WashACE Blog

Economy Over Climate Change, 85-12

That's the finding of a USA Today/Gallup poll reported in SeattlePI.com.

Which do you think should be a higher priority for the Obama administration right now?

85% Improving the economy
12% Reducing global warming

At Publicola, Josh Feit consider the implications of the survey for the legislative session.

So far, the left’s agenda in Olympia this year seems more blue than green. When a supergroup coalition of lefties (dubbing itself Rebuilding Our Economic Future) showed up in Olympia last week to protest the budget, no environmental groups took the stage with the union members, health care advocates, education leaders, and financial aid students.

<snip>.

[Coalition spokesman Sandeep] Kaushik tells me that was an accident and the environmental community is part of the coalition that’s working out a platform and message on the budget.

I’m sure they are. But I do wonder if the issue that seemed to be the zeitgeist during the last half of this decade has suddenly been displaced in our state.

It wouldn't be the first time that fiscal reality forced a change in strategy and priorities. The public gets it.

More on the CRU Climate Scandal

Here's my column on the scandal spreading from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (England).

Events continue to unfold. On the Commentary blog, John Steele Gordon notes that Phil Jones, the CRU director, has stepped down pending an investigation, according to AP. And Michael Mann, he of the wobbly hockey stick, is under investigation at Penn State.

A geeky, but interesting, discussion on the software & IT issues at Dude, with Keyboard. (h/t Instapundit)

And, in Australia, as today's Wall Street Journal reports, proposed cap-and-trade legislation sparks a parliamentary revolt. 

Interesting times.

Change in Business Climate Needed

Don Brunell's Columbian column highlights an issue deserving much more attention: lawsuits filed over climate change.

Global warming is about to create an avalanche of lawsuits against the federal government and private industry.

He gives a number of frightening examples. Then this:

Congress is wading in as well. The 1,427-page energy bill passed by the House of Representatives gives enforcement powers over greenhouse gas emissions to "… citizens, states, Indian tribes and all levels of government."

Simply put, that means everybody can sue everybody.

His conclusion:

Ironically, all this litigation could end up harming the environment rather than helping it. Rather than face a future of endless litigation, companies that employ millions of Americans will simply move to countries with less stringent environmental regulations — and jobs will go with them.

If we are to have any chance of putting millions of Americans back to work, we need climate change all right. We need to change the business climate in this country to encourage, rather than discourage, employers to do business here.

Precisely right.

A Sampling of Writing on the Climate Change Scandal

I spent part of the holiday weekend working on a column on what some folks are calling Climategate, the release of thousands of emails and other documents revealing a pattern of bad behavior at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, England. (Having taken a vow to resist the "gate" suffix for political mischief and misdeeds, I'll just call it the climate change scandal.) As the holiday weekend wore on, the commentary and analysis piled up, along with great links to the leaked information.

The coverage in local papers has been limited, so I thought I'd put some of the best of what I'd read up here.

In the Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel writes that the scandal has sunk any remaining prospects for Senate passage of a cap-and-trade bill.

One of the best headlines appears over a good WSJ editorial: Rigging a 'Climate' Consensus

Megan McCardle's Atlantic article points up the real problem with the climate science emails. She cites a perceptive assessment by CBS news reporter Declan McCullagh, widely viewed as having done the best MSM reporting on the scandal. This is from McCardle's post:

The emails seem to describe a model which frequently breaks, and being constantly "tweaked" with manual interventions of dubious quality in order to make them fit the historical data.  These stories suggest that the model, and the past manual interventions, are so poorly documented that CRU cannot now replicate its own past findings.

That is a big problem.  The IPCC report, which is the most widely relied upon in policy circles, uses this model to estimate the costs of global warming.  If those costs are unreliable, then any cost-benefit analysis is totally worthless.

The IPCC report she refers to is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments. As McCullagh writes:

That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it "relies on most heavily" when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.

Then we discover that the raw data has been dumped, making replication impossible.

What's it all mean? IChristopher Brooker, in an op-ed for the Daily Telegraph, calls it "the greatest scientific scandal of our age," with science taking a back seat to ideology.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

Michael Barone frames the question appropriately.

The more interesting question going forward is whether European and American governmental, academic and corporate elites, having embraced global warming alarmism with religious fervor, will be shaken by the scandalous CRU e-mails. They should be.

My column is scheduled to run Wednesday.

Cap and Trade Shelved ... Recession is Over

It's a pair of headlines that belong together.

From the Wall Street Journal: Boxer and Kerry Postpone Release of Cap-and-Trade Bill

From the Seattle Times: In case you missed it, recession is now over

Not sure I buy it, but if the first is right, the second is much more likely to be true.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce seeks trial on global warming -- latimes.com

Reporting from Washington - The nation's largest business lobby wants to put the science of global warming on trial.The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect. "It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs.

"It would be the science of climate change on trial."

via www.latimes.com

Intriguing move by the U.S. Chamber. The EPA should do it. We'd all learn from the debate.

