The U.S. delegation will include a large number of Cabinet-level (in the language of international diplomacy, “ministerial level”) officials. U.S. delegates “will keynote a series of events highlighting actions by the Obama Administration to provide domestic and global leadership in the transition to a clean energy economy.” The following keynote events and speakers are currently scheduled:

– Wednesday, December 9th: Taking Action at Home, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson
– Thursday, December 10th: New Energy Future: the role of public lands in clean energy production and carbon capture, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar
– Friday, December 11th: Clean Energy Jobs in a Global Marketplace, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke
– Monday, December 14th: Leading in Energy Efficiency and Renewables, Energy Secretary Steven Chu
– Tuesday, December 15th: Clean Energy Investments: creating opportunities for rural economies, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
– Thursday, December 17th: Backing Up International Agreement with Domestic Action, Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley and Assistant to the President Carol Browner

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose envoy Todd Stern is in charge of U.S. climate negotiations, was not part of the announcements.

You can’t read these e-mails and feel that the IPCC’s or the major climate scientists’ findings and predictions about global warming are kosher. You can’t. They may be, but if you read these you have to have a whole lot of skepticism about that. And of course, coming into Copenhagen these are going to have a big effect how the world looks at you. They’re going to say, “Wait a minute. You say these climate scientists have been telling us we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow?”

Watch it:

By asking whether “we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow,” Dubner — a top blogger for the New York Times — gets to the heart of why this bizarre theory of a cabal of all-powerful climatologists is getting support from conservative media and politicians. The incontrovertible science — based not on manipulated data but on decades of basic research — is that the burning of fossil fuels is drastically reshaping our planet’s climate, melting the glaciers, and acidifying the oceans. And the only known way to restore conditions to those safe for human civilization is to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels. Doing so, however, would affect the incredible profits and power of the oil and coal industries, and of their ideological allies.

One of the scientists, for example, who is “telling us we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow” is Ken Caldeira, who Dubner and Levitt falsely portray in their book as a supporter of their mindless contrarianism. Is Dubner now accusing Caldeira of being part of this conspiracy?

Dubner continues:

But the point is this: carbon mitigation as a plan to stop global warming — even if you devoutly believe that global warming is the biggest problem we ever faced — won’t work.

This is an even more radical claim than what’s in SuperFreakonomics, in which Dubner and co-author Steven Levitt merely argue — based on flawed logic and falsehoods — that carbon mitigation would be ruinously expensive and difficult.

In fact, if we stop treating our atmosphere like a sewer, the climate system will heal itself over time, potentially more rapidly than we expect. That our past inaction will continue to bear consequences into the future is a reason to act with greater swiftness, not to dither further. The longer we delay, the more difficult and expensive the challenge to reduce pollution while adapting to a hostile world becomes.

Transcript:

DAVID ASMAN: All right, we’re talking about Superfreaks, if you recognize the song.

Well, politicians distort the truth all the time, but scientists are not supposed to do that. Still, it does happen. Stalin used to demand results from scientists that weren’t supported by evence — evidence, and of course Hitler did the same. But surely, we are above that, aren’t we? Well, “It can’t happen here,” as many people have said, but apparently it has.

New e-mails from global warming theorists appear to show that they have been covering up evidence that the earth isn’t warming as much as they thought it was. In fact, it might actually be cooling a bit. Furthermore, there’s not as much evidence that man is responsible for climate change as has been claimed by Al Gore and others. But the evidence for that too has been distorted. Shocking allegations that could affect discussions at the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen. For details of how it all shakes out let’s turn to the coauthor of the super-bestselling book SuperFreakonomics, Stephen Dubner. Stephen, great to see you.

STEPHEN DUBNER: Thank you.

ASMAN: Thank you for being here. Let’s just read one of the e-mails that was discovered as a result of this great detective work on the part of . . . If we can put up b 13 e-mail. This was an e-mail from Kevin Trenberth, he’s a climatologist at the National Center for Climate Research, they believe in global warming quite a bit. He says, “The fact is we cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Now, it’s because of e-mails like this that suspicions have begun to mount that maybe they buried evidence suggesting that global warming didn’t fit the computer models. What do you think?

DUBNER: Let me start by saying the e-mails were hacked. Just so we know. So someone either wanted to get in there because they knew there was something that should be read. Or maybe there’s a whistle-blower. At this point we just don’t know. All these e-mails and other documents got released and what it seems to show is, what your e-mail shows — first of all you’ll find out how i feel about this issue — but just for the sake of devil’s advocacy for a moment. It is tough to say from one e-mail or 10 e-mail what is really going on. What seems to be going on, however, if you read these e-mails there is a group of scientists who supported each other’s work that reported to the IPCC, and formed the basis . . .

ASMAN: That organization is that United Nations organization that believes we should be . . .

DUBNER: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

ASMAN: . . . massively getting government involved in stopping global warming.

DUBNER: right. What you’ve got is a group of scientists who have very potent really at telling this UN body how it wants to tell governments around the world to deal with climate, to deal with carbon, to deal with energy, and so on. And it seems as though these guys are colluding among each other to a) make their findings be right for their position but b) even more troubling if you’re a scientist or a fan of science is to keep out the dissenters. So, you can say anything you want about scientists wanting to advocate for what they think is right, but when you’re dealing with peer-reviewed journals and the guys who publish in these journals having the podium to tell Al Gore what to say, to tell the UN what to say, and those guys are keeping out dissenters, and they’re working with federal tax money.

ASMAN: But we know Al Gore is trying to keep out dissenters. He has refused to debate anybody on the issue. And there’s some real distinguished scientists who don’t believe in global warming.

DUBNER: It’s true. We make the points in in SuperFreakonomics, a few basic points about global warming. The models that seem to predict calamity are . . .

ASMAN: The computer models that a lot of the policy that the UN advocates are based on.

DUBNER: . . . are a) full of uncertainty. Predicting the future in any realm is hard —

ASMAN: I thought you were going say they’re full of something else.

DUBNER: Well, I’ll let you fill in that blank. They seem to conform quite a bit. There seems to be what a lot of scientists like to call the “consensus.” The problem is there are other scientists who argue this consensus is really false. And what it represents is everybody’s scared to be an outlier, everybody’s scared to be a skeptic, because they won’t get funding unless they produce research that kind of supports the uh, the global –

ASMAN: Bottom line, we’ve got to cut to the chase. Who do you think is doing what to the evidence? Do you think that supporters of global warming and the UN are distorting evidence to prove their point?

DUBNER: Distorting evidence, probably yes. To what degree with don’t really know yet. We’re going to find out a lot more about that. Here’s what I think.

ASMAN: But doesn’t to any degree discredit their theories?

DUBNER: Yeah. You can’t —

ASMAN: If something has been made up you can’t rely on anything else.

DUBNER: You can’t read these e-mails and feel that the IPCC or the major climate scientists’ findings and predictions about global warming are kosher. You can’t. They may be, but if you read these you have to have a whole lot of skepticism about that. And of course, coming into Copenhagen these are going to have a big effect how the world looks at you. They’re going to say, “Wait a minute. You say these climate scientists have been telling us we have to stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow?”

ASMAN: Particularly in light of the fact we are on the cusp of spending a trillion dollars in a cap-and-trade program that the House has already approved here. Most Americans are already questioning this, but in light of these e-mail memos show the computer models wrong we don’t want to spend a trillion dollars for that.

