Thursday, May 15, 2008

Reaction from the Last Frontier   [Edward John Craig]

Alaskan senator Ted Stevens is building a bridge to reality:

I am disappointed and disturbed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to weaken the Endangered Species Act by listing the polar bear as threatened despite the steady increase in the species’ population. Scientists have observed that there are now three times as many polar bears in the Arctic than there were in the 1970s.

Never before has a species been listed as endangered or threatened while occupying its entire geographic range.

This decision was made without any research demonstrating dangerously low population levels in polar bears, but rather on speculation regarding how ice levels will affect Arctic wildlife. Worse yet, today’s decision cannot and will not do anything to reverse sea ice decline.

Instead, this action by the Fish and Wildlife Service sets a dangerous precedent with far-reaching social and economic ramifications. It opens the door for many other Arctic species to be listed, which would severely hamper Alaska’s ability to tap its vast natural resources. Reinterpreting the Endangered Species Act in this way is an unequivocal victory for extreme environmentalists who want to block all development in our state.

The manipulation of the Endangered Species Act was highlighted by Kassie Siegel, the lawyer who wrote the legal petition for the Center for Biological Diversity. Ms. Siegel made no attempt to disguise her group’s intent when she said that the effort to list the polar bears was to ‘try to make the point that global warming is not some future threat’. This statement confirms that these fringe environmentalists are simply using the polar bears to advance their extreme agenda.

This abuse of Endangered Species law will have a devastating impact on the entire nation through endless litigation and regulation. It will ultimately weaken the Act itself, which has been one of our nation’s most valuable tools for conserving wildlife.

Alaskans must now stand together and fight attempts to exploit the public’s fear of climate change as a means to impose unreasonable burdens in our state. The future of Alaska will depend on it.”

The Anchorage Daily News has the reactions from the rest of the Alaskan Congressional contingent, Rep. Don Young and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, as well.

05/15 11:14 AM

Bearing Down on Energy Policy   [Iain Murray]

Terry Corcoran of the National Post has a good column (when has he ever had a bad one?) up today on what the polar bear listing means for North American energy policy:

Between environmentalists and state planners and controllers, plus animosity toward the energy industry, keeping a lid on supply is the name of the game in energy these days. Pathetically, the Bush administration's polar bear release hailed the government's wind and solar energy strategy as the alternative.

Quite right. This was nothing to do with the polar bear and everything to do with advancing a ludicrous "alternative energy now" agenda. Meanwhile, I have further reflections over at The American Spectator.

05/15 09:32 AM

Polar Bears: More Journalistic Malpractice   [Henry Payne]

How do you declare a species endangered when its numbers are increasing?

Once again, my profession — journalism — failed its fundamental duty to report the facts Wednesday as the Interior Department bowed to political pressure from green groups to declare polar bears an threatened species due to global warming. This, despite the fact that bear populations have increased from 5,000–10,000 in the early 1970s to between 20,000 and 25,000 today (during the very period their habitat was allegedly shrinking). This is in part due to concentrated efforts to impose harvesting controls that have allowed this once-overhunted species to recover.

Indeed, Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a bear biologist with the Canadian government, wrote in 2006: “There is no need to panic. Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.”

This data is readily available in the public record, and yet a review of reports from America’s two leading print sources found nary a mention. The Associated Press completely ignored the bear population data and any critics of the decision. As for The New York Times, reporter Felicity Barringer also ignored the data, but at least alluded to it by quoting M. Reed Hopper of the Pacific Legal Foundation (which is suing the Department of the Interior over the decision) at the very end of her article as saying: “Never before has a thriving species been listed nor should it be.”

Otherwise, press accounts seemed more than willing (as did Interior obviously) to accept the definition of a shrinking bear habitat put forward by the plaintiff in the suit against Interior, the radical left group Greenpeace.

“Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses,” wrote AP. But as leading climatologist Patrick Michaels wrote in 2005 (when Greenpeace brought its suit): “Although the history of average Arctic temperatures shows no long-term warming whatsoever, trends can be found in the data if different starting points are used in the analysis — which is precisely what Greenpeace did. According to its release, ‘sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has declined 5.5 percent since 1978.’ Of course, 1978 is near the coldest point on record. Starting there has better yield a warming trend!”

In other words, Greenpeace — surprise! — deliberately cherry-picked data to bolster its case. Federal agencies should be skeptical of such a tactic — but for America’s top journalists to swallow it whole is simply unprofessional.

 — Henry Payne is a writer and editorial cartoonist for the Detroit News.

05/15 08:30 AM

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Tough to Bear   [Chris Horner]

I’m not sure I agree with my colleague Iain Murray’s conclusion that today’s polar bear listing is one that Secretary Kempthorne didn’t want to make.

All signals from within the agency were that this politician, as bound by “legacy” concerns as any, and with a worse track record on these issues than most (Republicans, that is . . . which still says quite a lot), deeply desired some sort of listing despite recommendations to the contrary from scientists in the field (as a matter of principal this is something on which we apparently agree with the Left, so I look forward to WaPo getting all exercised about this).

Hence this compromise.

Now, everyone stand back and wait for the green love for Kempthorne. Realists of course have already seen Lucy walking away with the football.

The only open question is how a green, might-be-around-for-some-consequences administration will deal with the litigation next year. Fight, or more flight?

05/14 03:55 PM

The Polar Bear Listing   [Iain Murray]

The listing of the polar bears as threatened is a compromise that shows just how the Endangered Species Act is a bad piece of legislation. The Secretary was compelled to make a listing he clearly didn't want to make and that comes with all sorts of foreseeable detrimental consequences of exactly the sort I describe in my book. In an effort to obviate those consequences, the Secretary has attempted to erect some barriers that will have all the legislative strength of tissue paper. It will take just a few seconds of a new administration to blow through them and bring about the dire consequences Sec. Kempthorne has obviously foreseen. The ESA needs to be reformed for all sorts of reasons that I discuss in the book, but this is perhaps the most urgent now.

05/14 03:26 PM

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There!   [Chris Horner]

A colleague of mine who attended the Virginia Governor’s Climate Commission meeting yesterday at George Mason University writes the following, noting that an argument that we’ve all heard before nonetheless can set political heads nodding:

A guy from [Environmental Defense] made the argument that, simplified, cites as the most costly option “inaction,” and the next most costly as delay. [He] analogized to saving for retirement or your kid’s college fund. The longer you put it off, the more costly it becomes to retire or put your kid through college. The earlier you start, the sooner compound interest starts working for you. If we start to now, we only have to reduce emissions by 2.4% per year to keep GHG concentrations from hitting some magic number (450 ppm?). But if we wait until 2010, then it goes up to 3.6%, 2015, 6.8%, 2030, 16%, etc. (or numbers like that).

Apparently, this tomfoolery persuades people who know little to nothing about the specifics of this (I admit, often complex) issue. But in light of the perennial political temptation to “do something” — even if it doesn't improve the situation you're trying to “do something” about, and may even cause harm after you’re out of office — I must concede that it is an artful, if fallacious, rationalization.

The analogy to compound interest is false because of the strangely ignored logarithmic effect of CO2 (scil., each succeeding molecule has half the greenhouse warming potential of the one preceding it — warming under the theory would not be exponential.) JunkScience has a logarithmic-effect calculator here.

As Aussie scientist David Archibald wrote in The West Australian on May 8, in a piece called “Loud and Proud in Praise of Carbon”: even if you accept the premise that the first 20 ppm achieves 1.5 degrees of heating, it takes more than another 400 ppm to extend the temperature increase by the same amount. “By the time we get to the current level of 384 ppm, carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas. From here, every 100 ppm extra may be worth 0.1 of a degree.” 
 

What “do something” pols and pundits are demanding with calls for immediate emission reductions are the most expensive, least meaningful reductions. And success in accomplishing these reductions also happens to still elude everyone —where in the world has CO2 been reduced? Is the entire world just too cheap and lazy? (Ask this question globally and you'll see how quickly that argument loses its currency — when not applied solely to the U.S.)

It remains true that the best course is a series of “no regrets” policies, as Jonathan Adler has written.

05/14 03:15 PM

The Least Worst Way Forward   [Edward John Craig]

Personally, I’m not ready to give up on John McCain just yet.

