September 2014 Climate Change Summary Report

“Fracking is the answer to global warming”

September 29, 2014: An op-ed in The Washington Times by Stephen Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, states: “President Obama raised a lot of eyebrows here and abroad when he declared in his United Nations climate-change speech: ‘Over the past eight years, the United States has reduced our total carbon pollution by more than any other nation on Earth.’ It’s absolutely true — though labeling carbon dioxide a ‘pollution’ is highly disputable. The fact that we have reduced carbon-dioxide emissions more than any other nation is especially remarkable because we as a nation didn’t sign the Kyoto Treaty, pass a carbon-dioxide tax or enact Mr. Obama’s cap-and-trade agenda. Most Americans are probably surprised by this news because we’ve been scolded nearly every day that America is the major source of all these satanic gases that are burning up the planet. Instead, since 2005, our emissions are down by roughly 10 percent. Not bad. The issue is how America has reduced its carbon-dioxide footprint, and here is where the real surprise lies.”

“EPA chief says to expect ‘changes’ in final climate rule”

September 26, 2014: The Hill reports: “There will be ‘changes’ made in the Obama administration’s proposal to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Gina McCarthy. ‘People who know me well enough know there are going to be changes between proposal and final because we listen,’ McCarthy said on Thursday. Since unveiling the controversial regulation, the administration has put all hands on deck to pitch the new standards to lawmakers, state officials, environmentalists, coal advocates, utilities, and more.  And while McCarthy says the feedback has been ‘positive,’ and she is ‘excited’ to see the end result, there has been relentless pushback from Republicans, and industry types worried that the rule will put a strain on reliability, forcing energy sources offline.”

“Climate summit shows U.S. is leading: McCarthy”

September 25, 2014: Energy Guardian reports: “Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy on Thursday is to come out swinging in declaring that President Barack Obama is rallying the international community to address global warming, based on the United Nations Climate Change Summit this week. ‘I was at the climate summit this week, and one thing is clear: U.S. climate action is changing the game,’ McCarthy is to say to the Resources for the Future group in Washington, according to advance excerpts of her speech. ‘Our leadership is spurring action and commitments from government and business leaders from around the world.’ …McCarthy also plans to take on Obama’s climate critics in Congress and industry, who are accusing him of using planned carbon regulations on power plants to wage a ‘war on coal’ and put the federal government in charge of state electricity grids. She calls it ‘worrisome’ that some public officials — primarily Republicans — use the phrase ‘I’m not a scientist’ to question climate change, while charging the Obama administration is threatening the economy.”

“Inhofe says Obama might try to bypass Senate on emissions treaty”

September 24, 2014: Greenwire reports: “The Senate’s top climate change skeptic said yesterday that President Obama seems poised to bypass the Senate and commit the United States to a binding international treaty on global warming. In a letter to Obama ahead of the president’s scheduled remarks at the U.N. Climate Summit, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) charged that the administration appeared ready to agree to commit to emission-reduction targets without seeking similar deals from other countries or waiting for Senate ratification. ‘This is deeply troubling,’ Inhofe wrote, noting that the Constitution bars the executive branch from entering into a treaty without the Senate’s consent.”

“Urgent messages, no binding commitments at climate summit”

September 24, 2014: Associated Press reports: “The only thing rising faster than heat-trapping gases Tuesday were the statements of urgency by world leaders, who told each other at a United Nations summit how seriously they take global warming. Binding commitments and action are to come. President Barack Obama pressed other countries to follow the United States’ lead on the issue, even as the summit revealed the many obstacles that stand in the way of wider agreements to reduce heat-trapping pollution. ‘The United States has made ambitious investments in clean energy and ambitious reductions in our carbon emissions,’ Obama said. ‘Today I call on all countries to join us, not next year or the year after that, but right now. Because no nation can meet this global threat alone.’”

“Obama to back ‘robust’ carbon reductions, take new actions”

September 23, 2014: Energy Guardian reports: “President Barack Obama on Tuesday plans to commit the U.S. to a ‘robust’ post-2020 U.S. carbon reduction target in his speech to the United Nations Climate Summit, according to a senior administration official. Obama will also unveil additional climate response actions in the speech, the official said. Those include an executive order to federal agencies to consider climate resilience in U.S. international development programs and investments. He will confirm U.S. participation in 12 new climate change partnerships unveiled at the summit, and, as previously announced, will make available new tools to help developing nations take advantage of U.S. climate scientific and technology resources.”