DUBNER: In Superfreakonomics we say that, but then we go a step farther and say even if you cut all of your carbon, even if — we could go to a zero carbon society overnight which of course is impossible — it’s probably not going address warming, if indeed warming is bad enough to worry about. The reason why carbon dioxide turns out to not be the thing, perhaps, we should worry about most in terms of warming.

ASMAN: the thing that’s worse than car exhaust is?

DUBNER: Well, we write about ruminants, believe it or not.

ASMAN: You write about cows! Let’s just put it up on here, the exhalation and flatulence and belching with manure emit methane — put that up on the screen, which by one common measure 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide released by cars.

DUBNER: This is true. So if you want save the planet, you gotta either, you know, you gotta learn to love the kangaroo, eat the kangaroo. The kangaroo does not emit methane.

ASMAN: Let me get that — kangaroo. Forgive me everybody. Hide the kids, cover the kids’ ears, kangaroo farts don’t have methane?

DUBNER: They’re clean. It has to do with the bacterial . . . What Australian scientists are trying to say if cows emit all of this methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and kangaroos don’t, if we can’t get people to eat kangaroos, what if we could transfer the digestive bacteria from cow’s — from kangaroo’s stomachs into cows and make them, you know, methane free.

But the point is this: carbon mitigation as a plan to stop global warming — even if you devoutly believe that global warming is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced — won’t work. It won’t work because it’s too little, it’s too late, and it’s too optimistic. It’s also very expensive. It also depends on governments and people around the world to change their behavior when it goes against their economic self-interest.

ASMAN: If we all became vegetarians, we could do a lot more for releasing these gases . . .

DUBNER: Than driving a Prius, for instance. If driving a Prius makes you feel good absolutely but if you drive the Prius to the supermarket to buy some hamburger you’re canceling yourself out many times over.

ASMAN: Many, many facts such as these are to be had in SuperFreakonomics. You and your coauthor Steven Levitt. By the way, top of the charts now, right?

DUBNER: We’re doing all right.

ASMAN: You’re selling it well. It’s a great stocking stuffer. Thank you very much for being here.

Much of what is being said is speculation at this juncture, as a great many folk are working to mine through the emails. However, the CRU has made public that they were indeed hacked and much of the information appears to already be confirmed as legitimate. If so, this could well be the greatest act of scientific fraud in history (it will take a while to calculate the total amount of grant money achieved by fraud and the cost of climate change legislation “Cap-and-Trade” could have been in the $ trillions). Accordingly, nearly all of the international data and models supporting the theory of global warming would have been influenced by data corruption and fraud…with the blatant attempt to perpetuate the political agenda of global warming supporters and the UN IPCC.

It is, of course, the likes of Zumwalt and other right-wing defenders of a pollution-based economy that are the actual “global warming supporters.” Sen. Vitter, whose career was tarnished by the revelation he used prostitutes, is one of several Republican senators who deny the reality of manmade climate change, despite the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Coincidentally, Vitter is a strong ally of Lousiana’s oil and gas industry, which faces regulation under climate legislation.

Zumwalt’s conspiracy theory, sent this morning and addressed to “friends,” includes the Fourth Estate. He writes that the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin — who wrote a front page story sympathetic to the rabid claims of conspiracy — “was mentioned in some of these emails as one of the people in the press they use, so his motives are questionable.”

Zumwalt even offers a top-ten list of the climate scientists’ supposed crimes:

1. Suppression of Data

2. Destruction of data subject to FOIA requests

3. Organized subversion of the peer-review process

4. Coordinated efforts with media outlets

5. Blacklisting of scientific journals for political reasons

6. Blatant scientific fraud and misrepresentation of data

7. Manipulation of data for the UN/WTO’s political agenda

8. Strategies for tax evasion

9. Deceit of International and U.S. agencies for funding and grants

10. And much more…

Zumwalt recommends recipients learn more about the “coordinated effort to achieve the IPCC agenda” by searching for blogs using the keywords “Hadley, hacked, global warming, email, fraud.”

As a side note, Zumwalt’s email contains several basic errors of fact, evidently copied from right-wing blogs. He incorrectly calls the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit the “UN IPCC’s Climate Research Unit,” “also known as Hadley.” Similarly, he incorrectly says the “I” in IPCC stands for “International,” not “Intergovernmental.” These errors, while minor, are consistent with the disdain the Climategate conspiracy theorists have for reality.

Download the Vitter staffer’s “ClimateGate” email here.

— “If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW,” says the Telegraph’s James Delingpole.

– Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey claims the emails discuss “repetitive, false data of higher temperatures.”

– The National Review’s Chris Horner salivates, “The blue-dress moment may have arrived.”

– “The crimes revealed in the e-mails promise to be the global warming scandal of the century,” blares Michelle Malkin.

– The Australia Herald-Sun’s Andrew Bolt claims the emails are “proof of a conspiracy which is one of the largest, most extraordinary and most disgraceful in moderrn [sic] science.”

Evidently due to this e-mail conspiracy, Arctic sea ice is at historically low levels, Australia is on fire, the northern United Kingdom is underwater, and the world’s glaciers are disappearing. Oh yeah, and it’s the hottest decade in history.

Following the endorsement of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) Wednesday for her campaign to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina questioned the science of climate change. Boxer, as the chair of the Senate environment committee, is the chamber’s leading advocate for action to create jobs, make America more energy independent, and cut global warming pollution. Ranking environment committee member Inhofe — “Senator Climate Change Denier” — led a failed boycott of Boxer’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733). After news of Inhofe’s endorsement of Fiorina came out, a reporter asked whether she believes in global warming. Fiorina admitted she is skeptical about climate science:

I think we should have the courage to examine the science on an ongoing basis.

Fiorina’s refusal to recognize the science of climate change and her belief that cap and trade legislation “will kill jobs” puts her in opposition to California’s business and political leadership.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), the leader of the California Republican Party, recently noted that California is “already experiencing” the devastating impacts of global warming:

In California, we are already experiencing rising sea levels eroding our coastal infrastructure, reduced snow pack in the Sierra leading to prolonged droughts and more conflict over water, drier forests suffering more frequent and ferocious forest fires, and worsening smog-related public health threats and crop damage. The implications for our state if these trends continue are simply staggering.

Fiorini’s opposition to binding reductions of global warming pollution will make it very difficult to encourage innovation and create jobs, accord to her Silicon Valley neighbor, venture capitalist John Doerr, who testified in July that the United States “must put a price on carbon and a cap on carbon emissions” because “no long-term signal means no serious innovation at scale, which means fewer new American success stories.”

On the same day he endorsed Fiorina, Inhofe “proudly” declared in a speech on the Senate floor that 2009 is “the Year of the Skeptic.”

If only we could have changed the weather. We hope Mother Nature is nicer to us next year, hopefully delivering less rain and more sunshine.

In addition, waffles are on the hit list, as supplies of Eggos are disappearing. “Heavy rains that soaked Atlanta last month knocked out Kellogg’s waffle operations,” ABC News reported on Tuesday. September’s epic flooding actually exacerbated a shutdown caused by an earlier virulent outbreak of the deadly bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. Kellogg’s initially only referred to the food poisoning threat as “equipment issues,” preferring to let global boiling take the blame.

Unfortunately, we have changed the weather.