But I wish he would take the advice of Bjørn Lomborg. (Or Planet Gore contributor Jim Manzi, for that matter.) Like McCain, Lomborg believes global warming is real. But, as Kathryn Lopez writes in the intro to her interview with Lomborg on NRO today, “Lomborg takes a cold, hard look at the empirical facts, and weighs the costs and benefits of global warming (which he does not deny) and the policy solutions advanced to restrain it. His recommendation: Calm down.”

Wouldn’t it be the lesser of two evils for McCain, instead of trying to paint a costly cap-and-trade scheme as a “market” solution — despite the fact that the carbon ration coupons will be given away rather than auctioned off — to set aside a smaller chunk of taxpayer money to incentivize technological advances in alternative fuels? [I know, I know — I’ll be getting grief at the Milton Friedman Prize dinner tomorrow night.]
What doesn’t come out in the interview with Kathryn on the topic of that .05 of GDP investment — but which I mentioned in my write-up of the one-man debate Lomborg headlined in New York last month — is that Lomborg advises this government investment in the form of cash awards. Ideally, this would mean that instead of distributing government grants in a highly politicized process to do-nothing, risk-averse rent-seekers, the public money would go to reward researchers who have made significant piece-of-the-puzzle technological breakthroughs — breakthroughs that, on their own, may not be marketable, but that advance the science (and future marketability) of new technologies.

We can always hope that McCain changes his mind and decides against “doing something” for its own sake. [He seems so malleable and open to criticism.] But if he is going to do something, shouldn’t we be trying to persuade him to inflict the least damage when he does it?

05/14 03:00 PM

The Planet Gore Vote   [Edward John Craig]

Apropos of Noel Sheppard’s piece below, two Planet Gore readers say Senator McCain has lost their vote:

It looks like Senator McCain is going to be his own worst enemy. He’s feisty and stubborn and those attributes are showing (and not in a good way) in his refusal to compromise with conservatives on issues like global warming and illegal immigration. The more I hear from McCain, the less likely I am to vote for him. I initially intended to vote for him because he’s the Republican candidate, but with a Democratic-controlled Congress and McCain’s inclination to “reach across the aisle,” what will I get for my vote?

____________________


A week ago I considered myself a strong McCain supporter and was considering volunteering for his campaign. Today I’m considering whether it might be better to vote for Bob Barr, and the difference is entirely McCain’s Oregon speech. Environmental issues are normally pretty low priority for me, but McCain’s proposal would be economically disastrous. He’s basically proposing turning most of the economy over to a gang of international bureaucrats. That means a dramatic drop in freedom and living standards here, and outright starvation for millions in poorer nations. It is a catastrophic and immoral solution to a speculative problem. I doubt that it will ever get enacted because China and India would never agree to cut their emissions, and I suspect the Senate will balk if ever asked to actually put such a plan into law. But still, it is such a bad proposal it really makes me question his judgment, and even his moral compass.

____________________

UPDATE: MAKE THAT THREE!

I highly doubt that I will be able to vote McCain. The most likely scenario will be to vote all the other races, and just abstain on the presidential race. McCain's global alarmist agenda has lushed me over the edge. 

 ____________________

UPDATE: ME FOUR! 

Add another to the McCain-lost-me pile. I was willing to grit my teeth and vote for him, but he's shown no inclination to listen to conservative voices, and the Oregon speech was the final straw. I'm voting Libertarian come November.

While I don't relish the thought of a Democrat in the White house and larger Democratic majorities in Congress, I take heart from the Carter backlash that gave us Reagan.

 

05/14 01:01 PM

Poll: McCain Support Plummets After GW Speech   [Noel Sheppard]

Many conservatives were not pleased with presidential candidate John McCain’s speech in Oregon Monday about global warming. If a poll taken by the conservative website NewsBusters (where I am the associate editor) is any gauge, this issue could be a serious problem for the Arizona Senator come November, representing another major departure from the views of his electoral base.

With 2,500 respondents so far, 44 percent said they were less likely to vote for McCain as a result of this speech, with another 20 percent saying they definitely won’t vote for him now.

By contrast, only 3 percent of respondents were either more likely to vote for McCain or definitely would vote for him because of this speech; 34 percent said the speech didn’t impact their position at all.

In a race that promises to be very close, one has to wonder just how many issues McCain can take counter to his base without it making it very difficult for him to win.

On the flipside, isn’t it amazing how many people see this issue as being important enough to impact how they will vote? 

05/14 10:24 AM

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Detroit's History Lesson for McCain   [Henry Payne]

Detroit — In outlining a plan to fundamentally reorder America’s economy under a centralized, carbon-capped, command-and-control regime, John McCain reaffirms why free-market conservatives are deeply suspicious of his candidacy.

“For all of the last century, the profit motive basically led in one direction — toward machines, methods, and industries that used oil and gas,” he said Monday at an Oregon wind farm. “Enormous good came from that industrial growth, and we are all the beneficiaries of the national prosperity it built. But there were costs we weren't counting, and often hardly noticed. And these terrible costs have added up now, in the atmosphere, in the oceans, and all across the natural world.”

This extraordinarily arrogant statement expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of how America rode industrial growth to wealth. In fact, without “national prosperity” the U.S. would have been unable to tackle the “costs” of industrialization — an effort that, today, finds Americans living longer and healthier than at any time in history.

Take the enormous good Detroit alone has created.

For “all of the last century” it has been an engine of American growth because “the profit motive led in one direction.” But if Detroit had labored under McCain’s massive cap-and-trade bureaucracy at the turn of the century, it is unlikely it would have created the prosperous product we take for granted.

The gas-driven automobile was  the result of ruthless competition among entrepreneurs, their experiments, and their failures. Backed by millions in investment dollars, these men were driven by efficiency and profit.

Detroit entrepreneurs were not alone in the race for a marketable horseless carriage. “In the East,” writes Robert Conot in American Odyssey, recounting Thomas Edison’s trip to meet Henry Ford in 1896, “automobile experimentation was centered on steam and electric-powered vehicles. Experience with storage batteries had convinced Edison that electric vehicles were impractical. He questioned Ford closely.”

And enormous good came.

Burning through investor money, Ford’s carbon-based, gas-powered technology — in competition with fellow gasoline entrepreneurs at Olds and Cadillac — eventually won out over steam and electrics because is was faster, more reliable, and cheaper.

But Ford’s design was helped by another unforeseen, free-market development — the explosion in carbon-based oil exploration across America’s southwest. Writes Conot: “The price of gasoline kept dropping, and automobiles become more and more economical to operate.”

And enormous good came.

This lead to a revolution in American society as the car became an affordable product for most Americans, not just the wealthy. From 1909 to 1914, Ford sales went from 10,000 cars to 500,000!

This explosion in production in turn created the opportunity for Ford’s $5-a-day wage, opening America to a new, assembly-line-fueled era of prosperity. But these assembly lines, in turn, needed massive amounts of cheap electricity to operate machinery. Into this void came industrial utilities, once again taking advantage of the cheapest, most efficient mineral in America: carbon-based coal.

But with so many cars hitting the road, the country struggled to keep up with road construction — an effort greatly advanced by Albert Kahn’s carbon-intensive “demonstration of the workability of reinforced concrete construction,” writes Conot.

And enormous good came.

The result of this extraordinary, unfettered entrepreneurism was that the U.S. leap-frogged Europe (where the auto was invented) in auto production — producing more autos than the rest of the world combined by 2010. This explosion in wealth is what every other country on the planet envies to this day, and that China and India are right now trying to recreate in their own nascent, carbon-driven auto industries.

Yet, under a command-and-control regime envisioned by McCain, it is unlikely that America’s efficient business climate would have existed because its entrepreneurism needed cheap energy sources to advance every step of the way. Without “profit as the primary motive,” resources would have been diverted to government lobbying, government would have picked winners and losers, and the automobile would not have become the egalitarian consumer product it is today.

And here lies the ultimate irony: Without its mass-produced auto wealth, Detroit would not have been able to afford to clean up its air, its rivers, its grasslands.

Free-markets dictated Detroit’s exploitation of oil, coal, and concrete to deliver the automobile’s enormous good even as it contributed to — if we accept the alarmists’ claims — a man-made increase of one degree in one century. What were the “terrible costs” of that one degree, and, in retrospect, would Sen. McCain have discouraged Detroit’s carbon choices to prevent them?

