 100 to 1.

Today’s Climatewire (subscription required) features interviews with Exelon Corp. VP Betsy Moler and Phil Sharp, President of Resources for the Future, who lament that Republican lawmakers, the “inventors” of “market-based” environmental policy, have turned against their own “invention.” If I catch their drift, Moler and Sharp are trying to spin GOP opposition to cap-and-trade as self-contradictory, hence as unstable, hence as reversible. As Climatewire reports, Moler is not ready to “throw in the towel” and Sharp entertains the hope that a “new kind of coalition” will emerge in the next Congress.

Now, let’s look at this notion, peddled by Moler and Sharp, that Republicans betrayed themselves and besmirched their own legacy by blocking cap-and-trade. Here’s how it’s discussed in Climatewire:

In an interview, Moler said that her deep disappointment was the rejection by Republican leaders in Congress of a market-based strategy for raising the price of carbon emissions, to speed transitions by power plants, industry and consumers to cleaner energy.

The Democrats called it “cap and trade.” Republicans labeled it “cap and tax,” and the change in one word proved lethal.

“The thing that just amazes me, confounds me, surprises me is how successfully the Republican leadership and a lot of the people who would be potentially negatively impacted have been in vilifying what have historically been market-based solutions,” Moler said.

Inventors Turn on Invention

“Cap and trade is really a Republican instrument that grew out of a lot of the Republican thought leaders as a market-sensitive, market-friendly, anti-command-and-control mechanism” to reduce sulfur- and nitrogen-based air pollution in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. “Now, some of the same people who invented it have turned on it as an energy tax,” she said. “It’s a huge missed opportunity. I don’t know where you go next.”

Moler’sregret is seconded by Philip Sharp, president of Resources for the Future, who, as a Democratic House member from Indiana, stood with Moler in the 1990s in the energy deregulation campaign. Sharp was a pivotal factor in Congress’ adoption of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments and the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which opened the way for FERC’s electricity market orders four years later.

“I’m not here to say cap and trade is the only way to do this,” Sharp said in an interview. “It worked magnificently with SO2 and a couple of other instances.” Scaling it up massively to deal with economywide carbon emissions is another question. “We don’t know we can manage it as effectively,” he said.

“But what is really unfortunate in the public debate is that the current Republican leadership has overthrown one of the great Republican successes in this country [under President George H.W. Bush], to capitalize on the flexibility of the marketplace” in achieving regulatory change, Sharp said.

“I don’t think people appreciate the extraordinary challenge that represented and the difficulty of getting it done” in the 1990s, he said. Now, with the demise of that approach, Congress has invited U.S. EPA to step in on the climate front “and regulate the living [daylights] out of everything and see how well a modern economy works doing that.”

Moler and Sharp miss several key points.

First, the Title IV acid rain cap-and-trade program enacted under President George H.W. Bush is not the “magnificent” success they suppose it is. As Kenneth Green, Steven Hayward, and Kevin Hasset of the American Enterprise Institute note, prices of tradable sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission permits have been highly volatile: “SO2 trading prices have varied from a low of $70 per ton in 1996 to $1500 per ton in late 2005. SO2 allowances have a monthly volatility of 10 percent and an annual volatility of 43 percent over the last decade.”

Second, utilities participating in the SO2 emissions trading program could meet all or part of their obligations by purchasing low-sulfur coal and/or installing scrubbers, a commercially-proven emission control technology. In contrast, there is no low-carbon coal, and no commercially-proven technology to “scrub” carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions out of power plant exhaust streams.

Third, unlike sulfur, which is an impurity or contaminant in coal and oil, carbon is intrinsic to the chemistry of fossil fuels. Consequently, whereas emission control requirements for SO2 do not logically entail an unlimited agenda aiming at total abolition of the fuel, emission control requirements for CO2 do imply abolition as the ultimate objective. Such extremism is reflected in the apocalyptic rhetoric of the global warming movement, in petitions demanding that EPA establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for CO2 at 350 parts per million and for other greenhouse gases at pre-industrial levels (not even a global depression lasting several decades would be sufficient to lower CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm), and in Al Gore’s campaign to “repower America“ with “zero-carbon energy” within “ten years.” More pertinently, pull-out-the-stops, sky-is-the-limit regulation lurks in the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Lieberman bills’ escalator clauses, which all but ensure that the explicit emission reduction target (83% below 2005 levels by 2050) would be superseded by more aggressive requirements.