“2009 continues to climb up the rainiest-years-ever chart” in Illinois. This year’s rainfall in Peoria of 49.34 inches — 50 percent above normal — has already exceeded the total of 2008, itself 25 percent above normal. With only six more inches of precipitation, 2009 will break the record rainfall set in 1990.

Similarly, the September 21st flood in Atlanta, Georgia “was worse than what’s statistically projected to happen once every 100 years — even worse than every 500 years.” It was “extremely rare”, “epic” and so “stunning”, the U.S. Geological Survey says the “flood has defied its attempts to define it.”

This kind of extreme precipitation is part of the changes to our climate wrought by global warming, which increases the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold and changes circulation patterns. As the U.S. Global Change Program reported in June, 2009 on the impacts of climate change in the Midwest and the Southeast:

– In the Midwest, both summer and winter precipitation have been above average for the last three decades, the wettest period in a century. The Midwest has experienced two record-breaking floods in the past 15 years.

– According to climate models, precipitation in the Midwest is projected to increase in winter and spring, and to become more intense throughout the year.

– In the Southeast, average autumn precipitation has increased by 30 percent for the region since 1901. There has been an increase in heavy downpours in many parts of the region.

In terms of the biggest result, I’d say is: We argued that the movement to stop global warming has the feel of a religion. I think if anything we should strengthen that sentence, because what’s been issued here is essentially a fatwa for entertaining alternate theories.

Listen here:

A fatwa is an Islamic clerical legal ruling. Dubner is evidently alluding to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s twenty-year-old fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie, whose novel Satanic Verses was considered blasphemous by hardline Muslims. Rushdie has suffered assassination attempts and decades in seclusion. Translators of the book were stabbed, shot, and killed, and bookstores were firebombed.

Despite this supposed global warming “fatwa,” however, Dubner is heroically appearing all week on the Takeaway to flack his book, co-written with University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. The SuperFreakonomics authors have now enjoyed softball interviews from Charlie Rose, Jon Stewart, 20/20, the Guardian, the UK Telegraph, and others. The Diane Rehm Show did a much better job, bringing in IPCC lead author Peter Frumhoff to debunk their nonsense.

SuperFreakonomics has been edged out on the bestseller list by Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, and Glenn Beck’s Arguing with Idiots.

In its present form, I would not vote for it. I have some real questions about the real complexities on cap and trade.

Last year, Webb asserted that “we can’t just start with things like emission standards at a time when we’re at a crisis with the entire national energy policy.” Webb seems to be aligning himself strongly with Republicans who believe that climate change is not a real threat that requires significant reductions in emissions. Perhaps the veterans and military leaders that have mobilized in Operation Free should give him a few briefings.

The Alexander-Webb Clean Energy Act, by providing taxpayer subsidies for nuclear energy but no economic incentive to shift from carbon power or keep costs down, “could pave the way for the same kind of industry-wide meltdown that happened in the 1970s and 1980s.” Dr. Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, has found that “even with climate change policy looming, nuclear power cannot compete in the marketplace, so its advocates are forced to seek to prop it up by shifting costs and risks to ratepayers and taxpayers.”

The federal government has long played a prominent and productive role in the research and development of advanced new technologies, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission deserves increased funding. There are elements of the Webb-Alexander bill that would make sense as part of the Clean Energy Jobs Act. But the aging, capital-intensive, increasingly expensive nuclear industry is not ever going to be a driving source for new jobs. As standalone policy, this bill would simply raise economic and security risks for Americans for the benefit of bankers and polluters.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is trapped by the toxic coal-dominated politics of his struggling state. He seems to be hoping global warming will simply disappear over time, like Republicans who have called for delay after delay in action. “I’m totally unconcerned about Copenhagen,” Rockefeller told Politico, justifying his own calls for delay. “I’m concerned about West Virginia.”

Because of the dilatory tactics of Webb, Rockefeller, and other Democrats, Kerry and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are struggling to keep the consideration of green economy legislation on track. Kerry is now backing off his commitment to “providing the ‘framework’ of legislation before the Copenhagen meeting.” Reid has placed financial reform on the calendar before the Clean Energy Jobs Act, and is now calling for a “jobs creation bill” as well.

Unfortunately for unemployed Americans, the Senate continues to ignore the obvious — that strong climate legislation would reward companies for creating jobs instead of pollution.

I-i-i-i-it’s harder to know whether it’s man created. It’s always harder to know whether it’s some — you know, why something happened than whether it did. That’s not even our question.

Watch it:

Later during the interview Dubner attempted to justify the book’s claim that “carbon dioxide is not the right villain,” arguing that it was the decrease in sulfur dioxide and other pollutants that has caused global warming, rather than the accumulation of carbon dioxide.

This is of course utter nonsense — aerosols like sulfur dioxide certainly masked the heat-trapping effects of greenhouse gases, but global warming is caused by the greenhouse gases. If a methamphetamine addict is using alcohol to blunt the side effects of his meth habit, his hyperactivity isn’t due to a lack of binge drinking.

Dubner and Levitt’s quest to deny the reality of climate change and promote radical geoengineering to block the sun as a “sensible” alternative to reducing greenhouse gases is, as the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert writes, “horseshit.” Their strategy is like counseling the meth addict to become a full-blown alcoholic instead of reducing his drug use.

Despite Levitt’s argument that “it’s harder to know” whether global warming is “man created,” in reality the scientific evidence is clear and has been for years, according to the scientific organizations of the world:

American Association for the Advancement of Science: The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. [10/9/06]

U.S. Global Change Research Program: Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. [June 2009]

American Physical Society: Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes. The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now. [11/18/07]

American Meteorological Society: Despite the uncertainties noted above, there is adequate evidence from observations and interpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies, on economies, on ecosystems, and on wildlife through the 21st century and beyond. [2/1/07]

American Geophysical Union: The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century. . . . Evidence from most oceans and all continents except Antarctica shows warming attributable to human activities. [December 2007]

American Quaternary Association: Few credible scientists now doubt that humans have influenced the documented rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. [10/24/06]

The national science academies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa: It is essential that world leaders agree on the emission reductions needed to combat negative consequences of anthropogenic climate change at the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009. [May 2009]

Transcript:

DUBNER: We address topics in this book that are less trivial than the first book. We don’t write about sumo wrestlers we don’t write about baby names so much, even though it was fun. We’re writing about things like terrorism and like global warming and we try to bring to those topics a different way of looking at them, an economic approach. In other words, instead of looking at them on an emotional level or someone involved in those arenas might look at them — if you’re in the global warming industry you have interests to protect and you have an argument you want to make. And we try to look at it from the outside.

ROSE: And not everybody is thrilled at what you say about global warming.

LEVITT: Most of the people who aren’t thrilled about what we said about global warming aren’t talking about what we actually said. I mean what we said is not even very controversial. We’re not denying the earth has gotten warmer. It has gotten a lot warmer over the last one hundred years . . .

ROSE: And it’s man created.

LEVITT: I-i-i-i-it’s harder to know whether it’s man created. It’s always harder to know whether it’s some — you know, why something happened than whether it did. But that’s not our question. We say if the earth gets too hot or is too hot, what’s the best way to cool it down. And the conventional wisdom is to reduce carbon emissions drastically. That’s a reasonable solution, it could work, it has three problems. One, it’s incredibly expensive. I mean there’s a reason we produce and use a lot of fossil fuels, they’re cheap and they drive the economy. Trillions of dollars it will cost to switch the economy over. Number two, you need seven billion people to get together to coordinate if you want a solution to cut fossil fuels. Number three, even if we could do that, because carbon dioxide stays in the air so long, we’re looking at 50 years, 100 years before you start start to feel the full effects of it.