05/13 06:00 PM

Laughing with Laura   [Edward John Craig]

Chris Horner hit the Laura Ingraham Show to preview yesterday’s climate-change speech by McCain.

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Listen to it here.

05/13 12:20 PM

Gross Negligence   [Noel Sheppard]

As the international food crisis makes its way onto America’s front pages, climate realists have watched in amazement the groundswell of finger-pointing at ethanol. In the last 30 days alone, over 3,000 news reports have discussed the biofuel’s connection to rising prices and grain shortages across the globe.

Yet, with all this overdue attention on the folly of turning food into fuel, Nobel Laureate Al Gore — who has advocated the expansion of biofuels for decades, and is himself invested in companies at the forefront of such technologies — has thus far escaped scrutiny.

Such convenient cloaking comes despite Gore actually promoting some of his ethanol-related investments — including Amyris Biotechnologies and AltraBiofuels — at a conference in Monterey, California, back in March.

Amyris is “developing a gasoline substitute that contains more energy than ethanol, will result in lower cost and less polluting biofuel blends, and is fully compatible with today's cars and the existing petroleum infrastructure.” That’s the good news; on the flipside: “Both [its] gasoline substitute and [its] diesel substitute will be made from the same feedstocks and production plants that are used to make ethanol.”

For its part, AltraBiofuels is working on future cellulosic models, but the “millions of gallons of biofuel” it currently produces are “primarily ethanol from corn.” Which means that both of these companies in Al Gore’s portfolio are intricately linked to the current and future demand on grains.

As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis wrote in his May 5 NRO article “Food for Fuel Is No Laughing Matter,” a number of key international organizations are expressing dire concern as such grain demand sends prices soaring:

Both World Bank President Robert Zoellick and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Domenique Strauss-Kahn warn that the increase in world food prices could force 100 million people back into absolute poverty (defined as a household income of $1 a day or less), wiping out all the gains the poorest billion people achieved during the past decade.

The price of wheat jumped 120 percent in the past year, hitting a 28-year high in February. The price of rice, the staple for billions of Asians, is up 147 percent over the past year, hitting 19-year high. The price of corn tripled in the past two years, increasing from $2.00 a bushel in January 2006, to $3.05 in January 2007, to $4.25 in January 2008, and hitting $6 a bushel in April 2008.

Making matters worse, the venture capital group Gore joined in November, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, also has investments in Amyris and AltraBiofuels. One of the key partners of this firm, John Doerr, is advocating legislation that would expand biofuel usage at exactly the time when we should be rethinking this entire process.

Add it up, and you’ve got an astounding number of dollars invested in agritechnology companies by Gore and folks connected to him, who together possess extraordinary clout and access to Congress, and who are also willing to spend $300 million on a public-relations campaign to create (at least the impression of) a public movement for legislative action to “solve” anthropogenic global warming — all with the green media’s blessing.

Yet, as more and more attention is placed on the impact ethanol is having on food crops internationally, these same press members continue to ignore the former vice president’s business ties to biofuel. This was once again evident on May 6, when Gore appeared on Terry Gross’s National Public Radio show, “Fresh Air,” and the subject of ethanol and how it pertains to the current food crisis came up:

TERRY GROSS, NPR: Ethanol and the amount of farmland in the United States being devoted to growing corn for ethanol is now considered one of the major reasons for the global food crisis that we now have. Are there policies that you've watched being created that you think helped lead to the position that we're in with corn and ethanol?

AL GORE: Well, I think that corn ethanol is at best a transition strategy toward the new generation of biofuels that don't compete with food crops at all. There is a sophisticated debate about why the food price crisis has suddenly blown up in the world. The drought in Australia, connected to global warming in the view of many, took the largest grain flows out of the world markets, and that touched off some protectionist measures with countries hoarding grain. And the introduction of leverage or speculation in commodities has had a lot to do with it as well. But there's no doubt that, at least on the margins, the amounts of corn being used for ethanol have had some impact.

But there's a major debate on how to go about this in an environmentally and economically sensible way. And I think that's a useful debate. Most people come out, when they really look at all the facts, by saying, look, some of these fuels are bad and some of them are good. We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's concentrate on developing the next generation that have positive consequences.

And that was it. From there, Gross quickly moved the discussion to Hurricane Katrina rather than pressing Gore about this issue. How is that possible?

After all, when Gore evaded the question “Are there policies that you've watched being created that you think helped lead to the position that we're in with corn and ethanol,” shouldn’t the NPR host have pointed out that it was Gore himself who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate 14 years ago mandating the use of ethanol? For those that have forgotten, this was how the New York Times reported that inauspicious occasion on August 4, 1994 (emphasis added):

With a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Al Gore, the Senate upheld today an Environmental Protection Agency rule requiring that ethanol and other renewable fuels get a share of the gasoline additives market.

The Senate voted 51-50 to table an amendment that would have denied financing to the agency to carry out a rule guaranteeing renewable fuels a 15 percent share of the lucrative fuel oxygenate market in 1995. That share rises to 30 percent in following years. . . .

Tabling the amendment, offered by Democratic Senators Bennett J. Johnston of Louisiana and Bill Bradley of New Jersey, in effect kills it and clears the way for E.P.A. to carry out its program.

With this in mind, and given all the focus on the current international food crisis and how it relates to ethanol, shouldn’t this have been the subject of a follow-up question from Gross?

Keep reading this post . . .

05/13 11:00 AM

Constitution? Never Heard of It.   [Chris Horner]

Yet another pair in a series of climate non-aggression pacts have been inked between U.S. states and foreign governments. This time, according to Greenwire (password required), “Wisconsin and Michigan entered into separate agreements with the United Kingdom on Monday, vowing to work together toward solutions to climate change. Under the pacts, Britain and the states agree to share research and ideas about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting low-carbon technologies and raising public awareness.”

Here’s a quick refresher. Article I, Section 10:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

These two agreements appear to be arguably less “a cooperative effort . . . to reduce carbon dioxide emissions” as are the regional climate pacts such as RGGI or their counterparts with, e.g., Canadian provinces. But do they nonetheless still purport to supplant activities which the constitution vests exclusively with the federal government, barring express approval by Congress?

Their champions have long indicated that is their intent. Let’s turn to Environmental Defense’s Tony Kreindler, whose comments on the MI and WI agreements echo several years of explanations by activist governors: “The states are stepping up because of a lack of leadership at the federal level.” Actually, guys, that’s not your place.

It’s a good thing that, out of a sense of caution and zealous protection of the Constitution and Congress's prerogatives, there are all of those strict constructionists up on Capitol Hill introducing legislation setting forth the “wherefore” of the constitutional requirement and calling for a vote, to give the courts some guidance in the event one or more of these states’ citizens legally challenges this activism. Apparently holding up agreements with Indian tribes is one thing, but we're talking about the "imminent Danger" of a climate crisis here.

05/13 10:08 AM

A Bad Review   [NRO Staff]

So a chemical manufacturer, say, would pay an industry not covered by the program – most notably, agriculture – to reduce its emissions. Or it could pay a coal plant in China for plucking low-hanging efficiency fruit, like installing smokestack scrubbers. In other words, U.S. consumers would be paying higher prices for energy in return for making Chinese industries more efficient and competitive. Europe is in the midst of that experience now under the Kyoto Protocol, and most of its reductions so far have been illusory.

The compliance bookkeeping for this new "market" is vastly complex, and a McCain Administration would create a public-private "Climate Change Credit Corporation" to oversee it all. This new regulatory body is likely to morph over time into an "Energy Fed," similar to the one Warner-Lieberman would create. Such an agency would set the price of energy indirectly by fiddling with carbon levies, which will undoubtedly lead to economy-wide distortions.

05/13 07:56 AM

"If John McCain were truly a maverick, he would publicly break from the politically correct culture that demands obedience to its global warming narrative. But sadly, he continues to do the opposite."   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Limbaugh — this time David — knocks McCain for cowardice in the face of Planet Gore, too.