“People’s Climate Demarche”

September 22, 2014: An editorial in The Wall Street Journal states: “Tens of thousands of environmental protestors paraded through New York City on Sunday, in a ‘people’s climate march’ designed to lobby world leaders arriving for the latest United Nations climate summit. The march did succeed in messing up traffic, but President Obama won’t achieve much more when he speaks Tuesday at this latest pit stop on the global warming grand prix. Six years after the failure of the Copenhagen summit whose extravagant ambition was to secure a binding global treaty on carbon emissions, Mr. Obama is trying again. The Turtle Bay gathering of world leaders isn’t formally a part of the international U.N. climate negotiations that are supposed to climax late next year in Paris, but the venue is meant to be an ice-breaker for more than 125 presidents, prime ministers and heads of state to start to reach consensus. One not-so-minor problem: The world’s largest emitters are declining to show up, even for appearances. The Chinese economy has been the No. 1 global producer of carbon dioxide since 2008, but President Xi Jinping won’t be gracing the U.N. with his presence. India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi (No. 3) will be in New York but is skipping the climate parley. Russian President Vladimir Putin (No. 4) has other priorities, while Japan (No. 5) is uncooperative after the Fukushima disaster that has damaged support for nuclear power. Saudi Arabia is dispatching its petroleum minister.”

“Climate Science Is Not Settled”

September 22, 2014: An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Dr. Steven E. Koonin, undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama’s first term and current director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, states: “The idea that ‘Climate science is settled’ runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future. My training as a computational physicist—together with a 40-year career of scientific research, advising and management in academia, government and the private sector—has afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. Detailed technical discussions during the past year with leading climate scientists have given me an even better sense of what we know, and don’t know, about climate. I have come to appreciate the daunting scientific challenge of answering the questions that policy makers and the public are asking.”

“Obama grasps for climate accord”

September 22, 2014: The Hill reports: “President Obama is headed to a United Nations climate change summit on Tuesday seeking to lay the groundwork for a global accord on greenhouse gas emissions that could burnish his legacy. Obama will call on global leaders to ‘step up to the plate and raise their level of ambition’ when considering actions to tackle climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the White House. While the speech on Tuesday before 125 heads of state will allow the president to tout the actions he has taken to reign in pollution, it will also give him an opportunity to pressure other nations into following suit. ‘We are taking this summit seriously,’ said senior White House adviser John Podesta.”

“Boycotting the U.N. climate summit”

September 19, 2014: An editorial in The Washington Times states: “Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sensibly declined to attend yet another climate summit — this time called by Ban Ki-moon for Tuesday in New York under the auspices of the United Nations — which profits handsomely from much-exaggerated climate scares. Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel likewise intend to skip the event. Environmentalists have complained about Mr. Modi’s decision. They say rising atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause droughts, melt Himalayan ice, and poison lakes and waterways in the Indian subcontinent. However, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has already had to backtrack on earlier assertions that Himalayan glaciers would be gone within 25 years, and the most comprehensive review of drought trends worldwide shows the global land area under drought has decreased throughout the past 30 years. The spiritual yet down-to-earth Mr. Modi knows that 300 million Indians still have no electricity. His priority is to turn on the lights all over India. In Bihar, four homes in five are still lit by kerosene. Electric power is the quickest, surest, cheapest way to lift people out of poverty, disease, subsistence agriculture and childhood death — thereby stabilizing India’s population, which may soon overtake China’s. The world’s governing elites, however, no longer care about poverty.  Climate change is their new focus.”

“Murray suit against carbon rule moves ahead”

September 19, 2014: Energy Guardian reports: “A federal appeals court will let a coal company petition proceed, for now, that seeks to halt the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned carbon rule for existing power plants. Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp. filed the petition in June with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia asking for an “extraordinary writ” that would stop the rule. A three-judge panel of the court on Thursday didn’t grant that request, but still ordered the EPA to file a response to the petition within 30 days. … The petitions argue that EPA wrongly interpreted the Clean Air Act in its proposal to impose carbon limits on power plants. They say the law does not allow the agency to set national emissions rules on power plants via its Mercury and Air Toxics Standard, finalized in 2012 under Section 112 of the law, while relying on another part of the law, Section 111(d), to regulate carbon.”