Fourth, just because a “market-based” approach is more efficient, in principle, than command-and-control regulation does not in any way obligate Republicans to support Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Lieberman if those same Republicans oppose all regulatory climate policies.

Fifth, every Republican in the Senate voted for the Murkowski resolution to block EPA regulation of greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act. So it’s silly to say that Republicans “invited U.S. EPA to step in on the climate front ‘and regulate the living [daylights] out of everything. . .’” President Obama threatened to veto both the Murkowski resolution and the much weaker Rockefeller bill, which would merely postpone EPA regulation of stationary sources of greenhouse gases for two years. It’s the Democratic leadership, not the GOP, that has “invited” EPA to make climate policy through the regulatory back door.

Finally, Republicans betray themselves (ask President George “Read My Lips; No New Taxes” Bush) when they vote for rather than against higher taxes. Because carbon is intrinsic to the chemistry of fossil fuels, a carbon cap-and-trade scheme is a virtual broad-based energy tax. The same cannot be said of the SO2 program, which was merely a virtual pollution tax. Moler and Sharp would like GOP lawmakers to believe they can win elections by becoming the Party of Energy Taxes. Fortunately, most Republicans don’t need much coaching to realize that is complete bunk.

TCEQ to EPA: Don’t Mess with Texas

by Marlo Lewis on August 6, 2010

in Global Warming, Legal

In a blistering letter published earlier in the week, the head of Texas’s environmental agency and the State’s attorney general told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): ”Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas regulations.”

The letter, by Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Chairman Bryan Shaw and Attorney General Gregg Abbott, comes hard on heels of EPA’s denial of 10 petitions (including one from the State of Texas) to reconsider EPA’s endangerment rule. That rule — the agency’s response to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA – is both trigger and precedent for potentially dramatic and far-reaching Clean Air Act restrictions on fossil energy production and use.

More pertinently, Shaw and Abbott sent their letter on August 2, 2010, the deadline EPA had set in its Final Tailoring Rule (p. 31582) for States to explain how they plan to apply Clean Air Act permitting programs to stationary sources of greenhouse gases. Instead, the Texas officials all but told EPA to go jump in the lake. 

Tailoring Absurdity

EPA adopted the Tailoring Rule to fix a problem of its own making. By adopting the endangerment rule, EPA obligated itself to establish greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles. The standards make carbon dioxide (CO2) a “regulated air pollutant,” which in turn makes any “major stationary source” of CO2 “subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program. 

The problem is that literally millions of  hitherto unregulated entities qualify as “major” sources of CO2 under those programs. The “major” source “applicability threshold” for PSD is a potential to emit 250 tons per year (tpy) of a regulated air pollutant. The threshold for Title V is even lower — a potential to emit 100 tpy. Whereas only large industrial facilities emit bona fide air pollutants in those quantities, millions of small entities never before subject to Clean Air Act permitting requirements — big box stores, office buildings, apartment complexes, restaurants, hospitals, schools — emit CO2 in the threshold amounts.

Applying the Clean Air Act to greenhouse gases thus produces what EPA itself describes as “absurd results.” For example, EPA and its State counterparts would have to process an estimated 41,000 PSD permits per year (up from 280) and 6.1 million Title V operating permits per year (up from 15,000). The ensuing “permit gridlock” would clog up environmental enforcement, stifle new construction, and force millions of firms to either operate illegally or close down. All on President Obama’s watch; all in the midst of a deep recession.

Rather than draw the reasonable conclusion that Congress did not intend to regulate greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act, EPA decided that Congress must have intended for the agency to ”tailor” — that is, amend — the Act so the agency can regulate greenhouse gases without wrecking the economy. So, while the law specifies 100/250 tpy as the applicability thresholds for the permitting programs, the Tailoring Rule sets the cutoff at 100,000 tpy over the next two years and at not less than 50,000 over the next six years.

In addition, under the Tailoring Rule, modifications to an existing source won’t be considered “significant” — that is, won’t trigger the PSD process — unless the changes increase emissions by 75,000 tpy.

The Texas environmental chairman and AG aren’t buying it:

You have declared that EPA’s decision to enact automobile tailpipe emission limits for greenhouse gases pursuant to Title II of the federal Clean Air Act renders such gases immediately ”subject to regulation” for all purposes under the Act, including Title I Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program  and the Title V operating permit program. Simultaneously, however, you recognize that permitting greenhouse gases under the Act is “absurd.” . . . We agree.

They continue:

In order to avoid the absurd results of EPA’s own creation, you have developed a “tailoring rule” in which you have substituted your own judgment for Congress’s as to how deep and wide to spread the permitting burden.

