TPPF COMMENTARY: A Change in Climate for Climate Change Policy

With President-elect Barack Obama and larger Democratic majorities in the U.S. Congress, the conventional wisdom has been that next year will be "all systems go" for the type of major climate change legislation that President George W. Bush had been blocking. However, in this week's commentary, Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Foundation's Center for Natural Resources and former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, lists six reasons why she believe that won't necessarily be the case.

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A Change in Climate for Climate Change Policy

By Kathleen Hartnett White

Come what dramatic political and economic changes may occur, a refrain persists within the media, industry, and the U.S. Congress that onerous federal mandates to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) are inevitable. I don’t think so.

In less than a year, many unanticipated developments have complicated the political dynamics of “ending the era of fossil fuels” through the enactment of carbon reduction mandates. Consider six such developments that may give pause to policymakers otherwise inclined to support these measures:

* When the price of oil topped $4.00 a gallon and food inflation reached almost 8 percent, most voters got it: price and security first! At least a dozen recent polls show that three-fourths of likely voters put far more importance on the U.S. oil supply than global warming. This prevalent public opinion dissolved the U.S. Congress’ long and intransigent opposition to increased domestic oil production. In late September, the 30-year bans on offshore oil production expired. The rapid decline in the price of oil, as a result of economic slowdown, has not yet squelched broad support for more domestic oil production.

* Energy independence has become a battle cry across the political spectrum. The painfully high price of oil increased the public’s recognition that there are no near-term, realistic alternatives to the dominance of fossil fuels in the U.S. energy supply. American dependence on unreliable, if not inimical, sources of foreign oil worries Main Street far more than it used to.

* The European Union’s (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS), once the model for a U.S. program, continues to fail. Europe’s program is not reducing CO2 and has lead to higher energy costs. The U.S. has reduced more CO2 by market efficiencies and without any complicated cap-and-trade programs. Growing numbers of EU member countries, including Italy, now want to delay (read: scratch) the ETS because of economic woes approaching crisis proportions.

* By the time the Lieberman-Warner bill (S.2191) made it to the U.S. Senate floor last summer, the veil on its staggering cost had been lifted. The world’s most ambitious, enforceable carbon regime to date, S.2191 would impose exorbitant costs and require unprecedented expansion of the federal control, but would yield no measureable effect on global climate unless China and India undertook similarly draconian programs.

* Far more substantial climate science emerges and is a game-changer for the reigning science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Observational evidence from NASA satellites indicates little to no heat-forcing effect from manmade CO2. This NASA data is empirical science, far superior to the uncertain IPCC computer models.

* And the clincher: the specter of global recession. Worldwide financial turmoil presents the most hard-hitting obstacle to mandatory CO2 reduction. While figures may differ, no one doubts that CO2 reduction mandates would lead to far higher prices for fuel, power, food, and other basic consumer goods. Until the U.S. and global economies stabilize, the least prudent among us might delay CO2 regulations that would overturn our energy economy.

Amidst the current economic maelstrom, some congressional leaders perversely cling to carbon regulation as a new federal revenue source to compensate for a reduced tax base. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal government’s auction of carbon allocations, e.g., power companies forced to buy permission to keep generating electricity, could generate trillions in revenue. Inconvenient facts, however, may have changed the political climate necessary for major CO2 reduction programs absent available control technology.

In the last year, many policy makers and voters have learned some hard facts about energy and the economy. If an ounce of reason might prevail, climate change policymakers would acknowledge that mandates are premature and impracticable. Immediate steps should be toward extending the new empirical climate science and market-based development of energy efficient technologies.

Natural variability – or change, simply speaking – is the hallmark of climate and politics; not easy to predict and never inevitable.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. She is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Renowned climate scientist addresses Houston business leaders

Spencer: Major climate models overestimate human role in global warming

HOUSTON – Speaking today to Houston business leaders, renowned climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer said that new data collected from NASA satellites show that there are significant errors in the climate models used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Dr. Spencer – published author, principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite – presented his latest climate research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Global Warming Policy Breakfast this morning at the Houston City Club.

The IPCC science is the driver behind national and international programs to mandate reduction of carbon dioxide. “The major climate models used by global warming advocates all assume a far greater sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide changes than what we observe in the empirical satellite data,” Dr. Spencer said. “That’s why all of these scenarios produce such outlandishly high forecasts about future global temperatures.”

Spencer said that manmade global warming proponents had confused cause and effect. “Al Gore’s apocalyptic temperature scenario assumes that carbon dioxide causes temperature changes,” Spencer continued. “Except there is one problem – global temperatures precede carbon dioxide levels by approximately 800 years. Ice core data reveals the opposite of what Gore claims.”

“When politicians and activists claim that the manmade global warming debate is ‘settled,’ they point to these IPCC climate models as their proof,” said Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Dr. Spencer’s empirical research contradicts the assumptions in those models.”

White urged policymakers to reassess onerous carbon reduction schemes because they are no longer supported by this far more substantial science based on the actual measurement of climate dynamics in the upper atmosphere. “Genuine science is never settled but always evolving, as Dr. Spencer’s work powerfully demonstrates,” White concluded.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.

Dr. Roy Spencer is the author of "Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor." He is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, and the former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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