05/13 06:26 AM

Monday, May 12, 2008

McCain's Hot Air   [Chris Horner]

John McCain’s delivered a major global-warming speech this afternoon at a windmill factory in Oregon.[Amazingly, he goes to a windmill factory to say that “When we debate energy bills in Washington, it should be more than a competition among industries for special favors, subsidies, and tax breaks.” Is this remarkable cognitive dissonance, or is he saying we don’t need to have these poor windmill folks competing for their pork anymore? Weird.] Being neither in Oregon nor near a TV, I offer the following observations based on the speech’s prepared text, which I had the painful opportunity to read.

I note that his opening joke — that there’s no wind there, so I was invited to give a speech (pause . . . wait for laughter) — is premised on guessing the weather in advance. Just like the agenda he is announcing. The problem is that the premise of McCain’s entire speech is that the rise in earthly temperatures is accelerating, as Al Gore and IPCC head R. K. Pachauri have both recently, if outrageously, repeated — which flies smack in the face of recorded observations.

McCain has big plans for U.S. climate-change legislation, nonetheless. And he is willing to impose these strictures on the U.S. economy unilaterally — without India, Mexico, and China et al. signing on to do the same. But the Arizona senator says he will also negotiate with these countries to persuade them to similar strictures on their own economies (which, I might note, has been tried for a dozen years). And if they don’t agree to go along, well, he’ll start a trade war against them. McCain might want to double-check the express understanding of the Rio and Kyoto treaties: that nations have “common but differentiated responsibilities.” If that remains the regnant understanding — that, roughly, the West must lead the rest — McCain will have a little trouble going after Chinese and Indian goods on the grounds that they’re doing exactly what we’ve asked them to do (i.e., bupkis).

If elected (in late 2008, inaugurated in 2009), McCain says he will begin legislating in what would be record time — particularly for energy taxes in the face of a teetering economic situation — and that his EPA will implement something faster than anything the EPA has ever done before. Which is another way of describing his vow today to give the economy up to two years to bring emissions back down to 2005 levels. Sure, we’re doing better than anyone else in the world — which McCain doesn’t mention, only crisis-talk today, folks — but that’s still a bold prediction. He either knows something really bad about the economy, or isn’t worried about being realistic.

Of course, those specifics would slip dramatically once the politics of actually voting on such a thing began, and this speech really isn’t about specifics. For example, after dismissing the guesswork and computer models we used to rely on for this agenda, in favor of (his, very selective) observations, he then goes rather overboard with claims of our “likely” future, including a greater intensity of storms and forest fires. Those claims are not credibly supported in the literature, they’re just scary. That means, alarmist. Also:

We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them. Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring.

This is nothing short of reckless. McCain is wrong on temperatures, wrong on sea level rise (if the implication is that SLR has accelerated; surely he doesn’t mean we can stop the interglacial SLR), and anecdotal about the rest. And throughout his speech, the anecdotes are either exaggerated, inaccurate, or countered by equal and opposite anecdotal evidence.

McCain says that we are likely to see “changes in crop production.” Well, yes, we probably will. When haven’t we? But is that a clever way — “changes” — to acknowledge that crop yields are higher in a higher-CO2 atmosphere, or is it somehow supposed to sound scary? Is it code for getting rid of the biofuel mandates, or tweaking them? Again, this is just strange. I have said this before about Sen. McCain’s tenure as chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, sometimes in pushing this agenda he seems to insist upon what he, well, just plain knows. There is no need to check facts. This can get quite clumsy. Today he speaks of the “Kyoto Protocols.” Of the Elders of Kyoto, possibly? Sorry, but that’s an entry-level red-flag.

He says that the free-ride granted to most of the world proved the undoing of these “Protocols” — or at least one of them anyway. The fact that none of the parties which promised emission reductions have any clue how to actually reduce emissions, and therefore are not doing so, would seem to me to be a more central feature in Kyoto’s failure.

Keep reading this post . . .

05/12 10:30 PM

Rush's Preview Review   [NRO Staff]

Limbaugh earlier today: 

"Free-market principles to global warming."  Really sounds nice, doesn't it?  Free-market principles to global warming.  After you've accepted a hoax, after you've accepted it's indisputable that man is causing it?  Free-market principles to global warming is a contradiction in terms.  If there was manmade global warming, the free market would already be responding to it in a more vigorous way.  Instead what we have is government telling industry what must be done, and industry reacting to it, because the Drive-Bys have convinced so many customers of all businesses that we face a dire threat, and these customers have been made to believe that they can stop the threat, and they can stop the warming, and they can make their lives matter, and they can count, and they can have meaning in their lives if they go with all this green stuff.  And so businesses are simply going green as a marketing technique.  This is what people think, fine, we'll give it to them.  The free market doesn't respond on its own to false science, by the way.  

A free market would reject false science, for the most part, by definition.  Now, this is all about attracting young voters, this is all about McCain — you talk about independents, social minded conservatives, it's about getting younger voters as well, 'cause they're among those that have seen Gore's movie.  They really think that all this is manmade.  So you have Senator McCain echoing Algore and pretending there's no dispute about manmade global warming.  See, to me, this is historical.  This is an historical chance to drive a wedge between the liberal environmental radicals and the blue-collar workers that Obama cannot get.  Now this is the time for McCain to enhance the party, but instead he's pandering.

05/12 10:21 PM

McCain Promises a Cap'N Trade Crunch   [Edward John Craig]

On the Corner today Larry Kudlow gave voice to the concern that many fiscal conservatives must feel who finally get a look into John McCain's beliefs on global "warming."

As good as John McCain’s pro-growth, supply-side tax plan is, his cap-and-trade strategy unveiled this morning is very hard for conservatives to swallow. The whole cap-and-trade experience in Europe and elsewhere reveals that this is a huge government command-and-control operation that taxes, spends, and regulates on a grand scale. The “cap” part rolls back production to an extent that undermines economic growth. The European cap-and-trade plans are prohibitively expensive, and are themselves hostile to economic growth.

I guess we all knew this was coming from Senator McCain. Perhaps we have been in denial about the issues connected to it. But here the McCain plan is, unveiled in Oregon, with emission caps by 2020 — only twelve years from now — that will somehow move carbon levels back to where they were in 1990.

I don’t claim to understand everything about the cap-and-trade mechanism. But scanning the McCain announcement, I look at bullets like banking and borrowing permits; unlimited initial offsets; integrating with international markets; strategic carbon reserves; early allocation of permits; U.N. negotiations; climate-change adaptation plans; implementation at the local level; comprehensive plans for infrastructure ecosystems; resource planning . . . O my gosh!

I’ve got to bone up and really learn the details about all this. But I truly have to ask: Is this candle worth the game?

05/12 07:23 PM

AP Tacitly Endorses McCain’s GW Speech   [Henry Payne]

As today’s coverage of McCain’s cap-and-trade speech makes clear, one cannot underestimate the power of the press in sustaining the global-warming movement. The Republican candidate’s Oregon speech outlines the usual GW drivel, demanding, reports the Associated Press, that “the country return to 2005 emission levels by 2012; 1990 levels by 2020; and to a level 60 percent below that by 2050.”

Really, and how is the current Kyoto plan to reduce to 1990 levels by 2010 going? CO2 emissions in the EU were 26 percent over their 1990 targets as of 2005.

But, of course, the AP won’t report this failure, meaning that the average reader has no context by which to judge McCain’s fanciful rhetoric.

Consider, by contrast, how AP (that most liberal and most ubiquitous of establishment news sources) reports on a different, “controversial” McCain policy — Iraq. Here are the nut graphs:

KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 7, 2008 — . . . Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, McCain criticized Obama and Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and insisted that last year’s U.S. troop buildup in Iraq brought a glimmer of ‘something approaching normal’ there, despite a recent outbreak of heavy fighting and a U.S. death toll that has surpassed 4,000. Clinton and Obama, still battling for the Democratic presidential nomination, dispute the claims of success, arguing the war has failed to make the United States safer.”

PHOENIX, Ariz., May 12, 2008 — John McCain . . . argues (insisted) that global warming is undeniable despite the fact that temperature data indicates the earth has not warmed in ten years.