And a bit later:

Instead of acknowledging that congressionally set emission limits [applicability thresholds] preclude the regulation of greenhouse gases, you instead re-write those statutorily-established limits . . . .

Problem Unsolved

Okay, now we get to the meat of the matter. PSD and Title V are mostly administered by States, not by EPA, and most State Implementation Plans (SIPs) define “major” emitting facility exactly as the Clean Air Act does. This means that even if the Tailoring Rule shields small entities from PSD and Title V regulation by EPA, it would not shield them from regulation by State agencies. EPA discussed this problem in its Proposed Tailoring Rule (p. 33542). ”Virtually all of [the EPA-approved SIPs] establish the PSD permitting threshold at the 100/250-tpy level,” EPA noted. Indeed, ”a few States have adopted lower permitting threshold levels.” In addition, “virtually all EPA-approved SIPs establish the significance level” for modifications triggering PSD “at zero” emissions in the case of previously unregulated air pollutants — not at 10,000 tpy, as EPA initially proposed, much less at 75,000 tpy, as the Final Rule stipulates.

Initially, EPA proposed to withdraw federal approval from those portions of SIPS incorporating the older thresholds and significance levels. This would mean, however, that the lower thresholds would “remain on the books under State law, and sources therefore remain subject to them as a matter of State law” (Proposed Tailoring Rule, p. 55343). In short, the regulatory nightmare would continue. For further discussion, see Peabody Energy’s comment on the Proposed Tailoring Rule.

Of course, States have the option to revise their SIPs and amend their clean air laws. But that could take years. Thus, notwithstanding EPA’s “tailoring,” small entities would find themselves “subject to regulation” under State PSD and Title V requirements on January 1, 2011, when the agency’s greenhouse gas tailpipe emission standards go into effect. As the Final Tailoring Rule observes, “Commenters stated that States would need to undertake a regulatory and/or legislative process to change the threshold in their state laws which they could not complete before the laws would otherwise require issuance of operating permits to GHG sources” (p. 31583).

Semantics Rule?

So what is EPA’s solution? Instead of changing the definition of “major stationary source,” EPA is changing the definition of “subject to regulation.” The agency, “by interpretation,” now defines “subject to regulation” as not including a “major source” of greenhouse gases unless the source has a potential to emit 100,000 tpy on a CO2-equivalent basis. EPA crows that “we find no substantive difference” between how the initially-proposed rule and how the final rule “tailors” the permitting requirements. EPA says that States similarly, “by interpretation,” can redefine “subject to regulation,” allowing them to exempt small sources from PSD and Title V without changing their SIPs or laws: 

Whether we add [higher] GHG thresholds directly to the definition of “major source” (as we proposed), or alternatively, expressly add and define the term “subject to regulation” [so that it only applies to sources emitting at least 100,000 tpy], both approaches revise the definition of “major source” to implement the Tailoring Rule. Accordingly, we adopt the later approach to facilitate state implementation of the final rule through an interpretation of existing state part 70 programs.

If you are confused as to how redefining “subject to regulation” can produce the same substantive result as redefining “major source” yet not similarly require States to change their SIPs or laws, you are not alone. It’s this attempt to turn law into a semantic game that the Texas officials refuse to play.

They write:

In the Tailoring Rule you have asked TCEQ to report to you by August 2, 2010 whether it would “interpret” the undefined phrase “subject to regulation” in TCEQ Rule 116.12 consistent with the newly promulgated definition of EPA Rule 51.166 in all its specifics and particulars. . . .In other words, you have asked Texas to agree that when it promulgated its air quality permitting program rules for pollutants “subject to regulation” in 1993, that Texas really meant to define the term “subject to regulation” as set forth in the dozens of paragraphs and sub-paragraphs of EPA Rule 51.166, first promulgated in 2010.

TCEQ Rule 116.12 was last amended in 2006. It “adopts” the Clean Air Act “by reference” — but only as the Act existed at the time of adoption. To adopt subsequent changes made by EPA, TCEQ would have to amend Rule 116.2 through a formal rulemaking process. Adopting such changes by mere act of “interpretation” would delegate more authority to EPA than the Texas Constitution allows.  