“Obama’s second chance for a U.N. climate push”

September 19, 2014: PoliticoPro (subscription required) reports: Less than a year into his presidency, an optimistic Barack Obama jetted to Copenhagen, hoping to jump-start the foundering international climate change negotiations. But his promises to heal the planet and slow the rising oceans failed to help secure a significant global warming agreement. Five years later, Obama is getting a second chance… Despite inaction from Congress, Obama has imposed unprecedented measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, including stringent vehicle fuel economy standards and plans for the first-ever carbon limits on power plants. But Obama can’t rein in runaway greenhouse gas emissions alone. Without the cooperation of major world emitters like China and India, the United States’ actions will mean little in the long term.”

“Bobby Jindal: White House ‘science deniers’”

September 18, 2014: Politico reports: “Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Tuesday accused members of the Obama administration of being ‘science deniers’ while skirting a series of questions about his personal views on climate change. ‘The reality is, right now, we’ve got an administration —the Obama administration — that are science deniers when it comes to harnessing America’s energy resources and the potential to create good-paying jobs,’ the Republican and potential 2016 candidate said … He went on to summarize his energy plan — titled ‘Organizing Around Abundance: Making America an Energy Superpower’ — which calls for promoting ‘responsible development of domestic energy resources,’ building the Keystone pipeline and coordinating with other countries on any actions to address climate change.”

“White House officials acknowledge their climate plan’s limits, but decry inaction”

September 18, 2014: ClimateWire reports: Yesterday, White House officials responded to criticism of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, “…Since the launch of EPA’s proposed rule for existing power plants last June, critics and proponents of climate regulation have sparred over everything from the constitutionality of the rule to its practical implementation. But increasingly, Republican lawmakers in Washington have focused on what they describe as an imbalance between the costs and benefits of a rule that would touch on nearly every aspect of the country’s power infrastructure, while, they claim, delivering negligible climate benefits. Moreover, critics say, the administration’s estimate of the Clean Power Plan’s benefits — which relies heavily on averted health impacts due to pollution reductions — looks far into the future with the final payback not coming until the year 2300.”

“EPA extends carbon rule comment period”

September 17, 2014: The Wall Street Journal reports: “The Obama administration said Tuesday it is allowing more time for the public to weigh in on draft regulations controlling carbon emissions from hundreds of fossil-fuel power plants across the country after a majority of senators called for the extension. The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it was extending by 45 days its public-comment period that was originally scheduled to end Oct. 16. In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy last week, 53 senators, including several Democrats up for re-election this year, urged the administration to allow 60 more days; the comment period was originally 120 days. The new closing date is Dec. 1.”

“Leo vs. science: vanishing evidence for climate change”

September 16, 2014: An op-ed in the NY Post states: “In the runup to the Sept. 23 UN Climate Summit in New York, Leonardo DiCaprio is releasing a series of films about the ‘climate crisis.’ The first is ‘Carbon,’ which tells us the world is threatened by a ‘carbon monster.’ Coal, oil, natural gas and other carbon-based forms of energy are causing dangerous climate change and must be turned off as soon as possible, DiCaprio says. But he has identified the wrong monster. It is the climate scare itself that is the real threat to civilization.”

“Obama science adviser to testify on climate plan”

September 12, 2014: The Hill reports: “White House science adviser John Holdren will testify before a House panel next week on President Obama’s climate agenda. Holdren will appear before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on Sept. 17. Acting assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s air and radiation office, Janet McCabe, will also testify before the committee. Both McCabe and Holdren are front and center in carrying out the administration’s climate agenda, key to Obama’s second-term legacy. Holdren is one of the most outspoken of Obama’s advisers on climate change and its links to drought, wildfires and other severe weather. On the White House website, Holdren provides much of the scientific explanation behind the administration’s climate initiatives. Last winter he struck back at some Republicans who claimed that the ‘polar vortex’ was a sign that global warming is a hoax.”

“15 GOP governors to Obama: Climate rule breaks the law”

September 11, 2014: The Hill  reports: “Fifteen GOP governors say President Obama’s signature climate change regulation on carbon pollution from existing power plants ‘exceeds the scope of federal law.’ In a letter to Obama, the governors from states including North Carolina, Alaska, Arizona and Wisconsin said the rule, which requires the nation’s fleet of existing power plants to cut carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030, is an overreach of authority. The governors argue that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot regulate a source under two different sections of the Clean Air Act; because the EPA already regulates existing power plants under another section of the law, it cannot do so again under section 111(d), the governors argue. They also take issue with the part of the agency’s proposal that allows states to go ‘beyond the fence’ to cut emissions.”