“In remarks prepared for delivery Monday at a Portland, Ore., wind turbine manufacturer, the presidential contender says expanded nuclear power must be considered to reduce carbon-fuel emissions. He also sets a goal that by 2050, the country will reduce carbon emissions to a level 60 percent below that emitted in 1990. But leading economists dispute McCain’s reduction targets, arguing that European nations have failed to meet more modest 2010 reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.”

Without journalistic malpractice, the global warming debate would be very different today.

05/12 07:10 PM

McCain on Climate Change   [NRO Staff]

The prepared text of John McCain's climate-change speech today.

Thank you all very much. I appreciate the hospitality of Vestas Wind Technology. Today is a kind of test run for the company. They've got wind technicians here, wind studies, and all these wind turbines, but there's no wind. So now I know why they asked me to come give a speech.

Every day, when there are no reporters and cameras around to draw attention to it, this company and others like it are doing important work. And what we see here is just a glimpse of much bigger things to come. Wind power is one of many alternative energy sources that are changing our economy for the better. And one day they will change our economy forever.

Wind is a clean and predictable source of energy, and about as renewable as anything on earth. Along with solar power, fuel-cell technology, cleaner burning fuels and other new energy sources, wind power will bring America closer to energy independence. Our economy depends upon clean and affordable alternatives to fossil fuels, and so, in many ways, does our security. A large share of the world's oil reserves is controlled by foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart. And as our reliance on oil passes away, their power will vanish with it.

In the coming weeks, I intend to address many of the great challenges that America's energy policies must meet. When we debate energy bills in Washington, it should be more than a competition among industries for special favors, subsidies, and tax breaks. In the Congress, we need to send the special interests on their way — without their favors and subsidies. We need to draw on the best ideas of both parties, and on all the resources a free market can provide. We need to keep our eyes on big goals in energy policy, the serious dangers, and the common interests of the American people.

Today I'd like to focus on just one of those challenges, and among environmental dangers it is surely the most serious of all. Whether we call it "climate change" or "global warming," in the end we're all left with the same set of facts. The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington. Good stewardship, prudence, and simple commonsense demand that we to act meet the challenge, and act quickly.

Some of the most compelling evidence of global warming comes to us from NASA. No longer do we need to rely on guesswork and computer modeling, because satellite images reveal a dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets. And I've seen some of this evidence up close. A few years ago I traveled to the area of Svalbard, Norway, a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. I was shown the southernmost point where a glacier had reached twenty years earlier. From there, we had to venture northward up the fjord to see where that same glacier ends today — because all the rest has melted. On a trip to Alaska, I heard about a national park visitor's center that was built to offer a picture-perfect view of a large glacier. Problem is, the glacier is gone. A work of nature that took ages to form had melted away in a matter of decades.

Our scientists have also seen and measured reduced snowpack, with earlier runoffs in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. We have seen sustained drought in the Southwest, and across the world average temperatures that seem to reach new records every few years. We have seen a higher incidence of extreme weather events. In the frozen wilds of Alaska, the Arctic, Antarctic, and elsewhere, wildlife biologists have noted sudden changes in animal migration patterns, a loss of their habitat, a rise in sea levels. And you would think that if the polar bears, walruses, and sea birds have the good sense to respond to new conditions and new dangers, then humanity can respond as well.

We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them. Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring. We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.

There are vital measures we can take in the short term, even as we focus on long-term policies to mitigate the effects of global warming. In the years ahead, we are likely to see reduced water supplies, more forest fires than in previous decades, changes in crop production, more heat waves afflicting our cities and a greater intensity in storms. Each one of these consequences of climate change will require policies to protect our citizens, especially those most vulnerable to violent weather. Each one will require new precautions in the repair and construction of our roads, bridges, railways, seawalls and other infrastructure. Some state and local governments have already begun their planning and preparation for extreme events and other impacts of climate change. The federal government can help them in many ways, above all by coordinating their efforts, and I am committed to providing that support.

To lead in this effort, however, our government must strike at the source of the problem — with reforms that only Congress can enact and the president can sign. We know that greenhouse gasses are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change. And we know that among all greenhouse gasses, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion. Yet for all the good work of entrepreneurs and inventors in finding cleaner and better technologies, the fundamental incentives of the market are still on the side of carbon-based energy. This has to change before we can make the decisive shift away from fossil fuels.

For the market to do more, government must do more by opening new paths of invention and ingenuity. And we must do this in a way that gives American businesses new incentives and new rewards to seek, instead of just giving them new taxes to pay and new orders to follow. The most direct way to achieve this is through a system that sets clear limits on all greenhouse gases, while also allowing the sale of rights to excess emissions. And this is the proposal I will submit to the Congress if I am elected president — a cap-and-trade system to change the dynamic of our energy economy.

As a program under the Clean Air Act, the cap-and-trade system achieved enormous success in ridding the air of acid rain. And the same approach that brought a decline in sulfur dioxide emissions can have an equally dramatic and permanent effect on carbon emissions. Instantly, automakers, coal companies, power plants, and every other enterprise in America would have an incentive to reduce carbon emissions, because when they go under those limits they can sell the balance of permitted emissions for cash. As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy. It is very hard to picture venture capitalists, corporate planners, small businesses and environmentalists all working to the same good purpose. But such cooperation is actually possible in the case of climate change, and this reform will set it in motion.

The people of this country have a genius for adapting, solving problems, and inventing new and better ways to accomplish our goals. But the federal government can't just summon those talents by command — only the free market can draw them out. A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy. Those who want clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels will have their opportunity through a new market that rewards those and other innovations in clean energy. The market will evolve, too, by requiring sensible reductions in greenhouse gases, but also by allowing full flexibility in how industry meets that requirement. Entrepreneurs and firms will know which energy investments they should make. And the highest rewards will go to those who make the smartest, safest, most responsible choices. A cap-and-trade reform wi ll also create a profitable opportunity for rural America to receive market-based payments — instead of government subsidies — for the conservation practices that store carbon in the soils of our nation's farms.

We will cap emissions according to specific goals, measuring progress by reference to past carbon emissions. By the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission, by 2020, a return to 1990 levels, and so on until we have achieved at least a reduction of sixty percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. In the course of time, it may be that new ideas and technologies will come along that we can hardly imagine today, allowing all industries to change with a speed that will surprise us. More likely, however, there will be some companies that need extra emissions rights, and they will be able to buy them. The system to meet these targets and timetables will give these companies extra time to adapt — and that is good economic policy. It is also a matter of simple fairness, because the cap-and-trade system will create jobs, improve livelihoods, and strengthen futures across our country.

The goal in all of this is to assure an energy supply that is safe, secure, diverse, and domestic. And in pursuit of these objectives, we cannot afford to take economic growth and job creation for granted. A strong and growing economy is essential to all of our goals, and especially the goal of finding alternatives to carbon-based technology. We want to turn the American economy toward cleaner and safer energy sources. And you can't achieve that by imposing costs that the American economy cannot sustain.

As part of my cap-and-trade incentives, I will also propose to include the purchase of offsets from those outside the scope of the trading system. This will broaden the array of rewards for reduced emissions, while also lowering the costs of compliance with our new emissions standards. Through the sale of offsets — and with strict standards to assure that reductions are real — our agricultural sector alone can provide as much as forty percent of the overall reductions we will require in greenhouse gas emissions. And in the short term, farmers and ranchers can do it in some of the most cost-effective ways.

Over time, an increasing fraction of permits for emissions could be supplied by auction, yielding federal revenues that can be put to good use. Under my plan, we will apply these and other federal funds to help build the infrastructure of a post-carbon economy. We will support projects to advance technologies that capture and store carbon emissions. We will assist in transmitting wind- and solar-generated power from states that have them to states that need them. We will add to current federal efforts to develop promising technologies, such as plug-ins, hybrids, flex-fuel vehicles, and hydrogen-powered cars and trucks. We will also establish clear standards in government-funded research, to make sure that funding is effective and focused on the right goals.

And to create greater demand for the best technologies and practices in energy conservation, we will use the purchasing power of the United States government. Our government can hardly expect citizens and private businesses to adopt or invest in low-carbon technologies when it doesn't always hold itself to the same standard. We need to set a better example in Washington, by consistently applying the best environmental standards to every purchase our government makes.