So, it seems like if you really think global warming is a terrible problem, you need a solution that’s faster, and that’s more certain, or easier to do. So, turns out geoengineering, extremely controversial but so sensible.

I mean, there are ideas out there that are cheap, they’re totally versible, totally reversible, which is incredibly important. You wouldn’t want to do anything that’s irreversible, because the science isn’t that certain. And they don’t require massive behavior change. We’re not saying we should go out tomorrow and build one of these machines say, to put sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, but what we are saying is, “How can that not that be part of the debate?” We’re just trying to give geoengineering a seat at the table, but the interests that are out there don’t want . . .

ROSE: So you put sulfur dioxide in the air, through hoses. This is Nathan Myhrvold, isn’t it?

LEVITT: Absolutely. Nathan Myhrvold is, has . . . it’s an old idea. A Nobel prize-winning environmentalist put it out a while ago. Nathan has the engineering solution that allows us to quickly and reliably do that for something like 20 million, 50 million dollars. Now compare that to the trillions of dollars we’re talking about on the old solution. Now, now, why not at least have that kind of solution ready in case, as an insurance policy, in case some kind of global catastrophe involving the Greenland ice shelf or something happens and we need to cool the earth down quickly.

ROSE: Explain how it would work.

LEVITT: It’s pretty straightforward.

ROSE: You pour sulfur dioxide in the air and it puts a shield.

LEVITT: Exactly. It puts a shield. Really, the science is based on what Mother Nature has been doing for eons, which is when there are big volcanic eruptions, among the other things that are spewed out is sulfur dioxide. And it sprays it so high it gets into the stratosphere. The key is that getting the sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere where it forms into this haze which reflects something like one to two percent of the sunlight. And that’s enough to cool the earth. And all you need to do is just have a steady flow of it. And if you can figure out a way to get it up there, Nathan’s idea and his compatriots is to just essentially build a glorified garden hose. They put one at the north pole and south pole. It sounds like scientific fiction, but they have the engineering solution. It wouldn’t be that hard. And if you don’t like it, you just turn the spigot off . . .

ROSE: And what did Paul Krugman say about this?

DUBNER: I don’t think Paul Krugman thought of that. he went off a paper Marty Weitzman wrote and Paul Krugman thought he caught us in a mistake, and I hate to say it, but he’s wrong. And at some point, you know, there’s so much fervor about this topic, part of the problem is . . .

ROSE: It’s like theology.

DUBNER: Well, it’s interesting you say that, Charlie, because, you know, it’s one of the many things a very small portion of kind of climate activists have objected to, is that we said, there’s a sentence, and I’m paraphrasing, but it’s something along the lines of, “The efforts to stop global warming have the characteristics of a religion.” There really are these kind of dogmatic principles, there are believers, there are heretics and so on. And we’ve seen that.

You know, um, the interesting thing is geo-engineering is a pretty broad subject, actually. The garden hose to the sky is probably the most frightening to the average person. Any of us would think, “You want to intentionally pollute?” Even though it is replicating a volcano.

But there are other solutions within that portfolio, some of which are as green as you could possibly hope to be — which is essentially creating higher reflectivity oceanic clouds by creating more cloud condensation nuclei. So, clouds cool the earth. They do a great job. They’re nature’s way of cooling the earth. Over the oceans there often aren’t as many because there aren’t enough nuclei.

So, one of Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures’ plans is to create an incredibly low-friction boats. They don’t even have an engine. And they just go around kicking up sea spray, salt spray that wafts into the air and forms more densely reflective clouds. That too is geo-engineering.

So the idea is this. That would cost — the three of us could chip in and buy one of those boats. I don’t know what you’re worth, more than us but it wouldn’t be that hard to do. But the point is that, like Levitt said, to get a seat at the table for these kind of ideas as opposed to this one route which we’re barrelling down as carbon mitigation as the only route doesn’t seem to be — seems we should be entertaining other possibilities.

. . .

DUBNER: Can I give one more example of the law of unintended consequences? The efforts to clean up the air in general and get heavy particulate pollution out of the air. All the sulfur, all the acid rain from coal plants and so on, in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.

It’s now thought — there are new studies, NASA, a bunch of scientists have been doing this — it’s now thought that removing the particles from the atmosphere is what’s led to the warming, in large part.

In other words, carbon dioxide may not be remotely as large a villain as many people fear, because what’s happened is that by being good environmental stewards and trying to clear up the air — we did clear up the air a lot, but all that junk in the air was blocking a degree of sun. And now with the removal of it, we’ve seen more warming. And so that will be a line of research we’ll be hearing of a lot more.

ROSE: The idea is you can take the junk back but you have to put something else back up there that will block the sun.

DUBNER: It’s a big may, it’s a big may — I mean look, Myhrvold, I think, describes it very well in the book. The idea of the garden hose to the sky and sulfur dioxide in the air and geoengineering. It’s like this. When you build a house you do everything you can to not have a fire in the house. You don’t give your kids matches, you don’t run around with a lighter and doing like this. But, if you have it, do you want a sprinkler system? Yeah. So the idea is: If the problem gets to be that bad, do you want to have something that could work beyond this kind of long-term, expensive, uncertain carbon mitigation idea?

We urge you to ensure that emission allowances allocated to the electricity sector – and thus, electricity consumers — be fully based on emissions as the appropriate and equitable way to provide transition assistance in a greenhouse gas-regulated economy.

The signatories on the letter defending coal-heavy polluters are Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Al Franken (D-MN), Roland Burris (D-IL), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Russell Feingold (D-WI), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Mark Udall (D-CO), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Carl Levin (D-MI), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

Their demand is a basic violation of a core principle of environmental economics — that companies should pay based on their pollution. The transition-period formula in the House bill, Waxman-Markey, and the current Senate legislation, Kerry-Boxer, at least distributes the free permits based 50 percent on electricity production. This formula was negotiated with the U.S. Climate Action Partnership and has received the endorsement of the Edison Electric Institute, the largest lobbying organization for the nation’s utilities. In contrast, President Barack Obama called for a full auction of pollution permits to avoid rewarding polluters at the taxpayers’ expense, instead dedicating the revenues to creating jobs, lowering taxes on the middle class, and building a clean energy economy.

The argument that the most “fair and effective,” “appropriate and equitable” way to help the constituents of their states is to increase subsidies to coal-powered utilities is frankly absurd.

Read the letter:

November 12, 2009

Dear Senators Reid, Boxer, Baucus and Kerry,

As the Senate formulates and debates energy and climate change legislation, it is clear that revamping our energy systems with alternative energy resources and technologies will be fundamental to our strategy for achieving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A transition of this magnitude will take years to accomplish and will incorporate major changes to the way we produce and use energy. Both the House-passed “American Clean Energy and Security Act” (H.R. 2454) and the recently introduced “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” (S. 1733) recognize the importance of helping individuals and firms by alleviating potential financial impacts as this transition takes place. This assistance, in the form of the allocation of greenhouse gas emission allowances, is an important tool for protecting consumers and businesses as we move to adopt new energy systems and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. To be fair and effective, any legislation must equitably allocate these allowances to individuals and across states and regions and economic sectors.