“Lawmaker: Regulators’ Oil-Train Safety Push Could Be Climate-Change Policy in Disguise”

September 10, 2014: National Journal reports: “A House Republican suggested the Transportation Department is hiding a stealth global-warming policy behind the guise of a rail-safety crackdown. Federal regulators are writing new safety standards for trains that carry crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation, part of a broader regulatory initiative that follows a string of derailments and explosions on trains shipping the fuel. The regulators have increased their focus on the flammability of the fuel, as well as other risks of moving it by rail. But Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California sees an ulterior motive: an effort to cripple fossil-fuel development in the name of a global-warming ‘theory.’”

“Democrats, Republicans spar over ‘climate denier’ label during House hearing on EPA carbon rule”

September 10, 2014: ClimateWire reports: “A hearing yesterday on U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan gave way at times to semantic angling, as House Democrats sought to frame resistance to the plan as a rejection of climate science and Republicans pushed back, at times testily, against the label of ‘climate denier.’ The hearing, which featured testimony from state agency heads and public utility commissioners, focused primarily on states’ concerns over technical aspects and the overall feasibility of the Clean Power Plan (Greenwire, Sept. 9). But it also gave Democratic and Republican lawmakers a forum to place the issue in line with their parties’ platforms — for Democrats as an important environmental safeguard, and for Republicans as a burdensome piece of federal overreach. With the consequences of human-caused global warming already manifesting themselves around the country in the form of droughts, wildfires and ocean acidification, Democrats said, the Obama administration’s cardinal piece of climate regulation was a critical first step to begin addressing the problem on a national level.”

Report: No Global Warming For 215 Months”

September 10, 2014: The Daily Caller reports: “The numbers are in and the verdict is that there has been no global warming for 17 years and 11 months, according to satellite data. Satellite data prepared by Lord Christopher Monckton shows there has been no warming trend from October of 1996 to August of 2014 — 215 months. To put this in perspective, kids graduating from high school this year have not lived through any global warming in their lifetimes. According to Monckton — the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley and a former policy adviser to U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — the rate of warming has been half of what climate scientists initially predicted in the early 1990s. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) first predicted in 1990 that global temperatures would rise at a rate of 2.8 degrees Celsius per century. But the temperature rise since the IPCC’s prediction has only been at a rate of 1.4 degrees Celsius per century.”

“CO2 levels in atmosphere rising at dramatically faster rate, U.N. report warns”

September 9, 2014: The Washington Post reports: “Levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose at a record-shattering pace last year, a new report shows, a surge that surprised scientists and spurred fears of an accelerated warming of the planet in decades to come. Concentrations of nearly all the major greenhouse gases reached historic highs in 2013, reflecting ever-rising emissions from automobiles and smokestacks but also, scientists believe, a diminishing ability of the world’s oceans and plant life to soak up the excess carbon put into the atmosphere by humans, according to data released early Tuesday by the United Nations’ meteorological advisory body. The latest figures from the World Meteorological Organization’s monitoring network are considered particularly significant because they reflect not only the amount of carbon pumped into the air by humans, but also the complex interaction between man-made gases and the natural world.”

“Whatever Happened to Global Warming?”

September 5, 2014: An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Matt Ridley, author and member of the British House of Lords, states: “On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won’t attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer? In effect, this is all that’s left of the global-warming emergency the U.N. declared in its first report on the subject in 1990. The U.N. no longer claims that there will be dangerous or rapid climate change in the next two decades. Last September, between the second and final draft of its fifth assessment report, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change quietly downgraded the warming it expected in the 30 years following 1995, to about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 0.7 (or, in Fahrenheit, to about 0.9 degrees, from 1.3).”