As we move toward all of these goals, and over time put the age of fossil fuels behind us, we must consider every alternative source of power, and that includes nuclear power. When our cap-and-trade policy is in place, there will be a sudden and sustained pursuit in the market for new investment opportunities in low-emission fuel sources. And here we have a known, proven energy source that requires exactly zero emissions. We have 104 nuclear reactors in our country, generating about twenty percent of our electricity. These reactors alone spare the atmosphere from about 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released every year. That's the annual equivalent of nearly all emissions from all the cars we drive in America. Europe, for its part, has 197 reactors in operation, and nations including France and Belgium derive more than half their electricity from nuclear power. Those good p ractices contribute to the more than two billion metric tons of carbon dioxide avoided every year, worldwide, because of nuclear energy. It doesn't take a leap in logic to conclude that if we want to arrest global warming, then nuclear energy is a powerful ally in that cause.

In a cap-and-trade energy economy, the cost of building new reactors will be less prohibitive. The incentives to invest in a mature, zero-emissions technology will be stronger. New research and innovation will help the industry to overcome the well known drawbacks to nuclear power, such as the transport and storage of waste. And our government can help in these efforts. We can support research to extend the use of existing plants. Above all, we must make certain that every plant in America is safe from the designs of terrorists. And when all of this is assured, it will be time again to expand our use of one of the cleanest, safest, and most reliable sources of energy on earth.

For all of the last century, the profit motive basically led in one direction — toward machines, methods, and industries that used oil and gas. Enormous good came from that industrial growth, and we are all the beneficiaries of the national prosperity it built. But there were costs we weren't counting, and often hardly noticed. And these terrible costs have added up now, in the atmosphere, in the oceans, and all across the natural world. They are no longer tenable, sustainable, or defensible. And what better way to correct past errors than to turn the creative energies of the free market in the other direction? Under the cap-and-trade system, this can happen. In all its power, the profit motive will suddenly begin to shift and point the other way toward cleaner fuels, wiser ways, and a healthier planet.

As a nation, we make our own environmental plans and our own resolutions. But working with other nations to arrest climate change can be an even tougher proposition. China, India, and other developing economic powers in particular are among the greatest contributors to global warming today — increasing carbon emissions at a furious pace — and they are not receptive to international standards. Nor do they think that we in the industrialized world are in any position to preach the good news of carbon-emission control. We made most of our contributions to global warming before anyone knew about global warming.

This set of facts and perceived self-interests proved the undoing of the Kyoto Protocols. As president, I will have to deal with the same set of facts. I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears. I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges. I will not accept the same dead-end of failed diplomacy that claimed Kyoto. The United States will lead and will lead with a different approach — an approach that speaks to the interests and obligations of every nation.

Shared dangers mean shared duties, and global problems require global cooperation. The United States and our friends in Europe cannot alone deal with the threat of global warming. No nation should be exempted from its obligations. And least of all should we make exceptions for the very countries that are accelerating carbon emissions while the rest of us seek to reduce emissions. If we are going to establish meaningful environmental protocols, then they must include the two nations that have the potential to pollute the air faster, and in greater annual volume, than any nation ever in history.

At the same time, we will continue in good faith to negotiate with China and other nations to enact the standards and controls that are in the interest of every nation — whatever their stage of economic development. And America can take the lead in offering these developing nations the low-carbon technologies that we will make and they will need. One good idea or invention to reduce carbon emissions is worth a thousand finely crafted proposals at a conference table. And the governments of these developing economic powers will soon recognize, as America is beginning to do, their urgent need for cleaner-burning fuels and safer sources of energy.

If the efforts to negotiate an international solution that includes China and India do not succeed, we still have an obligation to act.

In my approach to global climate-control efforts, we will apply the principle of equal treatment. We will apply the same environmental standards to industries in China, India, and elsewhere that we apply to our own industries. And if industrializing countries seek an economic advantage by evading those standards, I would work with the European Union and other like-minded governments that plan to address the global warming problem to develop a cost equalization mechanism to apply to those countries that decline to enact a similar cap.

For all of its historical disregard of environmental standards, it cannot have escaped the attention of the Chinese regime that China's skies are dangerously polluted, its beautiful rivers are dying, its grasslands vanishing, its coastlines receding, and its own glaciers melting. We know many of these signs from our own experience — from environmental lessons learned the hard way. And today, all the world knows that they are the signs of even greater trouble to come. Pressing on blindly with uncontrolled carbon emissions is in no one's interest, especially China's. And the rest of the world stands ready to help.

Like other environmental challenges — only more so — global warming presents a test of foresight, of political courage, and of the unselfish concern that one generation owes to the next. We need to think straight about the dangers ahead, and to meet the problem with all the resources of human ingenuity at our disposal. We Americans like to say that there is no problem we can't solve, however complicated, and no obstacle we cannot overcome if we meet it together. I believe this about our country. I know this about our country. And now it is time for us to show those qualities once again.

Thank you.

05/12 03:50 PM

Quick-Draw Hill   [NRO Staff]

Before delivery, Senator Clinton reacts:

Hillary Clinton’s Reaction to Sen. McCain’s Climate Change Proposal

“Senator McCain’s proposal simply does not go far enough to address the growing threat that the climate crisis poses to our children and grandchildren. Real leadership means taking this problem head on with a comprehensive, science-based plan instead of halfway measures. While Senator McCain's proposals may be improvement on President Bush’s, that’s not saying much.”

05/12 03:12 PM

Energy Subsidies   [Edward John Craig]

The Wall Street Journal today offers some numbers on government subsidies for various forms of energy, from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Wind is pretty high up the food chain.

05/12 01:12 PM

Fight Al, not Alternative Fuels   [Marlo Lewis]

The food-for-fuel debate continues . . .

Reader Duane Truitt writes in responding to my “Food for Fuel is No Laughing Matter” and suggests that Planet Gore spend its time fighting Al Gore’s cult of global warming, not alternative fuels:  

Your article that tries to debunk Cliff May’s “The Hunger” contains several errors in logic based upon faulty assumptions:

1. You blame corn-based ethanol for the entire worldwide inflation in food commodity prices of the last two years, laying responsibility for millions or billions of starving poor on the lack of corn to eat. That just isn’t so. Yet, even though you go in some detail in refuting May’s point that total corn production is much higher than it was just five years ago, you still end up having to admit that total U.S. non-ethanol corn crop production stayed virtually level over the last four years.Do the math:

For 2004/2005, 11.8 bb less 1.2 bb for ethanol use = 10.6 bb for non-ethanol use.
For 2007/2008 the estimated numbers are 13.0 bb less 3.2 bb = 9.8 bb.
The total reduction = 0.8 bb, or about 7.6 percent of non-ethanol corn.

Yet worldwide food prices have increased, as you report, something like 25 percent to 117 percent for non-corn-based commodities in the last year. It is fairly ridiculous to blame a minor drop in non-ethanol corn for such huge cost increases on non-corn commodities. You have not made the connection in your article, nor have you cited any specific causality or direct link between corn and other food crops that are not derived from corn. You could point to a link between feed corn prices and meat, egg, and dairy prices that are linked to the cost of animal feed, but you did not do that. You pointed instead to cooking oil, wheat, and rice that are specifically not linked to corn. Even if you did, the world’s poor don’t eat much if any meat or eggs anyway . . . it’s always been too expensive, so the world’s poor eat mostly basic staple grains like rice or wheat.

2. My first point is especially cogent when one considers that the normal year-to-year variations in the corn crop (as with other food crops) tend to be of a similar if not significantly greater magnitude from year to year, due to a wide variety of physical and market causes. In fact, citing the USDA report you linked to for your stats, over any comparable four-year time period between 1980/81 and 2007/08, the total U.S. corn exports (remember, it’s the export fraction of the crop that affects world prices that you’re griping about) varied by anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent between peaks and valleys of export production during the “pre-ethanol era” (before 2004/2005). It would seem, in fact, that if you look at the graph on the first page of the USDA report, one thing that jumps right out at the reader is that the oscillations in the corn export crop have actually gotten much smaller since the ethanol era began. So in other words, it makes a lot more economic sense for farmers now to produce corn, lots of it, every year now, because they are now much less susceptible to the bottom falling out on the world market price of corn with this new, steadily growing demand for their corn crop. Once grown, in an emergency some of our corn crop can always be redirected to food supplies. If the grain is not grown in the first place, there is no excess capacity to deal with a worldwide crop failure. 