The House bill falls short of that equitable distribution goal with its formula for allocating allowances to local distribution companies based 50 percent on emissions and 50 percent on sales. Unfortunately, the Senate bill currently under consideration includes the same 50/50 allocation provision. Under the proposed 50/50 formula, utilities that are more coal dependent will need to purchase even more allowances than they would have if all allowances were allocated based on emissions, and those higher costs will be passed on to their customers. Meanwhile, many utilities with relatively lesser emissions will receive sufficient allowances to completely cover their initial requirements. Thus, their customers will experience no price increases resulting from the legislation.

We believe it is essential that we strive to formulate legislation that equitably distributes transition assistance across individuals, as well as states and regions and economic sectors. We urge you to ensure that emission allowances allocated to the electricity sector – and thus, electricity consumers — be fully based on emissions as the appropriate and equitable way to provide transition assistance in a greenhouse gas-regulated economy.

We thank you for your efforts to build consensus on the critical issue of energy and climate legislation. The change we recommend would contribute to a more balanced and equitable bill for the Senate’s consideration, and a better strategy for America.

Sincerely,

Senator Tom Harkin Senator Al Franken Senator Roland Burris Senator Byron Dorgan Senator Herb Kohl Senator Russell Feingold Senator Kent Conrad Senator Michael Bennet Senator Amy Klobuchar Senator Mark Udall Senator Robert Byrd Senator Cark Levin Senator Debbie Stabenow Senator Sherrod Brown

Right now, preventing catastrophic climate change is just about the most important thing any one of us should be working on right now. 350.org organized a worldwide day of action which took place on October 24. The goal of their effort was to educate and generate attention around the setting of a 350 parts per million CO2 target goal for the meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December. I know something about getting attention and decided to contribute to their effort.

Watch it:

In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.

The whole “Supermodels take it off for climate change” project happened from start to finish in a little under two weeks and 300 phone calls–who knew production was so complicated! All the girls — Rachel Alexander, Shannon Click, Hanne Gaby, Olya Ivanisevic, Alla Kostromicheva, Heidi Mount, Crystal Renn, Rianne Ten Haken, and Nicole Trunfio — are my friends and loved shooting the video for a good cause, so that part was relatively easy to pull together. But let me tell you who was really responsible.

Indirectly there are three people responsible for this video: Tibor Kalman, Bill McKibben, and Robin Chase:

My all-time hero Tibor Kalman showed the world the ability of mass media to convey serious images and create real discussion (think 90’s Benetton advertisements of people with AIDS). Climate change, which is often seen as very political or scientific, needs to be made a people’s issue. My hope is that this ad helps re-brand environmentalism.

Bill McKibben, advocating scientist James Hansen’s target of 350 ppm CO2 to avoid catastrophic effects from climate change, leads the 350 movement — a widely successful environmental action campaign that remains in close touch with science and politics.

Finally Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and Goloco, is my mom and raised me in a household that didn’t drive when it could be avoided, bought used clothes and almost nothing else, and led our family and friends by example showing us that it doesn’t matter how much you have. She also taught us to appreciate our personal and unique strengths, skills and experience, and figure out how to put them to good use.

There were at least 26 other people directly involved in making it. Eleven other models donated their free time, a precious day off for these top girls who work nearly every day from their late teens to as late as their early 30’s. Some of them have professional lives outside of modeling too. Cystal Renn just put out a book called Hungry about her transformation into a plus size model — it’s been incredibly successful and earned her a spot on Oprah. Nicole is the host of Bravo’s “Make Me a Supermodel” show. Heidi is the proud mother of two year-old Liam.

Then there was a whole team of people that made the girls look amazing: a stylist, Shandi Alexander, and her two assistants, a hairdresser, Kevin Ryan, and his two assistants, and two make up artists, Jesse Lawson and Fara Homidi, who all donated their free time as well. Then there was our amazing director Damani Baker, the three guys who assisted him, and Andrew Zuckerman who took still photos. There was my co-prodcuer Alex Vlack who also let us use his studio and turn his office into a wardrobe room. Finally there was Christana Tran and Heather Hughes who work at Women and Supreme model management that helped provide designer clothing and coordinate models.

Tomorrow, Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-MT) Finance Committee will look at the effect of clean energy legislation on the “future of jobs.” Appearing before the committee are four industry or conservative lobbyists and one coal-industry union lobbyist, Abraham Breehey. The only economist to testify will be Margo Thorning, a lobbyist for the anti-tax American Council on Capital Formation. Also testifying is Carol Berrigan, a nuclear industry representative, Van Ton-Quinlivan of Pacific Gas & Electric, and American Enterprise Institute fellow Kenneth Green.

One could point out that Breehey’s union, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers, supports the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act in large part because it provides so much support for the coal industry.

One could point out that Berrigan’s organization, the Nuclear Energy Institute, is not satisfied that clean energy legislation will spur nuclear energy through free-market competition, but is demanding massive subsidies and tax breaks as well.

One could point out that ACCF and AEI have received millions of dollars in funding from Exxon Mobil alone, or that Thorning refuses to reveal her methodology and Green has tried to buy climate scientists for $10,000 a pop.

Instead, let’s just note that tomorrow’s testimony will likely rehash the talking points that these witnesses have delivered time and again for the past ten years. Other than Ton-Quinlivan, who is appearing for the first time before Congress, the witnesses are regulars on the Hill, testifying a combined 20 times on climate and energy policy since 2002. Thorning has been the most frequent guest over the years, and this will be Green’s fifth time testifying since June.

Margo Thorning:

• 3/26/09 House Ways & Means
• 3/18/09 House Energy and Commerce
• 9/18/08 House Global Warming
• 11/8/07 Senate Environment and Public Works
• 7/24/07 Senate Environment and Public Works
• 7/11/07 House Foreign Affairs
• 4/5/06 Senate Commerce & Senate Judiciary
• 4/3/06 Senate Energy and Natural Resources
• 10/5/05 Senate EPW
• 6/5/03 Senate Environment and Public Works

Kenneth P. Green

• 10/28/09 Senate Environment and Public Works
• 10/22/09 House Global Warming
• 10/15/09 Senate Foreign Relations
• 6/9/09 Senate Environment and Public Works
• 9/25/07 Senate Environment and Public Works
• 3/13/02 Senate Governmental Affairs

Carol Berrigan:

• 11/6/07 Senate Energy and Natural Resources
• 9/27/07 Senate Environment and Public Works

Abraham Breehey

• 2/14/08 Senate Finance
• 2/2/05 Senate Environment and Public Works

If the Finance Committee is really trying to learn something new about whether reforming our pollution-based energy infrastructure would create new jobs, one would think they could have put a little more effort in witness selection.

We had on a guy on the show, Steve Levitt — Freakonomics — whose science was, according to actual people who know climate science, not good, but it seemed like the tone of the book was, “Why don’t we just think about these other things?” People came at him hard.

Watch it (Stewart mentions SuperFreakonomics at 4:20):

Levitt and Dubner have now admitted, begrudgingly, that they misportrayed climate scientist Ken Caldeira’s own views about his research. To be more precise, they have announced they will change the sentence that claimed Caldeira believes carbon dioxide “is not the right villain in this fight” to omit Caldeira’s name. Despite this one welcome change, the book continues to be a farrago of errors, personal attacks, and unfounded conclusions.

