Obama's Dilemma on Keystone XL . . . As If

The New York Times would have us believe that the President faces a tough choice on the Keystone XL pipeline project.  The only tough choice he faces are which lies he will trot out to justify betraying American workers who would benefit from the project.  The Greenies were in full throated protest today over the impending decision, even though the outcome is not in doubt.  The original pipeline was rejected because of some not believable nonsense about protecting Nebraska grasslands.  Those objections have been set aside with a new plan that has received approval from the governor of Nebraska.  But the left has made clear all along that their objection is linked to global warming, not any harm the pipeline might cause grasslands.

All that is left now is to see how Obama hides the fact that his administration's agenda is driven entirely by the pseudo-religious agenda of the left.  The oil trapped in the tar sands of Alberta is going to find its way to market, no matter what the administration does.  The only question is whether Americans get jobs as a result or not.  The President recently announced his sixth pivot to jobs and the economy; he will abandon this pivot in record time as soon as the Keystone decision is announced.  There are unions who are in favor of the pipeline, but that won't matter.  Obama is dedicate to the farthest left of his base.

Bad Day to Miss the News

I missed the news yesterday and missed some good news stories, which are infrequent enough. (Work and class pressures were too much.)

Pension Reform Measure Stays on on the Ballot, Survives Two Lawsuits

In the first lawsuit, the California Public Employment Relations Board tried to take the almost unprecedented step of preventing a citizen initiative on pension reform to reach the ballot on the thin legal argument that it was actually a city government sponsored initiative, which violates good faith bargaining principles.

In his ruling, Judge William Dato said case law is clear that the court should block a measure only when it is clear beyond a doubt that it is invalid. He said he found no compelling reason to keep the initiative from the ballot when its legality can be still be challenged later.

Exactly. Further, even if city officials were involved in the initiative process, which is what the PERB alleges, they are citizens, too, and have the right to launch an initiative process.

The second lawsuit

. . . filed by mayoral candidate and attorney Hud Collins, claims the measure is a major revision to the City Charter, and can't be put on the June ballot by way of petition signatures.

But Judge Steven Denton ruled that the initiative won't affect the "structure" of city government, so it's a valid amendment to the charter.

So much for pre-election legal challenges. This initiative will clearly pass in June. I think the unions know it, hence the legal wrangling. Get ready for post-election lawsuits to prevent the law from taking effect. If any city employee is reading this blog, could you please explain how this hurts you; I understand how the union bosses get hurt, but how does the union member get hurt.

Comprehensive Smackdown of Warmist Scaremongering

The WSJ published a second smackdown of the theory that man made CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming. Of course increased CO2 has some impact, the questions about how much and whether this is even a problem are not clear. Further, the supposed climate experts have no clue as to whether the vast economic tradeoffs necessary to shift from a carbon based energy economy are worth it. They rail against supposed non-experts who question their findings, and yet launch themselves into economic discussions in which they are clearly uneducated and untrained. The pseudo-scientific cult of warmism has all the hallmarks of religion. A few choice quotes from the scientists who have gone public with debunking the theory that we are all doomed.

When predictions fail, we say the theory is "falsified" and we should look for the reasons for the failure.
. . .
From the graph it appears that the projections exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth's temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.
. . .
Given this dubious track record of prediction, it is entirely reasonable to ask for a second opinion.
. . .
The Trenberth letter tells us that decarbonization of the world's economy would "drive decades of economic growth." This is not a scientific statement nor is there evidence it is true. A premature global-scale transition from hydrocarbon fuels would require massive government intervention to support the deployment of more expensive energy technology. If there were economic advantages to investing in technology that depends on taxpayer support, companies like Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Millenium, SpectraWatt, Solyndra, Ener1 and the Renewable Energy Development Corporation would be prospering instead of filing for bankruptcy in only the past few months.

Thanks for that.

As I continue to point out, if the warmists were serious they would have called for a carbon tax with an income tax offset as the economically most efficient means of delivering CO2 reduction. That they do not is proof of their statist aims.

Santorum's Odds on In-Trade Drop

Ok, I admit this is today's news, but Santorum has too much big government baggage and emphasis on social issues when the nation has to face down the debt-star. I would hope that social conservatives see that government that is limited in all areas is to their advantage. Notice how every expansion of government eventually intrudes on religious beliefs, usually in a negative way, e.g. Obamacare vs the Catholic Church. Santorum can make a big show of defending Catholicism against Obamacare, but he has some history in causing the problem in the first place.