3. You do attempt to link corn and wheat production by pointing out to an increase in the U.S. acreage in acreage devoted to corn as compared to a slight decrease in U.S. wheat acreage. However, if you knew anything about farming, you’d realize that very little land that is useful for growing corn in America is going to be used for growing wheat, and vice versa. Corn grows well on land that has excellent loam soil with abundant summer rainfall, as is typical in the corn belt of eastern Great Plains states (eastern NE, IA, IL, etc.). Corn does not do well on more arid lands where most of the wheat crop is grown (the western Great Plains states like western NE, KS, western ND/SD, MT, etc.), as well as some portions of the Rocky Mountain states like north ID, eastern WA, eastern OR) because the soils are not as rich and the available rainfall does not support corn crops. You cannot simply convert large swaths of the wheat belt into growing corn crops.

4. You fail to mention that there is no shortage of agricultural lands in the U.S. Farmers could, if the U.S. government’s nanny-state agricultural policies allowed it, increase the output of all manner of crops, including corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, potatoes, and other staples. Of course, if we did so, the markets would crash for all of these crops virtually overnight, and there would be hell to pay for the politicians who allowed that to happen. The fact that U.S. ethanol production is being ramped up over a period of a decade and a half is easily sustainable without any major market disruptions.

5. You give short shrift to the other factors that, far beyond the effects of corn ethanol production, are moving food prices upward today — such as the increasing demand from huge, hungry, and economically strong customers like China and India . . . in case you haven’t noticed, the same guys are also driving up the costs of virtually every commodity in the world today, such as energy, concrete, building materials, etc. There is also the fact of a weak U.S. dollar and the recent credit-markets meltdown that have caused a massive rush of investment funds into “safe” commodities like petroleum and food staples, greatly lifting futures prices as well as current prices.

Your article is part and parcel of Planet Gore’s misguided focus on trashing alternative fuels production, when the real purpose of the blog ought to be to debunk the religion of anthropogenic global warming.

America needs alternative fuels — not to battle Al Gore and the U.N., but to battle the bad guys who today are stealing us blind on the sales of overpriced petroleum and gas — Chavez, Putin, and Ahmadinejad, not to mention our so-called allies the Saudi royals. They are not only stealing us blind, but they are using very same money that they extort from us to fund the terrorist bad guys who are killing our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and murdering civilians all over the world.

This dog piling on ethanol has really jumped the shark lately . . . anytime that you have the New York Times and the Washington Post agreeing with NRO that it’s time to stop producing ethanol, we can all be assured that ethanol production is a good thing for America. When Chavez and Putin and Ahmadinejad are criticizing and trying to delegitimize the use of alternative fuels, we can be assured that the bad guys have finally realized that they went too far in ramping up the price of their product, because now all of a sudden they are complaining about the competition.

Corn-based ethanol is not the uber-solution for alternative fuels (no single technology is) — but one thing is certain: every gallon of ethanol that we make is one gallon less that we have to buy from the bad guys at inflated prices. And since most of the hydrocarbon fuel input required to manufacture corn ethanol in the U.S. is derived from domestic coal and gas resources (to the tune of a ratio of nearly 6 to 1 reduction in imported petroleum fuels per gal. of ethanol), this resource is a definite weapon in our war of survival with the world’s bad guys.

Mr. Truitt’s opening complaint is that I “blame corn-based ethanol for the entire worldwide inflation in food commodity prices of the last two years.” Maybe he only skimmed my column, because I noted my agreement with Cliff May that “the biggest factor driving up grain prices is global income and demand growth.” I also mentioned “high petroleum prices” and “drought in Australia” as additional causes of grain price inflation. My column made two simple points — Cliff wrongly trivialized both the impact of rising grain prices on world hunger and the role of biofuel policy in driving up those prices.

He observes that, over the last four years, U.S. corn production for purposes other than ethanol declined by 0.8 billion bushels, or about 7.6 percent, yet world food prices shot up by much more. From these facts he concludes that, “It is fairly ridiculous to blame a minor drop in non-ethanol corn for such huge cost increases on non-corn commodities.”

No, it’s not ridiculous when global demand for food and feed is growing rapidly. As he mentions in paragraph 5, demand for grain is “increasing . . . from huge, hungry, and economically-strong food crop customers like China and India . . . the same guys [who] are also driving up the costs of virtually every commodity in the world today, such as energy, concrete, building materials, etc.” Like energy, the demand for grain is price inelastic. People must eat about the same quantity of food to stay healthy whether food is costly or cheap. Consequently, if demand surges but supply lags, the price increase can be sudden and steep. In this light, reconsider the World Bank’s analysis: “From 2004 to 2007, global maize [corn] production increased 51 million tons, biofuel use in the U.S. increased 50 million tons and global consumption for all other uses increased 33 million tons, which caused global stocks to decline by 30 million tons.”

Keep reading this post . . .

05/12 12:00 PM

Ökodiktatur   [Edward John Craig]

Apropos of Chris Horner’s post below, CCNet’s Benny Peiser has the following today from the Continent:

EU INDUSTRY COMMISSIONER WARNS OF “ECO-DICTORSHIP”

Focus Magazin, 11 May 2008

EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen is dead against the current plans by the European Commission to reduce CO2 emissions for new cars. He is warning against rules that interfere in the private life of citizens.

Verheugen warned against patronizing citizens with ever more climate laws and regulations. “I watch with growing uneasiness how legislators constantly issue new regulations on all levels that intrude the private sphere,” he told a newspaper.“We are approaching a state which I would call lifestyle-regulation” Verheugen said. He did not wish to live in a society where people would be prescribed how they would have to live in their own four walls. Already people were talking about an “eco-dictatorship”: “We shouldn’t put off citizens,” he warned.

05/12 11:08 AM

All Aboard the Kyoto Express?   [Chris Horner]

Today AFP reports that “A senior EU official said Sunday that a European Union deadline to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new cars by 2012 was unrealistic.” Yes. It is important for Europe to remain realistic and thereby retain its position as “world leader” for, say, U.S. presidential aspirants to follow.

2012 is of course when Kyoto expires, so this is Europe’s supposed Kyoto policy for transport going down the tubes (transport as a whole accounts for 21 percent of EU emissions, which are projected to be 26 percent over their baseline-year 1990 emissions by Kyoto's mid-point in 2010). Maybe they can just make up the difference with a recession?

Here are the specifics:

Brussels has proposed that all cars sold in Europe in 2012, whether European-made or not, should reach an overall objective of 120-130 grammes (4.2-4.6 ounces) of CO2 emitted per kilometre (0.6 miles), as opposed to an average of 160 grammes today.

 

The EU executive wants to penalise automakers who do not reach the goal by 2012 with a charge of 20 euros (30 dollars) per extra gramme of CO2 per car, with the penalties rising to 95 euros by 2015.

 

"Even the Commission knows that not all new cars will meet these standards by 2012," Verheugen continued, adding that "there are already calls from the (European) Parliament to extend the deadline to 2015."

By the way, here’s how our friends, whom I like to simply call “Double Down,” have done in fulfilling their completely realistic Kyoto promise to reduce CO2 and other GHGs to 8 percent below 1990 levels (including from transport) as of 2005. See the green line; the others are an annual joke whose slopes are sharpened two out of every three years since agreeing to Kyoto.

Yes, 2005. Brussels is quite slow playing with Member State data. But enough is out there to know that the 0/8% downturn was tied to the German economic downturn which, like EU emissions, reversed, and beginning next month this will be updated to show an increase of  >1% each for both 2006 and 2007. So after shutting down East German post-reunification and the UK's dashing for gas, and after picking the low-hanging emissions fruit in an economy that has grown more slowly than ours and whose population increased more slowly than ours, Europe is basically back where they started.

Regular PG readers know that this chart is just GHGs, as it appears they’ve stopped publishing this embarrassing chart:

Seeing this, just a few months ago they decided that the obvious next, presumably realistic step is to promise a 20-percent reduction by 2020.