Stewart, however, continues to not understand why the book came under such withering criticism. In his interviews that touch upon global warming — with EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, global warming denier Chris Horner, journalist Bob Woodruff — Stewart has consistently acted bemused, which is often a good interview technique. But it also seems that Stewart’s bafflement is genuine, failing to understand that billions of dollars have been spent by polluters and their political allies for decades to distort the clear need for decisive action. He does not seem to know that greenhouse gases are already reshaping the world we live in, destroying ecosystems and economies.

At least Stewart is just a comic. Our nation’s journalists have no such excuse.

Senate Republicans are demanding lengthy economic analyses of progressive clean energy policy, despite having spent careers voting for and against major energy legislation without such delay. This week the Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted its debate on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of the economic impacts was not sufficiently thorough. Before they launched their boycott, committee ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) demanded a “full analysis” that satisfied their particular requirements:

As we’ve noted in previous letters and requests, getting a thorough, comprehensive economic analysis of the Kerry-Boxer bill is an essential component of a meaningful legislative process. To accomplish that, EPA needs to do a series of model runs examining key provisions in the bill, with a number of sensitivity analyses on critical issues, including, among others, the availability of offsets, potential growth in nuclear power, and the extent of emissions reductions by developing countries. Anything less than a full analysis of this kind will be unacceptable.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chair of the Senate Republican Conference, piled on: “We want to participate in any clean energy bill, but we’re not willing to do that until we know what it costs.”

“It undermines the credibility of the process,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). “It’s not constructive to the process to proceed without knowing what it costs.”

On Monday, senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) joined Inhofe to demand a “complete and substantive analysis of any bill that attempts to address this issue” and “complete data and a thorough vetting” before the EPW Committee took action.

Yesterday, senators Gregg, Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter to the EPA saying, “We cannot support legislation” without “a clear picture of the bill’s impacts on our economy,” saying the EPA analysis needs to be completed “prior to any action in EPW.”

Their arguments fall flat, however, because these and other senators routinely voted on energy and global warming bills without any analysis. Since 2001, the Senate has debated at least eight energy or global warming bills where there was no analysis by EPA, Congressional Budget Office or the Energy Information Administration completed in advance of Committee deliberations. In several cases, there was no full analysis before the bill was voted on by the entire Senate:

– Energy Policy Act of 2002 (H.R. 4): EIA and CBO analysis conducted after both committee passage and full Senate consideration.

– Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 (S. 139): EIA analysis conducted before full Senate consideration. No committee consideration.

– Energy Policy Act of 2003 (H.R. 4/S. 1005): EIA and CBO analysis conducted after committee passage. Limited CBO analysis completed before full Senate consideration, EIA analysis after.

– Climate Stewardship Act of 2005 (S. 342): No analysis conducted before full Senate consideration. No committee consideration.

– Energy Policy Act of 2005 (S. 10): CBO analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

– Energy Savings Act of 2007 (S. 1321): CBO analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

– America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191): EIA and EPA analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

– American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (S. 1462): CBO analysis completed after committee passage.

Sen. Murkowski notably had no problem voting for the American Clean Energy Leadership Act this June, even though CBO analysis was only completed in September.

The fact that these and other bills moved through committees without any analysis sharply contrasts with the mountain of assessments of this year’s clean energy legislation. Full EPA, EIA, and CBO analyses were conducted of the House bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), and the EPA has conducted additional analysis of the Senate legislation. The Republicans’ interest in analysis is little more than an excuse for delay and defeat of clean energy legislation. In one of the boycotted hearings this week, Sen. Boxer noted that the “EPA has also indicated that this economic analysis reflects hundreds of thousands of pages of backup documentation” about the related House bill. Environmental Protection Agency Director of Congressional Affairs David McIntosh appeared before the Committee to reiterate that S. 1733 and H.R. 2454 were very similar:

[EPA economic] models are not designed to detect fine-grain details in this kind of legislation. So changes in the legislation at that level of detail will not even show up in the economic computer model. Second, it costs the EPA at least $135,000 and 1600 man-hours of time to run a bill through the agency’s full suite of economic computer models.

Nonetheless, Republican boycotters wanted EPA to spend five weeks and $135,000 of taxpayer money to conduct a redundant analysis before they would agree to a vote.

Today, the committee approved the Clean Energy Jobs Act on an 11-1 vote. Every Republican was absent without leave.

The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money.

Watch it:

Graham’s words recall the testimony of former Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and White House official Van Jones, who told Congress in January, “We can build a green economy Dr. King would be proud of.” Van Jones, the founder of Green for All, left the White House after talk show host Glenn Beck targeted him as an “avowed communist and radical activist.” Beck has warned that efforts to build a green economy are “socialism,” “black nationalism,” and “fascism.”

Sen. Kerry announced that the three senators would work in a “dual track” to the committee process now underway to craft clean energy legislation in concert with the White House, which they hope to present directly to the Senate leadership. The senators conducted the press conference in between meetings with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and White House climate advisor Carol Browner.

Graham also discussed how Americans of any party “really feel uncomfortable with the fact that our nation sends a billion dollars a day overseas to buy foreign oil from some countries who don’t like us very much,” saying that part of “this initiative is to create a vision for energy independence and marry it up with a responsible climate control carbon pollution controls and create a new economy.”

Graham emphasized that his vision is to “help this planet” that “is in peril, create millions of new jobs for Americans that need them, and to become energy independent to make us safer,” because he believes that “controlling carbon pollution is good business.” Although he hoped for participation from his fellow Republicans, he said, “If you believe carbon pollution is not a problem, then you wouldn’t want to work with me, because I do.”

Transcript:

GRAHAM: The reason I’ve gotten involved in this issue is I see kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity politically to solve two real problems that I think the country and the world faces. One, carbon pollution. I am no scientist, but I’ve traveled throughout the world with Sen. McCain and others and seen the effects of a warming planet. And I do believe all of the cars we have on the roads, and the trucks, and all the energy we use that produces carbon daily is not a good thing for the planet.

But if environmental policy is not good business policy, you’ll never get 60 votes. So my goal is to try to make sure that we fashion environmental policy that will create millions of new jobs for Americans who are desiring to have new jobs. Virginia and New Jersey are going to benefit from what we do. South Carolina, Connecticut, and Massachusetts will benefit.

The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money. The business community senses an opportunity they’ve not had before. That’s why they’re at least exploring the possibility of a new pathway forward.

I’ve been told by a lot of business leaders in South Carolina, “Senator Graham, once you price carbon in a reasonable way, this green economy that we’re hoping for really will begin to flourish.”

The other aspect of why I’m involved is energy independence. Remember “Drill here, drill now”? Where did that go? Four dollar a gallon gas is not in our face but it could be soon. I think most Americans — Republicans, independents or Democrats — really feel uncomfortable with the fact that our nation sends a billion dollars a day overseas to buy foreign oil from some countries who don’t like us very much. Part of this initiative is to create a vision for energy independence and marry it up with a responsible climate control carbon pollution controls and create a new economy.

Finally, our country doesn’t have a vision on carbon. We need one. And we need to lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution. Our country doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to build a green economy and never will until we price carbon.