Some Follow-Up on the Cap and Tax Vote

Can't beat this New York Times headline for understatement: Climate Change Bill May be Election Year Issue.

And can't beat this NYT column by Paul Krugman for over the top rhetoric:

...as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

Gotta love that passion.

Finally, the question we've all been asking: Dude! Where's my renewable job? (h/t Instapundit) Good links. Read the whole thing.

What's it Mean to Go Green? Climate Change Regulations and Definitions

Last week, Gov. Gregoire announced her executive order on climate change. The announcement coincided with the EPA's Seattle hearing on greenhouse gases and climate change. The order came after lawmakers chose not to pass the governor's preferred environmental legislation.

TVW's Capitol Record has reactions, including a statement from the Association of Washington Business on the EPA's regulatory role.

“AWB has long advocated that a federal approach to climate change policy is much preferred over a state-by-state patchwork of conflicting policies that puts Washington state businesses at a competitive disadvantage with other states,” said Grant Nelson, AWB governmental affairs director on climate change issues. “The proposed changes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions would create higher operational costs for industries, higher costs for goods and services for consumers and threatens the availability of good family-wage jobs.

“While AWB prefers a federal approach, we believe that Congress, not EPA should enact a national approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Congress is better positioned than EPA in representing the interests of citizens nationwide, guarding against further harm to our already fragile economy and job loss,” he said.

This map of carbon geography, from the Creative Class blog, shows Washington is already one of the nation's low-carbon leaders. 

Just how far can the governor go in unilaterally regulating by E.O.? As TNT's Joe Turner writes, it's not clear. And, continuing the uncertainty, what it means to be renewable also is not clear, as the New York Times reports. Todd Myers, writing at the Washington Policy Center blog, also casts some doubt on the green jobs said to flow from new regulation. 

All clear now?

Session Reviews Offer 2010 Previews

Although there's no special session, the legislative battles of 2009 remain alive. In particular, the budget will likely be back. If, as many expect, revenues continue to deteriorate, even the austere spending plan adopted last month may require additional tweaking. Conversely, freed from the I-960 requirement that new taxes require voter approval, lawmakers in 2010 may opt to raise taxes on their own. That latter scenario would ordinarily be risible - a tax hike in an election year! - but Democratic lawmakers may conclude that their constituents would rather see higher taxes than endure further cuts in education and social services. That calculus works better for them if the tax increases fall more heavily on higher income taxpayers, bringing more progressivity to the existing tax system.

Jason Mercier notes that at least one lawmaker wants to see I-960 disappear. Given that it can now be amended or suspended by simple majority, I'd expect more finesses. Even if they do end 960, tax hikes won't be easy, as Joe Turner writes in his TNT blog.   

You think Democrats would be any more likely to raise taxes on their own going into a November election? Hardly. They couldn't even get the votes in the House to put a tax proposal on the ballot this session...

About the only thing you can count on is that next session there will be lots of pressure on Democratic majorities (62-36 in the House; 31-18 in the Senate) to change I-960. And then?

Already, we can see the debate shaping up. Sunday's Seattle Times spotlights impending teacher layoffs. That front page story stokes the no-cuts-to-education flame. Note, this is a paper that editorially recognized that tax hikes were properly off limits this session. It's not clear yet just how many layoffs will be required.

Because districts tend to be conservative, a number of those laid off will probably be hired back by this fall. Issaquah, for example, could recall 60 or 70 of the 158 teachers. Still, the Washington Education Association has called it the worst teacher cutbacks in the state in 30 years.

With employees accounting for more than 80 percent of most school-district budgets, teacher cutbacks are an obvious place to go to trim the budget. Still, not every district will be sending layoff notices. Some districts expect to receive federal stimulus money. Others will need to make fewer cuts because more of their staffers are retiring, resigning or going on leave.

While some will look at the education cuts as reason to promote new taxes, John Barnes points out some spending cuts lawmakers did not make.

Further problems come as agencies respond to revenue grabs, as noted in this TNT blog post by Joe Turner. Already, the liquor commission voted to raise prices to replace lost reserves. And swiping money from performance audits has brought a lot of opposition, most recently in this piece by Ted Van Dyk in Crosscut. 

The Legislature's proposed gutting of the performance-audit program is inexcusable. The audits, thus far, have saved taxpayers millions more dollars than they have cost. Among other things, they have uncovered practices by WSDOT, the Port of Seattle, Sound Transit, and other agencies which required correction. Without the audits, they would not have been exposed.

Meanwhile, although California will possibly be broke by July, voters remain opposed to tax hikes, sending a strong signal that taxpayer bailouts remain highly unpopular.

It's not all about the money here, though. In the Puget Sound Business Journal, Deirdre Gregg reports that unions are "bitter" about the treatment they received this year. Their disappointment is shared by environmental groups, as reported by Phuong Le for AP.

In Olympia, legislative debate never ends, it's just suspended for a bit.