The Truth About Global Warming

Andrew Coyne has one of the best articles explaining the difficulties of untangling the arguments about AGW that I have read. It is titled Coyne on Climategate. The Truth is out there. Somewhere. I recommend a full read. But I also offer a few comments. To my friends on the right who doubt AGW, I offer the following two incontrovertible facts. Carbon dioxide is one of the green house gases that keeps the earth livable by raising the temperature above the black body equilibrium. Levels of CO2 have been rising steadily in a measurable and statistically significant manner for at least fifty years, for a total increase on the order of 35%. It is therefore unscientific and unreasonable to presume that this results in zero impact on earth's climate. How much impact, and how catastrophic, are of course subject to debate.

To those on the left who might be reading I offer this. The science is not settled. Eminent scientists such as Freeman Dyson, who offer nuanced critiques of AGW, are not ignorant "denialists" in the pay of energy companies. The magnitude of past and present warming is very difficult to measure, the use of modeling and proxies only makes the issues more complex. To say that the added CO2 in the atmosphere will result in catastrophe is certain to stretch credulity, when much is still unknown about other sources of climate change. I offer as trump card the following. Prior to the current age, the Holocene, the earth has gone through a series of ice ages only briefly interrupted by warm period such as ours, and the general trend of each ice age has been to be colder than the prior one. And no one has a widely accepted theory as to why. If this widely known phenomenon can not be explained by the models in use by global warming advocates today, we categorically can not put full faith in predictions of disaster.

Which brings us to the political part of the equation. The debate would not be so important if the left had not seized the science to argue, ex cathedra, that we must trust the science and that the only possible solution is a new world socialist order. Even if the science was settled, and it is not, the question of how to proceed is primarily a political and not a scientific question. Better for all parties to have a debate about the best shape of policy that admits to the possibility of some error in the scientific consensus. That way the scientists could cease to be advocates and perform real science and we would debating the issue in the realm of politics and economics, where policy should be debated.

Climate Conspiracy Explained by Iowahawk with Mathy Stuff

Ace, of Ace of Spades, has liberated a comment from Iowahawk who normally provides hysterical satire for our amusement (see link in this morning's post). Iowahawk explains the shenanigans behind the climate research scandal in East Anglia, complete with mathy explanations of linear regression. It is a bit of a tough read, but I recommend anyone who can follow read the article. Some highlights:

2. Next, Mann et al. regressed the 100 years or so of observed temperatures against the proxy variable principle components:

y = b0 + b1*PC1 + b2*PC2 + ... + bp*PCp + error

the regression coefficients (b's) estimated from recent data were then applied to the older proxy PCs to obtain retrospective "backcasts" or "hindcasts" of the temperatures in 1015, 1016,... 1850.

Voila! The Mann et al. statistical model resulted in the now infamous hockey stick, showing a radical increase in global temperatures in recent years versus the relatively flat milenial variation. This was in large part the basis for the IPCC report.

...

Now, if you've been following this, Mann's entire temperature reconstruction method rests on knowing (observing) recent periodic global temperatures, y. Quibbling about principle components aside, that's the dependent variable in the backcasts. But as is now becoming increasingly plain, y was constructed from an undocumented process that took raw ground station data and ran it through a black box that included smoothing, filtering, inference, manipulation, baling wire, glue and the juice of one whole lemon. This is what the CRU people are calling "valued added homogenized data." Or what normal people call "made up horseshit." It's also the temperature data that dozens, if not hundreds of AGW studies are based on.

This is in fact scandalous to good scientific process and the real scandal is not that some emails were compromised.



We should ask ourselves why we came to this end. I believe it is because we asked science to perform a task it will never be up to. Future predictions based on scientific method will always be imprecise and will necessarily not answer the question of what to do about the situation posed. Even if it were proved that man's carbon emissions are causing temperatures to rise, it is not clear what the best policy would be to deal with it. Our values, our ideology, economics, and yes, politics, all come into play in determining a way ahead. By putting all of the pressure on SCIENCE to answer the question of what to do about increased carbon dioxide in the air, we have shifted the political fight to the realm of science, where it does not belong. The result is science that is conducted like politics. As someone else said, science may be objective, but scientists clearly are not. Given the pressure to produce an answer that would result in more grant money, one can see the economic incentives that tempted climate researchers to fudge their data. This does not excuse their ethical lapses, but in fact shows that ethics matter most when the stakes are so high. Given the defensive nature of the "researchers," the skeptics necessarily became more aggressive and unapologetic in their criticisms, which provoked an even greater "circle the wagons response." In the compromised emails, we see the East Anglia team ever more fearful that the raw data would fall into the wrong hands.