And our country doesn’t have a vision for energy independence. We need one. Our goal is to create that vision that not only will help this planet — that I think is in peril — but create millions of new jobs for Americans that need them, and to become energy independent to make us safer.

. . .

What I’ve got to do is convince people in South Carolina and our colleagues up here as a whole that environmental policy will be good business policy. And if Congress doesn’t act, the EPA will.

Every member of Congress, Republicans included, has to answer to themselves and their constituents. Is carbon pollution a problem? If it is, what are you going to do about it? Some Republicans want a carbon tax. In many ways, that is a fairer system but I don’t think there are the votes for it. If you believe carbon pollution is not a problem, then you wouldn’t want to work with me, because I do. Now, if you … a cap-and-trade bill has to be well-crafted not to put us at competitive disadvantage to China and India.

I am convinced with my colleagues that controlling carbon pollution is good business. If you do it right, people can make money and you’ll have a cleaner planet and the world will follow. So I hope my Republican colleagues will at least listen, come to the table as the Chamber has, see where we’re going, give us input and if at the end of the day, you can’t support it, that’s okay.

But last thought. Doing nothing has a consequence. The EPA will do something. Doing nothing has a consequence to our business opportunity in leading the green economy revolution that’s coming and controlling carbon emissions.

So I think most people are upset with the Congress because we’re not doing anything that matters. And the things that we do do we’re overdoing. So we’re trying to get that sweet spot of a bill that will be good for the environment, good for business and make us energy independent.

So my hope is that participation is seen as a positive, not a negative. If you can’t participate in solving a hard problem, why are you up here?

Notwithstanding any provision of this title or title III, no stationary source shall be required to apply for, or operate pursuant to, a permit under this title solely because the stationary source, including an agricultural source, emits less than 25,000 tons per year of any greenhouse gas or combination of greenhouse gases that are regulated solely because of the effect of those gases on climate change.

The 25,000 ton standard reflects the EPA’s plan for starting global warming regulation under a “tailoring rule” limited to the few thousand stationary sources of more than that amount of carbon dioxide a year — in large part coal-fired power plants. However, Boxer’s text is poorly written, as many greenhouse gases are thousands of times more powerful global warming pollutants than carbon dioxide.

The new text — like that of the House bill — completely forbids the regulation of greenhouse gases under the criteria pollutant, hazardous air pollutant, and international air pollution sections of the Clean Air Act.

Although several progressive and environmental organizations have made the preservation of existing Clean Air Act authority in the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act a key demand, Democratic members of the Committee on Environment and Public Works — which is now beginning to mark up the legislation — are split on this issue. Committee members Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are signatories, with Chris Dodd (D-CT), of a dear colleague letter in favor of allowing greenhouse gas regulation as a pollutant circulated by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). However, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) had questioned the provision, and influential member Max Baucus (D-MT), the Finance Committee chair, strongly opposes EPA regulation.

Organizations that have called on the Senate to “save the Clean Air Act” include Friends of the Earth, 1Sky, and MoveOn, supported by youth and other grassroots activists.

Other changes to the original version of the legislation reflect industry-friendly demands from Democrats on the committee. They include: increasing free allowances to major oil refineries, putting the Secretary of Agriculture in charge of the agriculture offset program, and making owners of abandoned mountaintop removal sites (”private or public abandoned mine land”) eligible for “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Incentives.”

The chairman’s mark also adds some provisions which strengthen the bill: Rep. Doris Matsui’s (D-CA) tree-planting program language, incentives for rapid renewable energy deployment, and a program to reduce black carbon emissions from diesel.

Text in chairman’s mark of Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act restricting Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gases:

(g) AMENDMENTS CLARIFYING REGULATION OF GREENHOUSE GASES UNDER CLEAN AIR ACT.—
(1) AIR QUALITY CRITERIA AND CONTROL TECHNIQUES.—Section 108(a) of the Clean Air Act
(42 U.S.C. 7408(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following:
(3) PROHIBITION ON LISTING OF GREENHOUSE GASES.—On and after the date of enactment of this paragraph, the Administrator shall not include on the list of pollutants under this subsection any greenhouse gas on the basis of any effect the greenhouse gas may have on climate change.’’.
(2) HAZARDOUS AIR POLLUTANTS.—Section 112 of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7412) is amended by adding at the end the following:
(20) GREENHOUSE GAS LIMITATION.—No greenhouse gas may be added to the list of hazardous air pollutants under this section unless the greenhouse gas meets the criteria described in sub
Section (b) independent of the effects of the greenhouse gas on climate change.’’.
(3) INTERNATIONAL AIR POLLUTION.—Section 115(c) of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7415(c)) is amended—
(A) by striking (c) This section’’ and inserting the following:
(3) APPLICABILITY.—
(A) FOREIGN COUNTRIES.—This section’’; and
(B) by adding at the end the following:
(B) GREENHOUSE GASES.—This section does not apply to any greenhouse gas with respect to the effects of the greenhouse gas on climate change.’’.
(4) DEFINITION OF MAJOR EMITTING FACILITY.—Section 169(1) of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7479(1)) is amended—
(A) in the first sentence, by inserting
(other than any greenhouse gas), and 25,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide equivalent for any greenhouse gas or combination of greenhouse gases’’ after one hundred tons per year or more of any air pollutant,’’; and
(B) in the second sentence, by inserting
(other than any greenhouse gas), and 25,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide equivalent for any greenhouse gas or combination of greenhouse gases’’ after two hundred fifty tons per year or more of any air pollutant’’.
(5) PERMITS.—Title V of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7661 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following:
Sec. 508. EMISSIONS OF GREENHOUSE GASES. Notwithstanding any provision of this title or title III, no stationary source shall be required to apply for, or operate pursuant to, a permit under this title solely because the stationary source, including an agricultural source, emits less than 25,000 tons per year of any greenhouse gas or combination of greenhouse gases that are regulated solely because of the effect of those gases on climate change.’’.

I haven’t been able to sell that argument to my farmers and I don’t think they’re going to buy it from anybody else. I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home are going to be disadvantaged. As you turn on the lights, the lights, the electricity is going to cost more. Store owners, the same thing. Manufacturers, the same thing. I don’t think that the farmers or the ranchers necessarily buy the argument that it’s all going to be offset. And I don’t know why we want to create a system that sustains Wall Street once again .

Watch it:

In reality, the legislation makes multi-billion-dollar investment in clean energy jobs (including Nebraska) and scales back the pollution that threatens American agriculture, all at a cost of a postage stamp a day.

Nelson’s “prairie populism” doesn’t extend to his opposition to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “I don’t see creating a new agency is necessary,” he told Harwood, unless it is “scaled back or put in some other format.” When Harwood noted that Nelson is “with Wall Street on that,” Nelson offered the feeble reply, “Not for the same reason.”

Strangely, Nelson’s opposition to the president’s reform agenda precisely follows the interests of his top corporate donors. This year alone, Nelson has received $553,300 from agribusiness, $164,200 from oil and gas interests, and $140,199 from electric utilities. Nelson has even taken $31,500 from the virulently right-wing Koch Industries, the private pollution giant that has mobilized tea party opposition to climate and health care legislation. Berkshire Hathaway, whose subsidiary MidAmerican Energy is one of the nation’s largest coal-powered utilities, opposes climate legislation and has given Nelson $51,800. Coal-hauling Union Pacific is Nelson’s number-three contributor at $49,750.