In addition, the Texas officials argue, “TCEQ is also precluded from adopting EPA’s newly-minted definition of “subject to regulation” by the “express terms of the Texas Government Code, which requires public notice of agency rulemaking.” They explain:

When the TECQ promulgated Rule 116.12 in 1993, or even when it last amended the rule in 2006, it had no intention of enacting a permitting program for greenhouse gases. Consequently, TCEQ had no reason to (nor did it) give public notice of any such intent. Obviously, Texans concerned with greenhouse gas permitting could not have known to participate and comment on the decision to require permits for pollutants “subject to regulation” in 2006, when the EPA first discovered greenhouse gases were “subject to regulation” in 2010. It should go without saying that the nearly infinite expansion of Texas’ permitting programs to include greenhouse gases with no state-level rulemaking at all would not satisfy Texas or federal law requiring notice and an opportunity to be heard.

Of course, one could say that the whole point of the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which pushed the agency to issue an endangerment rule, and the ensuing cascade of CO2 controls was to bypass the democratic process and confront the public with regulatory fait accompli.

Another Bite at the Apple?

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. If Texas sticks to its guns, EPA may simply take over the Texas PSD program, in whole or in part, through a federally-imposed Federal Implementation Plan (FIP). Florida, for example, told EPA it could not make the regulatory changes in time, so EPA would just have to take over the Florida program. EPA reportedly is working on a “backstop rule” authorizing the agency to take over State permitting of greenhouse gases on a temporary basis (Environmental NewsStand, August 5, 2010, subscription required).

However, what if Texas still refuses to cooperate? Would EPA sue? Such a case might work its way up to the Supremes. The Court might then have to face the core issue it ducked in Mass. v. EPA – whether Congress intended for EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act as a whole, including PSD, Title V, and the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) program. The Court would have an opportunity to reconsider Mass. v. EPA in light of the absurd results to which it has led. A long shot — but a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Moveon.Org’s Disinformation Smear Campaign

by Marlo Lewis on February 11, 2010 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

Moveon.Org is running a series of TV ads accusing Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NB), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) of “working to roll back the Clean Air Act.” The ads tell the Senators to “Leave it [the Clean Air Act] alone,” because “Many Americans are already smoking the equivalent of a pack a day just from breathing the air.”

As I show here, Moveon’s attack ads are a triple whopper, piling falsehood upon falsehood upon falsehood.

(1) The Senators are not working to roll back the Clean Air Act. Rather, they are working to stop non-elected bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges from ‘enacting’ climate policies not authorized by the people’s elected representatives. It is the Senators’ defense of regulatory accountability — of democracy — that Moveon vilifies.

(2) Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions do not form smog or soot, history demonstrates that we don’t need CO2 controls to clean the air, and EPA currently does not regulate CO2 emissions. Hence, it’s complete bunk that stopping EPA from setting climate policy for the nation ‘rolls back’ the Clean Air Act.  

(3) No American smokes the equivalent of a pack a day, or even one cigarette a day, just from breathing the air. Pope et al. (2009), a study published by the American Heart Association, finds that a pack-a-day smoker gets a daily dose of 140 to 240 milligrams of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), whereas a non-smoker living in a city with high PM2.5 levels inhales 0.44 to 0.56 milligrams per day. The pack-a-day smoker’s dose is hundreds of times greater. In fact, smoking just one cigarette delivers roughly 12 to 27 times as much PM2.5 into the lungs as does breathing the air in a city with high PM2.5 levels.

Moveon should promptly do three things: (1) Apologize to Sens. Lincoln, Nelson, and Landrieu for subjecting them to a smear campaign. (2) Apologize to their members for peddling disinformation. (3) Return every penny to anyone whom the ads angered or frightened into making a financial contribution.

Is “several degrees” of warming “virtually certain,” as NASA claims?

by Marlo Lewis on December 17, 2009 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

Earlier this week, at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, NASA unveiled new data on atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), notably carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor, from its Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) unit on the agency’s Aqua spacecraft. NASA touted two main findings as “breakthroughs” in GHG research.

One supposed breakthrough is the discovery that CO2 is not “well-mixed” through the global troposphere (mid-level atmosphere), but is actually “lumpy” — distributed in higher concentrations in two “belts” circling the globe, especially in Northern hemisphere, which is more heavily industrialized. Now, I suppose this is a breakthrough in the sense that it will allow researchers to improve CO2 “transport models,” which hitherto have assumed that CO2 concentrations are uniform throughout the troposphere. But it would be surprising indeed if scientists did not know until now that industrialized regions have higher CO2 levels than non-industrialized areas.

