Updated 10/16/09

Today [Oct. 15, 2009], Rep. Darrell Isa (R-CA), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, ranking member of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, released a joint minority staff report titled, The Politics of EPA’s Endangerment Finding.

I’ll say more about the report after reading the 146-page document. Key findings include:

EPA prejudged the outcome of its endangerment finding to advance the Obama administration’s policy agenda.
EPA’s effort to control greenhouse gas emissions…

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Last week I posted several excerpts from EPA’s “Tailoring Rule,” which confirm that the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. EPA (April 2007), set the stage for an economically ruinous administrative quagmire.

To reiterate:

EPA, in response to Mass v. EPA, proposes to establish greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles.
Once those standards are adopted, carbon dioxide (CO2) automatically becomes a “pollutant subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits…

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Updated at 10/1/09 4:47 PM

I’ve just begun reading EPA’s proposed Tailoring Rule to establish a new 25,000 tons per year (TPY) ”major stationary source” applicability threshold for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program. I’ll blog about this again later on, but for now I just want to say, “We told ya so!”

Attorney Peter Glaser, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, CEI and a host of other free market groups warned…

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In today’s New York Times, John Broder strains to belittle Alan Carlin, the “whistle blower” whose skeptical comments on EPA’s proposed endangerment finding the Agency tried to suppress. Most of the piece is larded with innuendo and spin.

Below is the text of Broder’s article and my running commentary in bold italics.

Behind the Furor Over a Climate Change Skeptic
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon…

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In “The Dog Ate Global Warming,” published yesterday in National Review Online, Cato Institute scholar and climatologist Patrick J. Michaels delivers a body blow to the “science is settled” dogma.

There are three core issues in climate change science: detection (Is it warming, and if so by how much); attribution (What’s causing the warming we observe?); and, sensitivity (How much warming will a given increase in greenhouse gas concentrations produce?). As I argue in a previous post, all of these issues remain unsettled, and more so…

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Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a draft proposed rule to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that would exempt small emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2) from Clean Air Act (CAA) pre-construction permitting requirement, Greenwire reports.

The proposed rule, as described in Greenwire, is blatantly illegal. It is a tacit admission that the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA set the stage for an economic disaster. It is additional evidence that Mass v. EPA was wrongly decided. It confirms CEI’s…

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This week, CEI criticized Consumer Reports for reporting a high-performing shower head to federal authorities-not because it is defective or fraudulently advertised, but because it exceeds government limits on shower head water flow.  CEI General Counsel, Sam Kazman had this to say about the review:

“Consumer Reports has it backwards, [...]Its duty is to consumers, not bureaucrats. It should not be acting as a nosy bathroom cop, trying to toss good products in the slammer just because they violate some intrusive federal…

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Following a whistleblower report that criticized a global warming rule, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reportedly considering shutting down the agency office in which the critical report originated.  Dr. Alan Carlin, the senior analyst whose report EPA unsuccessfully tried to bury, worked in EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE).  According to a story in last Friday’s Inside EPA, the agency is now considering shutting that office down.

The Washington Times ran an editorial yesterday, critical of the potential shut down…

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Is global warming making hurricanes more destructive? Did global warming contribute to the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina? Would Kyoto-style energy rationing help avert future weather-related catastrophes?

Well, just ask Al Gore! In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore claims there’s a “strong new emerging consensus” that global warming is increasing the duration and intensity of hurricanes (AIT, p. 81), he depicts New Orleans as a global warming victim (pp. 94-95), and the threat of increasingly powerful storms is a major part of the alleged “climate crisis” that Gore…

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In a piece in today’s State Journal-Register, noted economist and commentator Walter Williams asks: “Why the rush to OK ‘cap and trade’ in the Senate?”  He addresses the major push now under way to pass the Waxman-Markey climate legislation through the Senate since it passed the House a couple of weeks ago.  In this quote he lays exactly what is at stake with this issue:

“Cap and trade” is first a massive indirect tax on the American people and hence another source of revenue…