Wouldn’t want to be unrealistic, now would we? Now I must sign off to go watch Sen. McCain give a major speech about how we need to replicate this glorious success. It would be a shame to keep taking Europe's manufacturing jobs (new steel jobs in KY and AL, for example) when they could go somewhere else. Besides, China, India, and Mexico need stimulus packages, too, you know.

05/12 10:48 AM

In Search of the White Grizzly   [Edward John Craig]

The Boston Herald noted on Sunday that the polar bear is not so endangered after all.

Thursday is the deadline set by a federal judge in Alaska for the Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether the polar bear is a threatened or endangered species.

All the evidence shows the polar bear doesn’t need his help. . . .

Polar bears have been around for 100,000 years, surviving much warmer temperatures before the last ice age. Population estimates are subject to huge and unknowable uncertainties. Native groups say there are more than there were several decades ago. Environmentalists are pursuing another petition to list a seal species as endangered — one eaten by bears, it seems. If there weren’t so many bears, there’d be more seals.

Canada, on whose territory about two-thirds of the bears live, has refused to classify them as threatened or endangered. The United States should follow suit.

05/12 09:15 AM

Friday, May 09, 2008

Speaking of "Climate-Change Tours"   [Chris Horner]

What with John McCain kicking off his "climate change tour," having just landed myself from the last of my own (campus-wise, that is, with a few more professional-audience gigs in the next fortnight before a break) it is incumbent upon me to thank gracious hosts, from St. John's and St. Benedict's — not once, but twice —Hanover College, Arizona State, Case Western, Central Florida, Michigan State, Lawrence University and Wisconsin-Madison. I apologize if I've skipped someone, there were a few private-sector talks in the mix as well, and the past few days were not exactly United Airlines' finest, so I'm a big groggy.

Thanks to all who hosted me, and participated. The questions seemed to get more substantive as events proceeded. Perhaps prefacing my remarks by describing how the inevitable ad hominem during Q&A would be received helped keep the conversation focused on facts and ideas. So hats off to the various campus groups and the help of CFACT and YAF. I look forward to the fall semester. Who knows, maybe with so "much climate change going on," we will see spark an actual political debate in the campaign or in Congress. So far, I've seen an awful lot more substance out of college students.

05/09 05:41 PM

Solare!   [Iain Murray]

From my coleague Myron Ebell — too good not to share:

According to an article in today’s Greenwire, Concentrating Solar Power has a bright future if:

• federal renewable tax credits are extended; and
• a federal 25% by 2025 renewable portfolio standard for electric utilities is adopted; and
• a carve-out specifically for solar is included in the 25% RPS; and
• European-style "feed-in" tariffs are adopted; and
• more transmission lines to remote areas with high solar resources are built: and
• a multibillion-dollar federal fund is created; and
• a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions is enacted.

If this level of government support were given to horse-drawn carriages and wagons, the era of the automobile would soon be a brief interlude in the age of the horse.

05/09 03:15 PM

Drew Thornley Wind Podcast   [Edward John Craig]

FYI: yesterday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation put up a new edition of its weekly podcast, the Texas PolicyCast. Planet Gore contributor Drew Thornley is this week's guest — delivering a seven-minute primer on the nuts and bolts (and the pros and cons) of wind energy.

Check it out. You can either listen to the PolicyCast on the Texas Policy website, or download it to your iPod or MP3 player. 

And if you like it and want to hear more — the series highlights not only environmental issues, but also education, taxes, health care, criminal justice, and government over-regulation — you can even subscribe on iTunes and have each new edition sent to you automatically. Technology is a beautiful thing.

05/09 02:25 PM

Saint Barackstar   [Edward John Craig]

On CNN today, Obama was addressing “technology workers” in Beaverton, Oregon (it looked like no more than a few dozen people, and the Barackstar wasn’t particularly energized: maybe he’s not a small night-club performer — needs to play the big arenas).

In the span of two minutes, he twice said that he “wants to invest” in “millions of green jobs” and “save our planet in the bargain.”

Iain Murray dispatched green jobs yesterday. And Chris Horner pointed out that Barack has already had ample opportunities at “legi-salvation.” So what has he done?

One thing he won’t be doing is voting for the Warner-Lieberman bill, which appears to be dead in the water.

05/09 02:20 PM

Auto Execs Stump for Higher Gas Prices   [Henry Payne]

Washington’s draconian CAFE mandates to fight global “warming” are being felt in perverse ways. Making the rounds before the Detroit media last week, Chrysler executives rallied around higher gas prices — criticizing the Clinton/McCain tax-holiday plan and applauding the trendtoward $4 a gallon gas.

“While (CEO Bob Nardelli) empathized with the pain higher gas prices causes for consumers,” reported the Detroit Free Press, “he said the nation must have an energy policy that is aligned with the country’s larger goals.”

Huh?

Why is the head of a company that is hemorrhaging profit — because higher gas prices are driving consumers from high-profit SUVs into lower-profit sedans — stumping for high gas prices?

Because the federal government has mandated an “energy policy” that, by 2020, tells automakers they have to sell (not just manufacture) a product line that averages 35 mpg — or 40 percent higher than today (keep in mind, product averages haven’t changed in the last two decades). That will cost the automakers billions in product redevelopment — billions that will be wasted unless consumers have a market incentive to buy more fuel-efficient cars. And that incentive is higher gas prices.

Automakers, in other words, can’t gain from Washington’s edict without consumer pain.

“You have to have alignment,” says Jim Press, Chrysler president and vice chairman, between the market and government mandates. Autonation CEO Mike Jackson, the country’s largest auto dealer, was more blunt, telling the Free Press that the senators’ gas-tax holiday demonstrated “zero intellectual honesty.”

Ford CEO Alan Mulally goes even further than his Chrysler peers, encouraging much higher federal gas taxes in order to insulate the industry from gas price swings (as Europe has done) and permanently incentivizing consumers to buy the higher-mileage cars that Washington is mandating.

Reading Nardelli’s comments, attentive consumers might start to catch on to the CAFE con. But that’s the beauty of backdoor GW mandates — they are intentionally opaque to shield pols from their true economic costs and real-world consequences.

05/09 12:46 PM

Obama's Dreams of My Beamer   [Edward John Craig]

As Charles Krauthammer argues on the homepage today, Hillary Clinton eventually found — albeit too late — Barack Obama’s weakness. He’s an out-of-touch elitist, more at home with the radical academic Left than with the average American. His comments on the U.S. auto industry that Henry Payne highlighted on Planet Gore yesterday certainly support that judgment, as does the barrage of viewer mail we’ve gotten on the subject — too numerous to print.

He sounds like someone who thought that he was supposed to be driving a better car — he wanted to be in the BMW. He DESERVED a better car.

How typical of a liberal eitist — policy by personal anecdote.

Another offers a counter-anecdote:

For what it’s worth, my father, mother, and brother successively drove a Monarch — the Mercury version of the Granada — for over 300,000 miles. Do you think Obama exaggerates a little? Ours was a 1975 model, I believe, and my mom drove it (solo) from California to Colorado in 1989, so she had faith in a 15-year-old US-built “piece of junk.”

Doubtless, your mother also had reasons to be proud of her country.

05/09 11:20 AM

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Obama's Revealing Car Comments   [Henry Payne]

Barack Obama continued his Bash Detroit tour this week, telling an Indianapolis radio station that his first car, a 1970s-era Ford Granada, “may be the worst car that Detroit ever built.”

As ever, Obama’s car comments are more revealing about him than the industry about which he pretends to be an expert:

"This thing was a tin can. It was during the '70s when oil had just gone up, so they were trying to compete with the Japanese," Obama continued. "They wanted to keep the cars big, so they made them out of tin foil. It would rattle and shake. You basically couldn't go over 80 (mph) without the thing getting out of control."

Remember, this was the age of the federal 55-mph speed limit mandate, that era’s moral equivalent of today’s twisty light bulb edicts. So what was a good lib like Obama doing driving an immoral 80 miles-per-hour? Wasn’t that fuelish? Against the law?

As for the car itself, the Granada was one of Ford’s best-selling cars (over 300,000 units sold in 1975) — a popular design positioned to compete, not against the Japanese, but against Mercedes. At least Obama gets the “tin can” quality right: the Granada was a mid-size car built to save money on a compact car chassis — but aren’t tinny compact cars exactly what green Obama wants to mandate for everyone?