When it comes to financial regulation, the story looks the same. Nelson has received $1,343,060 from Wall Street interests, from banks to insurers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In another remarkable coincidence, Nelson’s attacks on climate and financial reform are identical to those being offered by the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber’s head, Tom Donohue, sits on the board of Union Pacific, for which he has received approximately $5 million in compensation.

Adding his voice to a chorus of criticism, a University of Chicago climate scientist finds his colleague, economist Steven Levitt, guilty of “academic malpractice” in SuperFreakonomics. Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, the Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences, responded to one of the many scientifically illiterate assertions into the book, that “the problem with solar cells is that they’re black” — so that the heat reradiated from the cells “contributes to global warming.” As Pierrehumbert explains in detail in the RealClimate science blog, the albedo debt of solar cells is minimal compared to the amount of warming from burning fossil fuels to produce a comparable amount of electricity:

The point here is that really simple arithmetic, which you could not be bothered to do, would have been enough to tell you that the claim that the blackness of solar cells makes solar energy pointless is complete and utter nonsense. I don’t think you would have accepted such laziness and sloppiness in a term paper from one of your students, so why do you accept it from yourself? What does the failure to do such basic thinking with numbers say about the extent to which anything you write can be trusted? How do you think it reflects on the profession of economics when a member of that profession — somebody who that profession seems to esteem highly — publicly and noisily shows that he cannot be bothered to do simple arithmetic and elementary background reading? Not even for a subject of such paramount importance as global warming.

“And it’s not as if the ‘black solar cell’ gaffe was the only bit of academic malpractice in your book,” Pierrehumbert continues, citing Levitt’s false portrayal of geoengineered stratospheric cooling as a “a harmless and cheap quick fix for global warming.” Pierrehumbert recommends Levitt walk five blocks for some “friendly help next time”:

May I suggest that if you should happen to need some friendly help next time you take on the topic of climate change, or would like to have a chat about why aerosol geoengineering might not be a cure-all, or just need a critical but informed opponent to bounce ideas off of, you don’t have to go very far. For example…

But given the way Superfreakonomics mangled Ken Caldeira’s rather nuanced views on geoengineering, let’s keep it off the record, eh?

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, sponsored by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for this week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-OK) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Late Friday, Inhofe spokesman Matt Dempsey announced “Republicans will be forced not to show up” at the markup hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation:

– As Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) shepherded his American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) through the House Energy and Commerce Committee this June, committee ranking member Joe Barton (R-TX) employed multiple parliamentary tricks to “nitpick the bill into legislative oblivion.” Democrats responded to these “nefarious stall tactics” by calling Barton’s bluff, even hiring a speed reader.

– House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) filibustered the final vote on the ACES Act for hours by reading the text of the bill on the House floor.

– Last year during the debate over the Climate Security Act, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) demanded that the entire 491 page bill be read on the floor of the United States Senate. A strategy memo was leaked at the time detailing the Republican strategy for delaying the bill as much as humanly possible.

While this Republican obstructionism is not necessarily surprising, it is especially egregious this time. Here are a few things about this episode that struck me:

– Despite the fact that Senator Inhofe has been working to orchestrate this obstruction for a week now, Republicans are pretending the effort is being led by the two moderate Republicans on the committee. Politico handled the stenography, writing that the “boycott effort is being led by the two most moderate Republican members on the committee: Sens. George Voinovich of Ohio and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.” This is absolutely not true. Voinovich and Alexander have both indicated a willingness to lend bipartisan support to the legislation. Their statements in support of Inhofe’s obstruction are an indication that they are showing deference to the ranking member on the committee, nothing more. Again, this thing has Inhofe written all over it.

– Senator Inhofe, of course, will never support the bill regardless of any economic modeling the EPA does. He does not even believe that humans are responsible for climate change. In his opposition to health care legislation he was at least honest enough to say so up front, telling a town hall in August, “I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways.” The same is true of the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill: Inhofe has no intention of learning anything about it or voting for it. His only intention is to gum up the works and delay delay delay.

– As Senator Boxer has pointed out, Inhofe’s stated reason for concern here is absurd. The two-week EPA analysis of Kerry-Boxer came on top of the five-week review of the House-passed bill — and the two bills are “90 percent similar,” says Boxer. “We’re not going to waste taxpayer money because someone drew a line in the sand.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has called Inhofe’s gambit exactly what it is: “theatrics.”

This is nothing more than a shameless attempt to obstruct and delay clean energy legislation. Both on the EPW Committee, and in the full Senate, the numbers are on the side of passage. Senator Inhofe knows this, so he is throwing one last hail-mary in an attempt to stall the process. I don’t expect better from him, but it is still pretty pathetic.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Glenn Beck deny global warming.

In his book “Crossing the Next Meridian,” University of Colorado law professor Charles F. Wilkinson called the timber, mining, grazing and water development interests who for too long dictated how our western public lands should be managed the “lords of yesterday.”

Western lawmakers with their politics still stuck in a 19th-century time warp continue to do the bidding of the lords of yesterday, who now include big energy interests. Witness the letter 16 House and Senate Republicans sent to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar protesting his secretarial order creating a Climate Change Response Council that is designed to coordinate efforts among Interior agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cope with the impacts of climate change. The new council, the lawmakers said, represents an end-run around Congress and could be used to stifle oil and gas development and other activities on western lands on behalf of “special interest groups with narrow agendas”:

Businesses in the West are worried about potential court challenges and administrative action. These new rules will allow special interest groups with narrow agendas to block all existing and future activities on federal lands in the name of climate change.

Of course, the “special interest groups” these politicians attack are the Western people, with the “narrow agendas” of preserving their land and way of life against the ravages of uncontrolled development and runaway global warming.

Leading the charge in this effort to ignore the new realities of a changing climate is Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), one of the Senate’s leading opponents of legislation to regulate carbon pollution. Barrasso represents Wyoming, the nation’s top coal producer, and is the chair of the recently formed Senate Western Caucus, a latter-day reincarnation of the 1970s “Sage Brush Rebellion” that fought federal oversight of Western lands, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Barrasso has previously temporarily blocked the Obama administration’s choice to head the air office at the EPA, fought the establishment of a CIA climate change center, and accused the EPA of “silencing” a dissenting voice to its finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health.

Salazar, whose department oversees public lands comprising about one-fifth of the U.S., most of it in the West, issued his order on climate change planning in mid-September. It sets up a council made up of senior officials to coordinate the department’s response to climate change, and establishes eight regional climate change response centers and a network of conservation cooperatives to work with states, localities and the public in developing strategies to cope with global warming impacts.

Barrasso and his co-signers see this as a conspiracy to get through administrative fiat what the Obama administration may not be able to get through climate legislation. “These regulations will hit the Western United States the hardest,” they charge in their letter. “Westerners will suffer from higher energy and fuel costs or simply be put out of work.”

If Barrasso et al. are genuinely worried about the western U.S. being hard hit, they should take a closer look at what climate change is already doing to the region. In the state of Wyoming alone, a mountain pine beetle epidemic spurred by climate change had claimed 1.2 million acres of forest by the end of 2008, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Elsewhere in the West, declining snowpack and earlier spring runoff will mean the Colorado River, the lifeblood for some 25 million Westerners, will be unable to meet demand as much as 90 percent of the time by mid-century, according to a recent study.