The second supposed breakthrough is the claim that the AIRS data remove “most of the uncertainty about the role of water vapor [feedback]” in climate change.  “AIRS temperature data have corroborated climate model predictions that the warming of our climate produced as carbon dioxide levels rise will be greatly exacerbated — in fact, more than doubled — by water vapor,” said climate scientist Andrew Dressler of Texas A&M University. According to Dressler, “We are virtually certain to see Earth’s climate warm by several degrees Celsius in the next century, unless some strong negative feedback mechanism emerges elsewhere in the Earth’s climate system.” Dressler is talking about the assumption, common to all IPCC climate models, that the initial warming from rising CO2 levels increases concentrations of the atmosphere’s main greenhouse gas, water vapor, trapping more outgoing longwave (heat or infrared) radiation (OLR) and increasing global average rainfall.

William Gray of Colorado State University, perhaps the world’s leading hurricane forecaster, offers a different perspective on the NASA water vapor data. Gray’s comment follows:

I have just heard that NASA has a new satellite in orbit that can directly measure CO2 content in the atmosphere and that these new measurements are beginning to show that there is a positive association between increased rainfall (from higher CO2 gas amounts) and Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) suppression. This is to be expected in and around the areas of precipitation — but not necessarily in global areas surrounding precipitation where return flow mass subsidence is driving the water vapor radiation emission level to a lower and somewhat warmer temperature.

I and a colleague, Barry Schwartz, have been analyzing 21 years (1984-2004) of ISCCP (International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project) outgoing longwave radiation on various space scales as related to precipitation differences. We have investigated how OLR changes with variations in precipitation from NOAA reanalysis data on time scales from 3 hours, a day, a month, and up to a year scale.

We find that on a small space scale where rainfall is occurring OLR is greatly suppressed. But on the larger regional to global scales, OLR rises with increasing precipitation. This is due to increased return flow subsidence in the surrounding cloud free and partly cloudy areas. Globally, we are finding that net OLR increases with net increased amounts of global precipitation. This is the opposite of what most GCMs [general circulation models] have programmed into their models and, if I’m interpreting the new NASA announcement correctly, opposite to what they are currently reporting to the media.

Dr. Gray presents a more detailed examination of these issues in his March 2009 Heartland Institute climate conference paper, available here.

Following the scientific method: an example

by Fran Smith on December 2, 2009

in Environment, Global Warming, International, Natural Resources, Sanctimony

Experiments in science that don’t reinforce scientists’ hypotheses can be vitally important in understanding complex systems. Serious scientists don’t fudge the results or hide the data.

Here’s a recent example of a global warming study to show the effects of CO2-caused ocean acidification on the shells of crustaceans.  Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) found that, contrary to their expectations, many of the crustaceans built tougher shells in waters that were more acidified from higher levels of CO2.

According to the press release,

“We were surprised that some organisms didn’t behave in the way we expected under elevated CO2,” said Anne L. Cohen, a research specialist at WHOI and one of the study’s co-authors. “What was really interesting was that some of the creatures, the coral, the hard clam and the lobster, for example, didn’t seem to care about CO2 until it was higher than about 1,000 parts per million [ppm].” Current atmospheric CO2 levels are about 380 ppm, she said. Above this level, calcification was reduced in the coral and the hard clam, but elevated in the lobster.

The “take-home message, “says Cohen, is that “we can’t assume that elevated CO2 causes a proportionate decline in calcification of all calcifying organisms.” WHOI and the National Science Foundation funded the work.

Sounds like a useful project to add to the knowledge about CO2′s effects. Also, sounds like they’re following the scientific method.

H/T Julian Morris on Facebook

Why does recycled paper make such crappy toilet paper?

by Michael Fumento on October 1, 2009

in Environment, Global Warming

“I remember the importance of toilet paper while being shelled a few times, a couple of times while on the throne. I don’t understand why they can’t do re-cycled AND fluffy. Why are they exclusive?”

122 mm shell
One 122 mm mortar round can ruin that beautiful experience on the throne.

That’s from an officer I befriended at Camp Corregidor in Ramadi, Iraq, where it rained shells so often we had to wear body armor at all times outside of fortified buildings. He saw my blog “Enviros want to wipe out soft toilet paper!” concerning the greens wanting us to use recycled toilet paper instead of the softer kind from older – but not “old growth” – trees. Older trees are better carbon sinks, meaning better at soaking up CO2.

It’s all about fiber length. Longer fibers mean fewer knots and it’s those knots you feel, whether in TP or in your bedsheets or in clothes – albeit not in Army uniforms, which are part polyester anyway.