“Climate science in ‘Jeopardy’”

September 5, 2014: An op-ed in The Washington Times by Anthony J. Sadar, author and certified consulting meteorologist and JoAnn Truchan, a professional engineer specializing in chemical engineering and air-pollution control, states: “Scientific practice is a bit off these days. It seems as if the promoters of man-made climate change only want one answer for the cause of every climate phenomenon. Among them: The reason why thermometers are rising so quickly worldwide. The reason worldwide temperatures have leveled off in the past 17 years. The cause of the higher-than-average hurricane season in 2005. The cause of the lower-than-average hurricane season in 2013. The reason there has been so little snowfall in the U.S. and Europe. The reason there has been so much snowfall in the U.S. and Europe. If climate science were a category on the popular game show ‘Jeopardy,’ where the answer must be in the form of a question, there would be but one response allowed for the cause of all these contradictory events: ‘What is man-made climate change?’ …Science must ask the questions first, then work diligently to ascertain the right answers.”

“Social cost of carbon gets its day in court in Minn.”

September 5, 2014: EnergyWire reports: “The federal government’s social cost of carbon values is going on trial in Minnesota. Required by state law to establish a dollar value for the environmental damages caused by power plants carbon dioxide emissions, state utility regulators sent the contentious issue to an administrative law judge. If it plays out like it has so far, the case will pit advocacy groups that successfully petitioned the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to refresh outdated values for damages caused by CO2 emissions against utilities and big power users, which will try to poke holes in the methodology used by the federal interagency work group and experts.”

“EPA ‘Tier III’ Test Change May Complicate Achieving Fuel Economy Goals”

September 4, 2014: Inside EPA reports: “EPA’s recent decision in its ‘Tier III’ vehicle emissions rule to increase the amount of ethanol in certification fuel used to determine an automobile’s compliance with the standard could complicate automakers’ ability to meet separate fuel economy and greenhouse gas (GHG) rules for cars subject to a different type of certification, observers say. The Tier III rules, finalized earlier this year, increased the amount of ethanol in EPA’s certification fuel from zero (E0) to a 10 percent ethanol (E10) gasoline blend, but did not change the calculation used by the agency to account for the decreased energy content of ethanol in assessing fuel economy and vehicle GHGs. Automakers in comments on the proposed version of the Tier III rule warned about potential conflicts between that regulation — which caps the amount of sulfur in fuel in order to cut conventional pollution — with the separate fuel economy and GHG vehicle standards. The industry urged EPA to change an equation known as the ‘R’ factor underlying its fuel economy testing to reflect an increase in the ethanol level of the Tier III test fuel.”

“China to launch world’s largest carbon market in 2016 – official”

September 4, 2014: ClimateWire reports: “China plans to unveil a national carbon permitting market in 2016 and the government has almost completed rules for the policy, an official said at a conference in Beijing on Sunday. The emissions market would become the world’s largest carbon-permitting system — orchestrated by the biggest international polluter — and, at full capacity, would dwarf the European Union’s current emissions trading market. Pledging to cut carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, China has initiated seven regional markets as test projects leading up to the start of the 2016 marketplace. ‘We will send over the national market regulations to the State Council for approval by the end of the year,’ Sun Cuihua, a senior climate official with the National Development and Reform Commission, said Sunday.”

“House panel to hear from regulators on carbon rule”

September 3, 2014: The Hill reports: “House Republicans are continuing their push against the administration’s carbon pollution rules on existing power plants next week when they return from recess. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power will hold a hearing on ‘state perspectives’ of the administration’s proposal. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules would mandate the nation’s fleet of existing power plants cut carbon dioxide 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels.  Lawmakers are expected to hear from state regulators on the ‘unprecedented new regulatory authority’ the committee says EPA is asserting in its proposal.  ‘The burden of implementing this plan will fall to the states, which are being asked to completely redesign their electricity systems,’ chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), said in a statement on Tuesday.”

“The Climate Change Agenda Needs to Adapt to Reality”

September 3, 2014: An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Edward P. Lazear, professor and chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (2006-09) and head of the White House committee on the economics of climate change (2007-08), states: “The Obama administration is instituting a variety of far-reaching policies to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. Are any of these capable of making a difference? Simple arithmetic suggests not. Given this reality, we would be wise to consider strategies that complement and may be more effective than mitigation—namely, adaptation.  According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, in 2012 the world emitted a little over 31 gigatons of carbon dioxide. China was the No. 1 emitter, accounting for more than one-fourth of the carbon produced. The U.S. was second, emitting about one-sixth. China and India, among other developing countries, argue that they should be allowed to increase carbon emissions. They’re still developing and require higher rates of economic growth. Moreover, they aren’t responsible for previous emissions, and on a per capita basis U.S. emissions are much higher.”