Finally and most tragically I must state that AGW is not proved, nor is it disproved; and we may never know the truth because so much raw data has been lost. And that is a real crime, because, while science may not be able to answer policy questions, it should certainly be called upon to intelligently and dispassionately inform the debate.

I would like to end on a lighter note, so here is a nice youtube video explaining it all, to music. H/T again, to Ace.

Climate Research Scientists - Before They Were Famous

I found this rare footage from the 80's that sheds some light on climate research scientists and their methods. Here they are, when they were in a previous line of work, before they were famous.

Carbon Conservatism Revisited

With the health care debate trending so nicely in our favor, I thought it would be a good time to revisit my unpopular views on global warming. My dilemma is that unlike many conservatives, I believe man-made global warming is a real phenomena and unlike many leftists I don't believe it's a good excuse to ruin the economy with massive socialist schemes. That leaves me in a predicament. In my first foray into this territory I tried to convince fellow libertarians and conservatives that man is really having an effect on the planet. To recap, the planet is in a unique time with respect to the climate. The last three million years have seen ever deepening ice ages, with short interregnums of warming. We are currently in such a period, the Holocene, but that period has lasted significantly longer than the mean time of other such warming periods. Man's civilization developed during the Holocene, which is currently about 12,000 years old, so any changes, either a plunge into a new ice age, or global warming will be highly disruptive to the global economy. In my view the current increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are probably preventing another ice age, which is the geologic "normal" for our epoch, but this increase also threatens to significantly increase global average temperature. The current, since 2001, slight cooling trend we are seeing is probably the result of a sunspot minimum and in my opinion, should be a much deeper trend. The longer term temperature trend is upward, unless the current sunspot minimum, against probability, remains in place.

But the tougher debate is over what is to be done. First, I think that left and right can accept that the historical record shows that civilization developed in a fairly narrow and unique time in geologic history. It is unlikely to remain stable indefinitely, so we are likely to need all of our wealth to be made available to deal with whatever conditions prevail. That means that wealth destroying plans, such as the current "cap and trade" bill have to be non-starters. Further, any steps that we do take, must be clearly effective. We can't afford to disrupt the economy to no benefit. Finally, since the free market has shown itself to be the most efficient producer of goods and services, we need to harness its power toward our stated end of stabilizing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

No one is smarter than the market as a whole and so cannot predict which technology will be most efficacious in replacing energy sources that are currently carbon based. Further, within carbon fuels, some produce more CO2 than others, so a shift from coal to natural gas for instance would reduce carbon emissions per BTU produced. So I propose a carbon tax at the point of consumption, with an offsetting reduction in the income tax so that government does not consume a larger share of GDP, therefore damaging the economy. Such a tax would be phased in gradually to further avoid economic disruption. Finally, the United States should make it a goal that all industrial and emerging economies sign a treaty regarding such a tax, because if only the United States takes this route, we are unlikely to reduce carbon dioxide emissions unilaterally.

A carbon tax has the advantage of simplicity and being technologically neutral. By raising the price of fuel sources in direct proportion to the amount of carbon oxidized, we directly attack the problem we wish to solve. Is wind power better than solar photovoltaic? Who knows? Over time the market will decide. Further, the carbon costs of building solar panels or wind turbines would be factored into the equation by the equitable distribution of this tax. Also, a carbon tax has the added advantage of reducing air pollution caused by other contaminants. The majority of air pollution in the United States today is caused by burning fossil fuels.

The other advantage of this plan, is that it would reduce global demand for fossil fuels. There may be a correlation, but it seems that the world's oil reserves are in the hands of despots and madmen. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Venezuela come to mind. Depriving these governments of oil revenue would go a long way towards advancing the cause of freedom in the world.

I have been a little slow on posting lately, as I waited until the last weekend to finish a paper for a class I am taking. More to follow, and as usual on this subject, I look forward to spirited debate.

Carbon Conservativism

Conservatives and Libertarians are losing credibility by arguing that man made sources are not responsible for global warming. While I appreciate that the left has seized on the issue in order to seize our income and control of the economy, arguing against the underlying science is a long term losing proposition. Further, having done nothing about the issue when they controlled the Congress and the Presidency, the Republicans have paved the way for Henry Waxman's hair-brained, reward-your-buddies scheme that will actually do little to nothing to solve the problem. For scathing critiques of Waxman-Hartley also see the Reason article and Economist article.