That’s why Egyptian cotton is the best, because it has the longest fibers. Recycled paper products inherently have fiber of short length, hence lots of knots. Not so important when you’re writing on it, but rather more so when wiping with it and – although I personally haven’t had the experience – doing so with 122 mm rounds dropping around your throne.

Enviros trying to wipe out soft toilet paper!

by Michael Fumento on September 27, 2009

in Environment, Global Warming

Okay, this time they’ve gone too far!

Now, says the Washington Post, environmentalists are trying to wipe out plush toilet paper!

They say that’s because plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made from older trees – though not what’s defined as “old growth” by any means. And older trees, they say, are better for absorbing carbon dioxide and thereby slowing global warming.

(Have you noticed that there’s nothing that can’t be tied into global warming?)

They want us Americans to wipe with the same stuff Europeans use, made from recycled paper goods.

Well, I’ve been to Europe a lot and while I’m no xenophobe I must say their toilet paper is just one grade above sandpaper. No, ifs, ands, or butts about it.

They’ll get my soft toilet paper when they pry it from my cold dead hands!

(Though I really don’t want to be found dead sitting on “the throne” . . . )

Carbon dioxide by any other name would fertilize as well: Myron Ebell quoted in Climatewire

by Marlo Lewis on September 23, 2009 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

Today’s ClimateWire (subscription required) carries an analysis by reporter Lauren Morello that begins:

Say goodbye to “greenhouse gases.” Say hello to “carbon pollution” and ”heat-trapping gases.”  

Morello observes a shift in the vocabulary U.S. government officials are using to talk about global warming — a change much in evidence in President Obama’s climate speech yesterday at the U.N.

Obama officials increasingly avoid the non-pejorative (although somewhat metaphorical) term “greenhouse gas” to describe carbon dioxide and instead refer to “carbon pollution” and “heat-trapping gases.”

Morello quotes NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco’s explanation that these terms are emphasized to “make what’s happening more understandable and more accessible to non-technical audiences.”

Fortunately, she also quotes CEI’s Myron Ebell, who cuts to the chase: “The cleverest thing that the global warming alarmists have done is to categorize carbon dioxide emissions as pollution, because it’s not true.”

The Obama administration’s shift to this terminology is actually way behind the green bamboozle curve. Al Gore repeatedly called carbon dioxide “global warming pollution” in his 2006 film and book, An Inconvenient Truth. Major environmental groups have been denouncing “greenhouse pollution” and “global warming pollution” for years.

The Supreme Court takes the cake, however, deciding in Massachusetts v. EPA (April 2007) that carbon dioxide is an “air pollutant” merely by virtue of the fact that it is “emitted into” the air. By that logic, even zero-pollution, completely clean air is an “air pollutant,” provided it is “emitted.”

This sort of terminological confusion is not harmless. By defining CO2 as an “air pollutant” merely because it is “emitted,” the Court set the stage for a gigantic regulatory chain reaction under the Clean Air Act that could easily dwarf Waxman-Markey and the Kyoto Protocol in cost and scope, as I explain here.

If Lubchenco really wants to demystify the climate debate, she might start by describing CO2 more accurately. Here’s my pick: ”a plant-fertilizing, biosphere-greening, colorless, odorless, non-polluting, trace gas.”

Obama Speech to the UN: The Data

by Iain Murray on September 22, 2009 · 2 comments

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, International, Regulation

Myron has already pointed out how most of what the President claimed were the threats from global warming are exaggerated.  Here’s the data to back that up.

“…[T]he threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing.”  Reality: global mean temperatures increased slightly from 1977 to 2000.  Temperatures have been flat since then.

“Rising sea levels threaten every coastline.”  Reality: sea levels have been rising on and off since the end of the last ice age 13,000 years ago.  The rate of sea level rise has not increased in recent decades over the nineteenth and twentieth century average.

iain1

iain2

“More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.”  Reality: there is no upward global trend in storms or floods.

iain3iain4

“More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive.”  Reality: there is no upward global trend in major droughts.  Reversals in large-scale cycles have meant that the southward march of the Sahara Desert into the Sahel has been reversed in recent years and the Sahara is now shrinking.

“On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees.”  Reality: some Pacific islanders may want to emigrate to New Zealand or Australia and are claiming that their islands are disappearing as the reason, but shrinkage has been minimal in recent decades because sea level rise has been minimal.

droughts-atollsCharts from SPPI’s Monthly CO2 Reports and from Indur Goklany, “Death and Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events: Global and U.S. Trends, 1900–2006,” 2007.

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