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Over at Science Progress, a web magazine published by the Center for American Progress, former USDA biotech regulator Val Giddings and U. of Illinois microbiologist Bruce Chassy offer the Obama Administration a well-reasoned and scientifically-sound blueprint for reforming the irrational and burdensome regulation of biotech crops.  They write:

In summary, biotechnology applied to agriculture has enormous potential to enhance our ability to develop seeds for improved crops and for enhanced livestock to enable us to meet the food, feed and fiber challenges of…

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In this insightful, informative post, Keith Hennessey, formerly the senior economic advisor to President G.W. Bush, cautions that Obama’s new fuel economy rules could destroy 50,000 auto industry jobs. Yet the rules would have no detectable impact on projected global temperatures or sea level rise–all pain for no gain.

In addition, Hennessey notes that Obama’s action “will accelerate EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources.” He continues: “While Congress is futzing around on a climate change bill, EPA is getting ready to bring their “PSD”…

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At some point today, the EPA and the Department of Transportation (DOT) will propose a first-ever joint regulation to establish first-ever greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. The new standards, covering model years 2012-2016, will raise federal fuel economy standards to 35.5 mpg in 2016.

This is considerably more stringent than the standard Congress adopted in the December 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), which would boost average fuel economy to 35 mpg by 2020.

This is bad news for three…

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An 82-year-old Australian grandmother says she is prepared to go to jail rather than pay a A$1-million (US$731,000) bill to clean up toxic chemicals spilled by her tenant.

Opposition spokesman for the environment David Davis described the EPA [Environmental Protection Authority] as a ramshackle organisation that needed to be overhauled.

He said toxic waste was leaking from the barrels and presented a risk to the local community of the light industrial area.

“Because of the EPA’s failure to act at an early point, failure…

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Tucked into the EPA budget proposal the Obama administration revealed yesterdays are plans to reinstate the Superfund taxes which expired in 1995 as a way to partially offset the $2.7 billion in increased spending at the EPA.  The administration estimates that the taxes will generate more than $1 billion per year.

The original Superfund taxes were actually three different taxes, a petroleum tax of 9.7 cents per barrel, a tax on chemical feedstocks, and a so called Corporate Environmental Income Tax…

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This week, host Cord Blomquist and co-host William Yeatman, along with guest commentator Ryan Young (Richard Morrison is off this week) take a whiff of the bank nationalizations floating through the air, and say they stink. Sen. Chris Dodd’s dodgy dealings in real estate come under scrutiny. Rep. John Murtha has a few multi-million dollar skeletons hiding in his own, heavily gilded, closet. Climate czar Carol Browner declares war on the economy. While favoring immigration in general, our hosts question…

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Earlier this week, in a letter to Sierra Club climate council David Bookbinder, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the Agency would reconsider, via a notice-and-comment rulemaking, a Bush-EPA memorandum interpreting regulations that determine whether carbon dioxide (CO₂) is currently subject to emission controls under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program.

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A front-burner issue facing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson is whether to grant a waiver under the Clean Air Act allowing the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to implement first-ever greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. Thirteen other states are poised to adopt the CARB program if Jackson grants the waiver. In all, about 40% of the U.S. auto market would come under the CARB rules.

Jackson’s predecessor, Stephen Johnson, rejected CARB’s application  in December 2007.  His reasons,…

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In a letter dated 5 February 2009, 17 state attorneys general (AGs) plus three other non-federal officials urge EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to respond to the Supreme Court case of Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) by issuing a finding that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to “air pollution” that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare.

To explain why EPA should make an endangerment finding, the AGs quote from EPA’s July 2008 Advanced Notice…

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On Tuesday (Feb. 10), USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack urged EPA to increase the quantity of ethanol blended into gasoline from the current amount–10% ethanol per gallon–to some higher percentage, Reuters reports.

Will EPA heed Vilsack’s request or heed the clear implication of www.fueleconomy.gov, a Web site EPA administers jointly with the Department of Energy?

The EPA/DOE Web site reveals that filling up with ethanol is a big fat money-loser. To see for yourself, click on “Flex-Fuel Vehicles,” then click on “Fuel Economy Information…

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