First, I want to examine a little of the science. It is established fact that greenhouse gases, CO2, water vapor, ozone and methane, exist and cause the surface temperature of the earth to be about 57 deg F warmer than if they were not present. Hooray, it would be mighty cold without them. I worked the equations to determine this difference in a college level physics class well before the current debate. Further, the concentration of CO2 is increasing steadily and is now about 37% higher than a century ago, so it is not too far a stretch to believe that this will cause a warming of the earth's atmosphere. How much? Perhaps one degree Celsius. However, we continue to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.



The historical record of the last million years has been dominated by ice ages, with relatively brief warming periods that occur on a 100,000 year cycle. We are currently in such a warming period, called the holocene that started about 10,000 years ago. During the warming period, the rise in carbon dioxide levels generally lagged the rise in temperature by 800 to 1100 years. While this proves that historically, CO2 did not cause the initial increase in temperatures, it is hypothesized that the rising carbon dioxide levels, released from warmer oceans, due to lower CO2 solubility created a positive feedback effect that caused temperatures to rise quickly.

Today, we appear to be in a historically anomalous time. The interglacial period has lasted almost as long as any for the last million years, so it is an open question as to whether the increased carbon dioxide will be overwhelmed by the natural forces that seem to be cooling the earth over the longer haul. More importantly, the surface temperatures of the earth have been very stable during the holocene; this very predictability has contributed to economic development. The argument on the left is that because we are dependent on temperature stability for our current economic structures, it would be disastrous to allow anthropegenic (man-made) global warming to upset the balance.

However, the balance is likely to be upset anyway, and it seems that the Waxman's proposal is to wreck the economy to in order to save it. However, because the main source of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels, which is associated with air pollution, it would still seem prudent to reduce carbon emissions in a way that does the least damage to the wealth of the planet, for the very reason that this wealth will be needed to adapt to climate changes that have probably become unstoppable for the time being. Because I believe in the power of deregulation and free markets to effect change, the proposal that makes the most sense is to phase in a carbon tax and offset the revenue with an equal phased reduction of the income tax. This has the advantage of not choosing favorites with respect to which alternative sources of non-carbonated energy should be used and minimizing the impact to the economy. Because it doesn't raise revenues nor reward favored groups, Democrats will never go for it. Republicans, you suck too, for not putting this in place when you had the chance. Now, we are all going to suffer.

I will post more on this topic at a later date.

I am calling out 'Dawg to comment. Other posters are welcome as well.

I leave you with a quote from Reason: "Man-made climate change may be a huge problem, but cap-and-trade proponents need to stop pretending that the solution will cost virtually nothing while producing more jobs than it destroys."

The Coming Carbon Thugocracy Update

During the campaign, I predicted that if Obama won, he would use the EPA to back door Congressional lawmaking and get the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emmisions. From an October article in the WSJ:

In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.

So guess what happened? From the NYT article today:

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.

Unlike the earlier proposal, this effort does not seem to propose the blatantly unconstitutional proposal to have the EPA impose a tax on carbon emissions. The administration is trying not to tread on Congressional toes in other ways as well. Lisa P. Jackson is the new EPA administrator. From the same article:

The finding and proposed regulations would be issued in sequence, with ample opportunity for public comment and not in a sudden burst of regulatory muscle-flexing, Ms. Jackson said. The regulations would work in concert with any legislation and not supplant it, she added.

The article also points out the likelihood of lawsuits that would dramatically draw out the implementation. But I say, bring it on! I would love to see this case in front of the Supreme Court, with the AGW crowd (that's anthropogenic global warming) having to defend their pseudo-science. American Thinker has pointed to the total hysteria on the other side, with little proof that man is (a) causing global warming and (b) that global warming is actually harmful. I think this last bit is the trickiest part for the chicken-little crowd. Just because the earth heats up, life is not necessarily harmed. In fact, increased carbon dioxide and warmth might help biodiversity. If that could be shown, then the tree huggers should be encouraging us to by that Hummer.

But of course, it really isn't about saving the planet is it? It's about wresting control over the lives of individuals to establish a socialist utopia where the intellectuals rule and rid us of our benighted ways. But the dirty little secret of that dream is that thugs with guns always end up ruling, not the so-called enlightened intellectuals.

This is a threat to freedom. It is one more warning, as if we needed one, that Obama is on a crusade to secure socialism in America, just like someone else who just won an election.